Where were you 5 years ago?

I don't post much on here, as I'm sure you can read by my thread-count, but as of late, something has been bothering me, and I wanted to see if I'm the only one. In 13 days, it will be 5 years since September 11th. (I refuse to call it an "anniversary", as the word has a celebratory connotation.) Many news stations, radio programs, and websites are running specials detailing the events that took place. Films have recently been released. As a news and politics junkie, I thought it would be a good idea to get a better look at the day from a more informed perspective, i.e. Court TV, CNN, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, and MSNBC documentaries. However, the other night, I turned on CNN to watch one such program, and I could only get through a couple of minutes of it. I was physically sickened, and unable to finish watching. Also, I recently read of a new ad campaign about to run, with people detailing "where I was" when they found it. This is more memorable (to me since I'm 22, and I'm sure to most of the nation) than the Kennedy assassination. I think it is important to explore these types of things, however, as a way to clear the air, and come to terms with what happened, and where we're going. I hope this thread serves as a place to help those who have been unable to come to terms within themselves or express their grief, frustration, anger, or other emotions. Sometimes it needs to be written. I'll go first.

Sept. 11, 2001

I was a senior in high school and had gone to my 0 period class (an hour before normal classes started so I could get out earlier). I left that first class and went to my Pre-calculus class. The girl sitting next to me told me she had heard about an airplane crashing into the World Trade Center, , she thought it was just a private aircraft. I think a joke or two may have been told about it, as something similar had happened in Florida a week or two before. Just after 8:30 (CST), our principal came over the intercom system and announced that teachers must immediately check their e-mail, specifically one entitled "Emergency". As any class of seniors would, we started talking, maybe it was a fire drill, maybe a bomb threat. You must remember, this was only 2 years after Columbine, and I went to a very similar high school. Our teacher could not access her e-mail, as all faculty was trying to do so. After a couple of minutes, the principle came over the intercom once again and said that two planes had been crashed into the World Trade Center and for teachers to immediately turn on televisions to news programs. Even MTV was carrying live news. We sat there for an hour, watching what was happening, and then were moved to our next classes. Some teachers tried to teach. Some gave us a free day. No matter what, all we did was talk about it.
I was co-captain of the debate team that year, and that entire class was nothing more than a forum on the implications of the events. I hate to say it, but I specifically remember 2 things that I said that day, crystal clear, and both, unfortunately, have come to pass. First, I said that it wasn't a nation-state, just a terrorist group, so we couldn't invade to defeat them. Well, turned out it was state-sponsored terrorism. We attacked one of the right states. Secondly, I talked about a decade of extreme conservatism. So far we've seen half of a decade.
The next day I went back to my 0 period class, economics. The teacher gave us a very educated, calm, rational analysis of what was going on in our world. As 17 year olds, we really couldn't understand it as well as we thought. He quoted one girl that he had heard in the hall saying, "My mom was crying about it all night. I just don't understand what the big deal is!" He railed against her and her ignorance. This let us know what we, as the future of the nation, were coming up against. We were the youngest generation who would remember those events first-hand, not through media re-broadcasts. We were the ones who would live with the repercussions of the actions the government was about to take. That's what I remember about September 11, 2001.

Brandon

I was one of the blind supporting the CLOWN in the White House.....Ive woke up...

and it all happened as we were arriving at school. The principal announced that we were NOT to turn on our TVs and allow the children to watch this. I was mad. As depressing as it was, it was history in the making and I felt like we had an obligation to share it with our kids. I told my principal that and she respectfully disagreed.

That night, one of my friends who taught at another elementary school called me and told me her principal had told the teachers at her school to turn on the TV and let the kids watch it. While watching the replay of the plane hitting the WTC, one of the 3rd graders, who was from Saudi Arabia, stood up on his chair and cheered. The other kids in his class attacked him and it took 2 teachers to break up the fight. The kid who cheered was sent home, for his own safety.

The next day I went to school and thanked my principal for telling us not to turn on our TVs. :)

for one of the airplanes that crashed. I was at the iceskating rink early that morning with my daughter in San Diego, and one of the mothers was terribly afraid her brother had died. It wasn't until two hours later that she was able to confirm he wasn't flying that day.

As this was very early in the morning and we were among the first in San Diego to hear of the disaster, we were all on cell phones calling and waking up friends and family. I have a brother in D.C. and was worried about him upon hearing that a plane was heading toward the Capitol (and later crashed at the Pentagon, right into an office are where he'd interned in the past.) We watched on live TV in horror as the Twin Towers in New York pancaked and collapsed, people fled from the Capitol in a panicked evacuation, and more planes crashed into the Pentagon and Pennsylvania.

As a freelance journalist, I was assigned coincidentally and ironically to cover the international conference on family violence in San Diego. These survivors of domestic violence were surprisingly numb to the horrific events still unfolding, and gave me some insight into the minds of the hijackers. They told me that when you live with violence every day, as some in the mideast have done, it desensitizes you to the pain of others - hence the ability to "justify" taking innocent lives for a perceived greater good.

Many of the conference goers were stranded in San Diego, since planes were grounded for several days. I nearly skipped the conference out of concern over leaving my teenage kids alone, since on that morning no one knew if there might be additional attacks after watching four hijacked planes crash in Washington, New York and Pennsylvania.

This also affected my ability to trust people. I learned that the seemingly friendly young Saudi man who had waited on me at our local gas station was, in fact, a suspected terrorist who had apparently helped the hijackers.

Over time, as I learned more about this administration's role in bungling prevention of this tragedy (at the very least) and possibly even being complicit in the attacks, my outrage and disgust with Bush and his uncaring, corrupt and sociopathic administration has grown. Incompetence alone should be enough to convince anyone who recalls the horror of 9-11 that this entire administration and the Republican Party that has supported the repeated coverup of efforts to get the truth about 9-11 should be tossed out on their ears.

On 9/10/2001 I went in for my six-month flight physical and was temporarily grounded (high blood pressure .. the grounding later became permanent). After my flight physical on the 10th, I set up an appointment with my internist for the 12th to work-up the B/P problem, get on meds, and get back to flying ASAP.

The events of 9/11 drove my B/P to 210/110 levels. My guess is most people's B/P was up 150% that day. I didn't own a TV then, so I spent the day on dial-up internet (mainly DU, which I had discovered in April 2001). And, of course, answering the phone as it rang off the hook (any airline crew member knows what I mean .. the same with any crash, especially if it involves that crew-member's carrier).

I can't remember when I found out that my friend Michelle H___, an American Airlines flight attendant, had been killed in the Pentagon crash. Her husband, a Boeing 737 captain at the time, and I were good friends and co-workers at another airline.

As an airline pilot, I was numbed by 9/11. As an ALPA (Air Line Pilots Association/AFL-CIO) accident investigator, I packed my go-kit in dread, gassed the car for a long drive to Washington, DC, or Pennsylvania, or NYC (the airlines were grounded, remember), and waited several days for the call that never came. I remember reviewing my ALPA Accident Investigation Manual and notes and wondering if they would let any of the investigation parties onto Pentagon property. I think that I now know the answer, and it's rooted in Bu$h's lack of action on the August 8, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing.

Like the assassination of JFK nearly forty years before 9/11, we again find the truth vigorously suppressed. And who is better able to suppress the truth than a Bu$h?

RIP: Nearly 6000 Americans and 100,000+ dead elsewhere, because Bu$h chose to ignore the 8/8/01 PDB (along with countless other warnings). RIP, and God have mercy on our souls for what has been wrought and the atrocities yet to come, in our name.

I woke up, flipped on the local Good Morning fluff,had a cup of coffee and jumped in the shower, just like every day. I got out a few minutes later to hear reports of a plane hitting one of the towers, and by the time I was ready to leave, they had video of the tower smoking. I thought it had to be an accident, an anomaly.
I left to catch my bus, and arrived at work over an hour later (Auto Auction). We had to arrive by 8, but we didn't really do any work until 9:30. We spent over an hour in front of the TV, watching the video, watching the second plane hit, hearing about others hijacked. We were just shocked, kind of on auto-pilot. I thought for sure they would cancel the auction... how could they not? We were being attacked!
Right on schedule, they started the auction. I was a driver that day, jumping in a car, driving it past the block, parking it and jumping to another. I felt like a robot. Jump in, adjust seat, start engine, TUNE THE RADIO TO THE NEWS, get in line, idle at the block, drive it back, park it. Repeat.
All around me, dealers on cell phones, yelling bids, checking out the interiors... just like it was a normal day. But it was anything but normal. The most striking thing... we were 2 miles from the (major) airport, but it was so quiet, and the skies were empty. Absolutely surreal. The rest of the day is a complete blur.
That's what I remember about September 11, 2001.

When I heard that both the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon were hit I said, "Yeah, right." I could buy one or the other, but not both at the same time. It was hard to take it in, but I knew on that day that nothing would ever be the same again.

Later that day when I got home from work my fuel oil tank fell over, spilling over 200 gallons of fuel oil into the ground while I could only stand by and helplessly watch it happen. Most of the rest of my week was tied up with dealing with and cleaning up that mess and not on 9/11. It was undoubtedly a tragedy, but this country's attitude and reaction to the terrorist attack was I thought to be arrogant because it was one of, "How dare any terrorist attack this country and kill our people?" People all over the world had been suffering from various forms of terrorism from North Ireland to Sri Lanka to the Middle East for years and dying, but it only became real for the United States until it happened to us. Until then, we never seemed to care.
But to tell the truth, I personally have no more fear of terror now than I did before 9/11. I do have a real fear of having a close encounter with a drunk driver.

reason awake and watching what ever news fluff. When the second plane hit the tower I called hubby and told him - I guess we now get to live like the rest of the world. Terrorism was not new then and others have lived with it daily. We were lucky for so long while others suffered and I refuse to give up or give in any more than they did, regardless of how much this admin tries to take away our rights.

...and the phone rang, and it was my esposo, saying, "Hey, honey, turn on the television, I just got a call from a co-worker who said something about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center?!?" He was halfway through his 2-hour commute at the time, and the radio stations were slower to pick up full coverage.

So I turned on the TV just in time to see the second plane crash. Then sat there and watched, jaw dropping, as the third plane hit the Pentagon, which was right across the bay...

At first when he said "a plane crashing into the Pentagon" I thought of some small private aircraft, maybe the pilot had a midair heart attack or something. It HAD to be an accident, right? Even when I realized it was an airliner, at first I just thought, whoa, really BAD, BAD accident. Not allowed to think that for long, with the second one hitting so fast.

I just sat there and watched in stunned disbelief and horror that anyone could be so evil as to do that... Then the phone rang again and it was my mother calling from Ireland where she lived at the time, asking (essentially) WTF?!? (Well, she wouldn't use language, but same deal.) And I started crying right then because that was the moment when the first tower collapsed.

I remember the eerie silence in the skies for the next couple of days, the traffic stops and diversions around the Pentagon and the phone calls checking everyone I knew in NY or in the Pentagon... "safe?" "OK?" Yes, thank god, but the heartbreaking shots of people putting up pictures of their missing loved ones will stay with me forever.

I can NOT go and see that World Trade Center film. I just can't. Even just remembering, writing this, I am crying again, partly for the horrors of that day, and partly for the greater tragedy that played out over the next year-- the outpouring of caring and support from the entire world, the moment of unity-that-might-have-been, that opportunity for a miraculous change that BLIVET PISSED AWAY. Hell, pissed ON. And the dawning disgust and horror from the rest of the world that we would so crassly use that tragedy and embellish it with lies to serve political expedience and start an unprovoked war on a peaceful nation, coercing others into going along with us, flipping concerned allies the bird...

Anyway. The tragedy is still too painful. I can't go there. And I'll never, never forget, or forgive those evil, callous men, Osama bin Laden and blivet, and their helots, for the horror they unleashed on us all.

somberly,
Bright

and listening to my sports talk. I clearly remember being three blocks away from my house when one of the idiots stated, "Look at that, some idiot just flew his plane into the World Trade Center." I got home just in time to turn on CNN and see the second hit. I worked nights and slept during the day, but that day I stayed up watching news all day. Sickened and tired, I went to work that night to a group of saddened employees. At that time, production did not matter....as the supervisor, I kept everyone on the floor abreast of events as they occurred. They were welcome to stop by my cube and watch the TV we altered to pick up local feeds.

The sad part was that just one month before, I told these same folks our facility was shutting down and we were losing our jobs in 9 months. It was a rough 2 month period for all of us.

I had a better job and a better life. But that is a rant for another day.

I worked for our local newspaper The Charlotte Observer. I had been at work about 45 mins when word came down about a plane crashing into one of the towers in NY. I remember thinking how awful and brought up CNN's website on my computer and began reading. When everyone in my area heard about the 2nd plane, I knew something wasn't right.

One of the bosses put on the tv in a nearby conference room and we would take turns watching the events as the day unfolded. It was horrifying.

My job was to answer phone calls and speak with customers about their paper account or delivery issues. That day our phones were strangely quiet.

Lexington Ky.

Having driven a couple hours without tuning in the radio, I was somewhat surprised to see all the eyes affixed upon a somber Dan Rather - in the unusual late morning hours for an anchor.
Then the smoke and videos.

There was some shock evident on the numerous spectators, and it would be reasonable to expect that many of them - the vets - had gone through their own hell in some previous times. It was ominously quiet in that normally busy venue.

...O...