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In honor of rememberence... My 9/11
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I've been trying so hard to make this happy for me and Mari despite what I saw today 9 years ago.
My 9/11...
I was in college, but home. I was living on Staten with my parents. My mom, who worked at the World Financial Center at the time for Merrill Lynch was off for the day because she had a doctor's appointment. I was just waking up for class when I heard a gasp from downstairs. Then I heard my grandmother come up from her part of the house and ask my mother "did you see that?" in Italian. I had no idea what they were talking about but soon learned as I ran down to the kitchen as my mom watched the TV in absolute horror. I remember my mind racing to remember who of my friends was internerning down there this semester - I remember trying to figure out which tower my cousin Kim worked in... I remember realizing my friend's sister just started her new job there. I remember hearing my ex boyfriend had an interview at WC 1... Amd I clearly remember the feeling of vomit when I spoke to my BFF that she couldn't find her boyfriend - a firefighter down in SoHo.
luckily, all but one of the people I knew made it out of WTC. My BFF's firefighter lost his entire company. We went down to St. Vincent's hospital on the North Shore of Staten to help bring in firefighters who were being transported by ferry there. We were given bottles of solution to wash out their eyes; we were given gauze and peroxide to clean out their cuts.
After the dust settled, literally, I remember going home, exhausted and feeling defeated, yet so incredibly happy I still had my mother. The front of her building was blown away... And had she been there, there's no telling what would have happened. Myfriends who made it out are traumatized for life - I think we all are...
And that was my 9/11. Share yours.
luckily, all but one of the people I knew made it out of WTC. My BFF's firefighter lost his entire company. We went down to St. Vincent's hospital on the North Shore of Staten to help bring in firefighters who were being transported by ferry there. We were given bottles of solution to wash out their eyes; we were given gauze and peroxide to clean out their cuts.
After the dust settled, literally, I remember going home, exhausted and feeling defeated, yet so incredibly happy I still had my mother. The front of her building was blown away... And had she been there, there's no telling what would have happened. Myfriends who made it out are traumatized for life - I think we all are...
And that was my 9/11. Share yours.
This discussion has been closed.
Re: In honor of rememberence... My 9/11
WOW, Cristina! So powerful- I got chills! That's only the second first-hand account I've gotten from someone who was actually there. The first was an old friend who worked across the street at the time. He told me on that day his family was at home in PA mourning his death because they thought for sure he did not make it.
I was in college, and turned on CNN that morning just after the first plane hit, and then I watched live with my roommates & boyfriend as the second one did. Illinois State did not cancel class that day, so there we were, in Spanish Grammar class. I raised my hand & asked if the professor had heard the news yet, and we all told him was happened. In Spanish he replied, "My wife is from Medilline, Colombia. That crap happens every day in her town." And class continued. Way to have a heart, profe!
I was in college and sadly, slept through most of the morning. (I had no Tuesday/Thursday classes.) I remember hearing the phone ring many, many times and thinking, "What the crap is going on???" I woke up, listened to the messages and the first I heard was my college boyfriend telling me to turn on the TV and that he'd be over after class. (Like Carollyn said, ISU didn't cancel classes that morning.)
I flipped on the TV and was glued for the rest of the day/night. Friends came over to watch with us, we just sat in silence.
I had a friend living in Brooklyn, working in Manhattan. It took me about a day to finally reach her. She was fine, thank goodness. We did lose one family friend that day, my favorite Uncle's best friend's daughter. She was starting her first week of work in NYC. She called her mom from the stairway of one of the towers (not sure which), said they were evacuating but that she was okay. No one heard from her ever again. To this day, her mom still believes she will walk through the door again someday. It's so very sad.
Still feels fresh in my mind. I feel like there's so much more I can say about that day. Just amazing.
Katy and Brett ~ Runaway Bay, Jamaica ~ October 4, 2008
Ugh, sounds like my experience! I was in American Literature class in high school, which really should have been retitled Anti-America Literature class because the only books the teacher had us read were books written in the 1990s about how horrible America is. But anyway, I went to the office during our bathroom break and the secretary told me what happened and said all classrooms can turn on their TVs. I went back to the classroom and she said "I don't want American negativity filling my classroom". I walked out and went to my Urban G classroom where it was not only being played but the teacher was changing networks every 30 minutes to make sure we were seeing the news from a variety of resources and then would stop every now and then to explain to us what was going on, what was fact, what was assumption, and what this could mean for our futures. I'm so happy that's where I was able to spend that day.
I was a flight attendant for Delta living and working in Atlanta. I remember it very well because it affected my job so much. I had flown all day on the 10th and my last flight was into NYC (I think it was JFK). We were really delayed because there had been fires in Newark and our passengers were really annoyed. We didn't get into New York until really late that night. When we called scheduling they told us that we were going to layover in NYC and go home the next morning. We flipped out because the 11th was our day off. So they let us go on the flight that was headed back to Atlanta (that was also really delayed because they had been waiting on our plane). I remember leaving so vividly because I love flying in and out of NYC. If you have ever flown there you would understand. It is such a great place to fly over and get to see everything. I remember looking at the Twin Towers when we flew out that night.
My phone started ringing off the hook the next morning. I lived in an house with 3 other flight attendants and one of my roommates had friends staying with us who just happened to live in NYC. I think everyone any of us knew started calling the minute they heard the news to make sure we weren't one of those on the planes. It was so scary but it was also a very stressful time for us. We didn't know when or if we were going to go back to work. And we had no idea what was in store for us when we did. People were so different on the flights the first few days after they reopened the airports. People were so scared and so grateful to us. I never had someone thank me for doing my job before then. I remember how scary the airports were those first few weeks. Walking around seeing military troops with guns in their hands all over. Everything in my job changed. That is one of the main reasons I'm not a flight attendant anymore. There were a lot of layoffs after and pretty much no job security. I didn't get laid off but I decided to go back to college instead. I remember how scared I was on my first few flights. I was on one of the first flights out of Atlanta and we were the first American plane into Japan.
Anyways, thanks for sharing your stories.
Wow, Cris and Katy both your stories gave me chills!
It was my freshman year in college, a week into classes. I had an 8am music theory class that ended at 9. I walked back to my dorm room as I had 45 minutes until my next class, psychology. My roomie was in the room with the tv on and I see an airplane had flown into the first tower. I thought the plane hitting was an accident. Right as I'm about to leave for psych the 2nd plane crashed, I saw it happen on tv and was freaked out and that's about the time everyone realized this was not an accident. I go to psych class and the teacher says we do not have to stay.
My mom and my brother literally arrived in Brooklyn the day before 9/11. They had driven out there as my brother was moving to a new apartment from Illinois to Brooklyn. I could not get a hold of them as the phones were all out and was again freaking out. They were obviously ok since they were not near the Towers but I couldn't get a hold of them for almost 2 days and my mom was stuck in NYC a week longer than she planned b/c of the halt on flights. Even in Brooklyn my mom said the sights and smells were undescribable.
I still get sick to my stomach watching what happened.
Wow. Cris thanks for sharing. That's intense.
I was a sophomore in High School. I didn't watch TV before leaving for classes and always listened to the CD player in my car. So I had no idea what was going on.
I get on campus and my BFF at the time comes running up to me yelling, "we're under attack!" I thought something crazy was going on at school and she can be kind of dramatic so I kind of brushed it off. I had no idea what was going on. Then I went to my Gov't class. The teacher talked about it the whole session and we watched coverage on TV. Sadly, I still didn't understand the significance and I had never heard of the twin towers prior to that morning.
~Kimberly & Eric~ April 21, 2008 ~Tensing Pen ~ Negril, Jamaica ~ My Blog: One Sunset at a Time
Wow, thank you for sharing that. It's amazing how every year, the emotions of that day still feel so raw & so fresh.
I had just graduated college, & started my 1st job at a dental office the week before 9/11. During my first week, my dad's brother committed suicide. I had to take off work 9/10 for the funeral, & my family had just gone through a really horrible weekend. On 9/11, I was headed into work, still very emotional from the events of the previous days. For some reason, I was listening to Mancow (who I hate & never listen to, so I'm still not sure why I had him on that day). I remember hearing him say, "A plane has crashed into the WTC," & I thought, ok, Mancow is pretty obnoxious, but that's just a terrible thing to joke about. He kept saying it, so I switched over to AM radio, & they were saying the same thing. I couldn't believe it. I got into my office, & everyone was standing in the break room watching the t.v. in silence. I'm so stupid & naive that I didn't realize that it was a terror attack for awhile. I remember the second plane hitting, & thinking, omg, what are the odds? Why is this happening? Eventually, one of the reporters said something about a terror attack, & I started to understand what was happening. I guess it had just never crossed my mind that there could be a terror attack of this magnitude in our country. I had never lived in fear of something like that before. Once I realized what was actually going on, I remember being so scared. I was glued to the t.v. for days after that, and my heart ached every second that I watched.
DH & I took our first trip to NYC in 2006. We visited the WTC site, and we also went to a 9/11 museum, which was a very intense experience. It was a tiny museum with items from the WTC. It is run by firefighters who were part of the 9/11 effort. They shared their first hand accounts, and it was an incredibly emotional experience to hear their memories of the day. My heart breaks to think about how many children lost a parent that day, and how many people lost loved ones. It's amazing to think about how many things have changed since that day.
I'll try to make this short. I still can't watch any of the stuff on TV because it's still too fresh in my mind and I wasn't anywhere near New York or PA. Honestly I feel like a wuss about it but I know sometimes it takes time to process things even though I wasn't in the thick of it.
At the time I was still dating my college boyfriend (about 4.5 years at that point and the guy I thought I was going to marry for a long time) whom was working at CIA headquarters just outside of the 495 loop in Virginia. I was in my 2nd year of graduate school at the Univ of IL. I got to campus that day minutes before the first plane hit, and being 7:35 or so in the morning, campus was erriely quiet and I had and odd feeling that things weren't quite right and couldn't put my finger on it. I was teaching a lab class and had to do clean up so I went to do that in a room that had no TV or radio access. So I came out at 9:30 CST having no idea what had happened. I went across the street to the building where I did my thesis research and some d!ck got on the elevator and said something along the lines of "what a f*&%ed up world". Now I worked in a building with a lot of 1st year med students under a lot of stress but this was still bizarre. So he manages to tell me in 2 floors of the elevator going up in a very raw manner about how the two buildings had been hit in NYC and that there was a hijacked plane flying around the DC metro area. My heart stopped and I had to remind myself to breathe. He had no idea who he could have been talking to. For all he knew I had a family member there and he was my point of finding out. It didn't take much to put two and two together, especially since I knew that I had seen CIA headquarters (or what I had guessed it was at the time) one time when we were turning in a plane entering National (DCA) airport so I knew it would be easy to find by air. I got off the elevator on the 4th floor and was doing everything I could to keep my composure until I could get a rational person's confirmation of the events. As soon as I saw my coworkers they asked me if I had heard from my boyfriend yet so I knew that the guy wasn't completely full of it. And of course, my cell phone was dying and I didn't have a charger with me. I did manage to get ahold of my bf indirectly, as I happened to leave the room when he called but found out they had released the workers at the CIA when the plane hit the Pentagon. I managed to talk to him for about 10 min that night, trying not to hog the phone lines because they were a mess. And I overpaid for gas that night because no one knew what to expect from gas prices. Honestly I was thankful to have class to go to because it was a distraction from the continuous barrage of news that was hard to make heads or tails of other than we knew that planes had been hijacked, people had died, and that planes were grounded.My husband is an air traffic controller and some of his friends were actually in class (in part practicing talking to airplanes) and their classes definitely stopped that day. I know I've asked DH about that day before but I don't remember what he was doing. I know he hadn't been hired yet by the FAA but other than that I just think he was working waiting to be hired.
I first remember my mom running into my room in a panic and telling me I had to get up and come see what was happening. It took me a few minutes to really figure out what was going on. I - like everyone else - was in shock and couldn't fully comprehend what happened. I listen to a "comedy" radio show in the morning and on my drive to school I just remember that there was no funny business going on, on the radio. There were only 2 members from the show on still and they were very serious (of course) and just kept talking about it and updating anytime anything knew came out.
I was in my first semester of college, I had Psych that morning and I remember half the school was empty. My psych professor told us that she had just gotten into LA on the red-eye from NY that morning. She said how on 9/10, her last day in NY, she decided to go see the WTC and she laid on one of the benches outside so she could take pictures of them. It's weird to think those are some of the last pictures ever taken of the towers. I was really happy she shared her stories with everyone.
When I left school I was with a friend of mine and we were driving to lunch. She ended up getting pulled over for making an illegal right turn. I distinctly remember her saying "Don't they have better things to do today?" and then laughing. I then realized this wasn't someone I wanted to be friends with anymore.
I was a sophomore in HS and my dad was driving me to school. The people on the radio were saying that a plane had flown in to the WTC and I can still hear my dad saying "oh sh!t oh sh!t". He's a firefighter so I'm sure his thoughts went straight to the FDNY. My mom called seconds after b/c my grandma and my dad's best friend had called her.
I got to school and was able to see some of the footage. I remember one of teachers refused to play any of the footage b/c he didn't want us to be distracted and there was nothing we could do anyways so we didn't need to sit and watch TV all day. That really pissed me off. The very least we could do was acknowledge that there were people going through hell in our country.
At the time my brother was in the Marines, just about to get out the next month. I was so worried that they'd send him off to war and he would never make it back. Luckily for us that didn't happen, but so many others weren't as lucky.
We had just been to NYC two months prior. I remember walking through the towers and just being in awe of how huge they were. There were people bustling around and tourists snapping pictures. I often think about how many of the people I saw that day lost their lives on 9/11. Every once in awhile I'll take out the pictures we have of the towers and the NYC skyline. It's still hard for me to picture NYC w/o the towers since I haven't been back since.
I still have the local newspaper from 9/12 with pictures of the towers on fire. Still gives me chills to look at.
Sorry that ended up so long
Started TTC Nov. 2011
1st clomid cycle June 2012- No response :: HSG August 2012- Left tube blocked, right tube clear :: 2nd clomid cycle Aug. 2012 BFN :: 3rd clomid cycle Sept. 2012 :: BFP Sept 30th :: DS born 6/15/13 :: BFP #2 7/29/14 M/C 8/5/14 :: BFP#3 10/20/14 DD born 7/1/2015 :: Applied to be surrogate April '17 :: Transferred 1 Embryo for IFs Dec. '17 :: Surro Babe born 9/11/18 :: Started 2nd Journey May '19 :: Transferred 1 Embryo for new IFs 9/24/19 :: HB 138 at 6w6d
I was doing a semester abroad in London, my junior year of college. There is a 6 hour time difference so it was around 2:30 or 3 in the afternoon and we were sitting in class. One of the other American students who was not in that class came in a said that the WTC had been bombed. Like some others have mentioned, we thought it was a sick joke at first, but she convinced us that she was serious. We all went to the building where we were living (next door) and crowded in one room around the TV. We watched as the second plane hit the WTC, and continued watching for hours. We were all shocked and dazed by what we were seeing. Eventually many of the students trickled back to their own rooms. My roommates and I went up to our room and took a nap, because we felt so emotionally drained.
No one there was from NYC, but one of my roommates was from DC, so she had a few people that she was concerned about, but she was able to get in touch with them eventually. I also spoke to my family. I just remembered feeling like I wanted my family to come to London with me, because I felt like it was safer to be there than in the US.
That evening several of us went to a pub. One of the girls (who is generally very outspoken) almost got into a fight with a Brit who said that we (America) deserved what had happened. He was definitely in the minority, most people expressed sadness about what happened. In the following days, one of the London newspapers printed an American flag on their back page, and people all over London displayed them in their windows. It was wonderful to see so many people supporting America. There was a huge outpouring of support in the days and weeks immediately following 9/11. (Incidentally, the tide of public opinion turned somewhat once GB got involved with Afgnanistan and their troops were being sent over there. At that point I would say there started to be more Anti-American sentiment.)
It was very interesting to experience 9/11 from the outside looking in, so to speak. There were definitely times between that day and December, when I returned to Texas, when I was afraid for people to know that I was American. I remember conversations between myself and my friends about who looked most American, and how to look less conspicuously American in public. I got caught in a huge Anti-American demonstration in Rome, which was a little scary.
I studied abroad in Spain the following year- just as the war was starting & I agree, I was always hesitant to say where I was from. Whenever people asked I would say, "Guess?" and they would normally say "Sweeden?" (I had super blonde hair back then) "Yup!"
I was in college in Nebraska - so not close to it all like some of you, but I do remember the morning pretty clearly.
I was in class when the first plane hit, and didn't know anything about it until I returned to the dorm and got in line to pick up an early lunch. The girl in front of me told me what she knew. I took my lunch back up to my room and turned on the TV where I saw the second tower collapse. I remember this guy I dated off and on at the time popping up on chat obviously clueless to what was going on. I told him to turn on his TV.
I was a psychology major and I remember all of my professors having a different idea of what should be done. One thought that class should be canceled, another felt that keeping things as normal as possible was best.
I was in college at the time and my dad called me to say that someone attacked the WTC. I turned on the TV to see the first tower had been hit. A few seconds later I saw the second plane hit the second tower. My classes had been cancelled that day because so many students and professors were trying to get through to people they knew on NYC. My mother and I gave blood later that day since we have the blood type that was needed. For months after 9/11 I just remember this profound sense of sadness and anger that was felt all over the country. My boyfriend at the time was Muslim, and I remember him feeling angry over the growing prejudice. I also remember people having mixed feelings over the increased security at the airports. Some people appreciated the extra precautions, some just whined.
My first trip to New York was in April 2007 when DH proposed. We visited ground zero and I was filled with such a deep sense of sadness. I had never really felt like that ever before and began to cry.