FREE NEWSLETTER
Go to main Forum page »
Twenty-four years ago today, I was still confused about my routine since retiring the prior month. My spouse had the tv on she and called to me to come to the family room to see coverage of the 1st tower on fire in New York. I was really aghast. The stock market had cratered, and looking at the video, I knew that the building would ultimately collapse. Who could know about the profound impact this event would have on our society. It wasn’t just the loss of life and damages to the City of New York, it was the feeling of not being safe any more.
I remember getting ready to go for a walk and after opening our garage door stepping out to see my neighbor Don leaning against his car. He looked carefree and I then asked him if he had heard the news. He had not, and didn’t believe me, until he went into his house and turned on his tv. He came back out in a few minutes very shook up. Until he passed in 2014, every year on 9/11 when he saw me he would remember that day again.
What were you doing on 9/11 when you heard? How did you feel? What impact did that event have on your life?
I was booked on a flight from Boston, scheduled to depart around 8:00 a.m. on 9/11, bound for my home in Seattle. Things wrapped up early in Boston, so I decided to try to fly home late on the 10th. I managed to re-book on the last flight to Seattle on 9/10. If I hadn’t made that chance decision, my flight would have been grounded somewhere over the northeast US. Shortly after I awoke the next morning, my wife received a phone call telling her that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I assumed it was a small plane, until I turned on the TV… Hard to believe that was 24 years ago.
The internet was relatively new at the time and the NYT had recently began offering a service where they’d email breaking news stories. I signed up expecting just an occasional email. You had to be careful even then giving out your email address or you’d end up getting tons of marketing spam, but I figured the NYT wouldn’t do that.
I was one of the first to arrive at work on 9/11 (I’m in CA) so I hadn’t spoken to a soul and I listened to CDs in my car driving to work. I turned on my computer and my email was filled with emails from the NYT. Darn! They were going to spam me with promotions and advertising.
Then I read the first one…
I was working the first of my two days per week in the outpatient physical therapy clinic at a very small hospital. The rehab staff was just a woman at the front desk and me. The woman had a problem attending to her work and spent part of her time flitting about the hospital talking with other staff. That morning, she returned from a visit to tell me a plane had just flown into a building. I said, “K., that’s ridiculous. Who told you that?” A few minutes later she returned to tell me that a second plane had hit a building. I walked to the lobby to see the television reporting and realized it was true.
For a few families, the attack was catastrophic. But I knew that the people behind it had no ability to affect the long-term viability of our country. Still, it revealed they–or someone else–could create significant short-term misery. I was left with a heightened sense of personal insecurity, which my wife and I addressed by rehearsing “what if” scenarios. This exercise provided mostly an emotional salve. Meanwhile, I focused on continuing to go through my daily routine.
Lessons? I learned that I can’t know every danger lurking behind the next sunrise. I can be prepared, however. Not for the odd disaster that strikes an infinitesimal fraction of us, but for its aftermath.
I was flying from Pittsburgh to Houston on business with a stop in Atlanta. The pilot mentioned an issue that might change our arrival. Some passengers turned their phones on and advised the pilot what was going on in NYC. He had no idea, of course. We landed in Chattanooga, TN. As I walked off the plane, I could see the TV coverage of the first tower going down. Busses arrived a few hours later to transport us to Atlanta. I called my admin and asked her to book me a rental car and hotel room in Atlanta. I was very unsure how this would play out. I was meeting guys from the UP of Michigan in Houston. They were driving to Detroit for their flight. They heard about the issues and returned home. Our busses arrived at Hartsfield. It was surreal, the building was locked and we were dumped on the curb in front of the terminal. There was no bus to the car rental location, so I walked to the facility and they gave me a car. I had lived in Atlanta for 6 years and knew my way around very well. I had a good friend who lived in the northern suburbs and I gave him a call. He was a school principal, and everyone had been dismissed. I went to his house that evening and watched CNN with he and his wife after calling my wife in Pittsburgh a few times. No decision was announced about resumption of plane travel. I decided that I would drive the rental car back to Pittsburgh. A very long drive but plenty of time to listen to radio news and think. When I arrived in Pittsburgh, the rental car area was overwhelmed with rental cars that had been returned. I was never charged for the one way rental. We had a group of Americans working in India on a project. They were advised to stay put until things sorted out. They got on the first plane out of Delhi to Western Europe. They ended up spending two weeks in Amsterdam waiting on transatlantic flights to resume.
I am a violinist from Germany, married to an American since 1997, and a music graduate student in 2001. School was cancelled that day – except for one rehearsal, and the professor directing the ensemble implored us to come to rehearsal regardless. I will never forget his moving address to point out that when the whole world seems under attack by extremists, the best we can do is to carry on – if we don’t, the terrorists win. I’ve lived by this rule ever since and am deeply grateful for this teacher’s strength!
I live in NH and that day the sky was picture perfect blue, not a cloud in the sky. The air had a tinge of fall to it. For years when a day would be similar instead of thinking what a beautiful day it is, my mind would wind backwards in time to the tragedy. It’s only been a few years now that that weather doesn’t bring my mind back to that day. But I will never forget. We went to NYC to the memorial site while afterwards when the trees were still in their large wooden “pots”, and just last year went to the museum. The museum really hits you in the gut.
I lost a close friend who was on AA flight 11 … incredibly hard to believe it has been 24 years. If you are in NYC a visit to the memorial is a must
Sorry for your loss. I also found the 9/11 memorial to be extremely moving.
My Wife was at work, it was my day off. The next day 9/12 was going to be our 10th wedding anniversary. I had a Beatles cd on and was just finishing wrapping the anniversary gift I was going to give to my wife. I was going to surprise her with a trip to Hawaii. Someplace she always wanted to visit. I bought us a couple Hawaiian shirts, had brochures of the islands and a couple of handmade plane vouchers. As I finished up my wife called, told me to turn on the tv. Like everyone else I couldn’t believe it. The next day we didn’t do everything for our anniversary but watch tv. Before we went to bed she told me that she would never be able to get on a plane again. Without her knowing I returned the shirts and disposed of all the Hawaii stuff. I did tell her about it a year later and to this day she has not flown. Certainly trivial in the scheme of things compared to the suffering and loss of so many people. But one small way some people from afar were impacted.
I’m sharing a remarkable interview from the Atlantic. It’s with the then general manager of Windows on the World.
I was in the hotel next to the towers three days before the attack. I watched the second plane hit the tower from my office window. It didn’t seem real at that moment.
A few years before 9/11, I was making a beer delivery at a convenience store. Another of my customers, Ron, spotted my truck at the store and stopped in to say hello. I introduced him to the owner of the store (Chris). As soon as Ron left, Chris went into the back room and washed his hands. Chris explained that he hated Arabs, all Arabs, both Christian and Muslim. Ron’s ethnicity is Arab, his family have been US citizens for many generations.
When 9/11 happened, I was making a delivery to Chris’s store. We were both shocked and incensed by what was happening, but Chris was having an I told you so moment. It was as if he felt vindicated, his hatred had been validated.
9/11 stands out in my mind as one of the worst things to happen in the US in my lifetime. A senseless loss of life that gained the perpetrators nothing in my opinion, but I will not allow myself to hate nearly 500 million people solely because of who they are.
Dan, Very well said! I’ve never mentioned this in my posts, but my wife Suzie is actually called Sunita Suzanne Sihat, a name that’s an amalgam of Indian Punjabi and Irish naming conventions because her dad is Punjabi. I’ve witnessed broad-stroke discrimination against a whole race firsthand; it’s not pretty. I’m nit-picking, but I guess you meant Ron’s ethnicity was Arabic, and his nationality is a U.S. citizen?
That’s correct. I should know better, as Chris’s ethnicity is 50% Lebanese.
The first I heard of the 9-11 attacks was a rumor. I was with a small Intrepid Travel group, going overland from Beijing to Rawalpindi. After a night in Tashkurgan, the last Chinese town on the Karakoram Highway, we were waiting to clear customs and immigration when word came down the line – perhaps from someone with a satellite phone (this was 2001) – that there had been an attack in New York with 60,000 dead. We looked at each other, said “not likely” and kept going.
The Highway was a joint Chinese-Pakistani project in the 1950s, built through magnificent but unforgiving mountains and only open from May to October. The border itself, at over 15,000 feet, was indicated by a simple stone marker. At Sost, where we officially entered Pakistan, there was no news, and none at Gulmit, our first stop, which had neither TV nor radio. However, later that day a tour group going the other way was able to tell us what had actually happened. I didn’t see photos of the attacks until I got back to the US in January.
I grew up in the UK right after WWII, and never thought of the US as inviolable, as I think some Americans did. I had also recently read a Clancy novel in which a plane was crashed into the Capitol during the State of the Union speech. That said, the photos were much impactful than just hearing about the attacks. The Pakistanis were already talking about CIA or Israeli plots.
Some think that the attack was life imitating art instead of art reflecting life…..that the attackers got the idea from the book….
Thanks for this post. I always put our flag out on 9-11. The thing that sticks in my mind the most was how quiet the skies were afterwards where we live. No airplane noise. We had the windows open at night and one night heard the military planes go over our town. Chris
I was in college at Kent State University. Unbeknownst to us one of the hijacked planes turned around over our heads on its way back east.
My fraternity brothers and I all watched the coverage at our house. As a flag collector I happened to have a gigantic appx. 25′ x 20′ American flag, which we plastered to the front of our fraternity house. It could be seen from blocks away.
9/11/2001 ended the so-called “vacation from history” that started at the end of the Soviet Union in the early 90s. Those were probably the best times in human history, and we were all shaken awake back to the reality that is the darkness of human nature.
I was in the sub-basement of 1 Chase Plaza, watching on CNN with my buddy Bill. We didn’t think the towers would actually collapse, but then one did. We went up the escalator to the sub-plaza level, and the air was so dense with dust we couldn’t see. People were pouring in through the revolving doors to escape, bringing dust into the building.
After about 15 minutes, the dust settled and we went out the back way onto Maiden Lane, walking towards the Brooklyn Bridge. We put handkerchiefs over our nose and mouth. Bill went over the Brooklyn Bridge to get to Long Island, and I walked up Water Street.
The thing that I remember the most that everything seemed completely normal when I got to Chinatown. The sky was blue, the air was clear, and Chinese groceries were selling fish and vegetables from stalls. I, and many other people, were covered with dust from head to foot, and looked like a migration of ghosts. I went into a Chinese deli and bought a big diet Cherry Pepsi. The counterman didn’t bat an eye – serving ghostly customers was apparently nothing new to him.
I was at work. I worked for a software company, and suddenly none of our servers were running at normal speed. My wife at the time called to tell me what was happening in NYC. I tried to access an outside news website and all were unresponsive. We all went to our break room and watched it on TV. An incredibly sad day. I went outside, into a courtyard, and cried. My brother in law was on a business trip, stuck on the west coast, unable to fly home for days.
I was contemplating a similar post when I saw yours. Thanks for posting this. I’m sure we all have vivid memories of that day. Many of us have personal connections to that day and the horrific events. Twenty-four years later it still brings back strong emotions. If you haven’t had a chance to visit the 9/11 Museum in NYC, I highly recommend it.