Where Were You on September 11, 2001?

[Fireengines]

Where were you on September 11, 2001? I was on a temporary assignment in Bentonville, AR. I heard about it on the radio news and later found a TV just when the second plane hit.

Let the world always remember,
That fateful day in September,
And the ones who answered duty's call,

- Poem by Alan W. Jankowski

 

[magpens]

I was in my kitchen when my wife got a phone call from a mutual friend ...

The world has forever changed .......

 

[jttheclockman]

Never forget it!!!

I was on a construction job. I know exactly where and what I was doing. This was a new construction of 250 offices on a 3 floor platform. It was an extension to an older building. Being an electrician I happened to be working on the security systems of the surrounding doors. So I happen to be basically standing in the doorway of one of these doors when one of the Fitters who were working on the roof, on the heating and cooling system leaned over the edge and shouted down that the Twin Towers were hit by a plane. It was such a crystal clear day and you could see for miles. At first everyone thought it was a small plane and then all the people that had radios playing throughout the job site had their stations interrupted and the story began. I proceeded to go to the roof and from there we could see the smoke from the tower. As the scenario played out we actually watched as the first tower fell and by now the news was intense. As the second tower fell it was such an eerie site to look over to the New York skyline and not see those two towers standing.

The Super on the job site came and shut the job down. As this was happening a mess of cop cars pulled up to the existing building and secured the building for it turns out that building was some sort of Federal important building and it was feared that would be the next target, buildings like this. For those that had to cross the major bridges, they were in fear that those maybe a target. It was a nightmare. It was surreal. Got home and put the television on and did not shut it off.

I flashed back to the years I worked in NY and in the downtown section for 6 years. I walked past those towers every day. I checked the list of those that lost their lives to see if i knew any of the electricians that died but I did not. I did know one electrician who happened to be a brother of one of our members. He played a large part in helping some people get out. He was interviewd on TV shortly after that. The stories he has.


We shall Never Forget

 

[builtbybill]

Teaching class at Trident training Facility in Kings Bay Georgia. The base closed and we got sent home, I lived in base housing and pretty much got stuck there for about a week, unless we wanted to leave base and wait in a 5 hour line to get back on.

 

[jcm71]

I was outside teaching drill to my NJROTC cadets, while my running mate had his class inside for a lesson. We came inside just before the second plane hit. He already had the TV on. There was no more drill that day.

 

[Old Bessie]

Ford Motor Company's Romeo Engine Plant prepping for a construction meeting....they shut down the facility. I remember how odd it seemed when there were no jets or contrails in the sky.

 

[CREID]

I was at home, my Dad called and said we are at war!
Curt

 

[PR_Princess]

I think that September 11 was one of those life defining moments when you will never forget where you were. For me, I was at home, and had just woken. And through sleep encrusted eyes, I couldn't believe what I was witnessing on the news.... That such an attack could be occurring here, on home soil.

Below, I have attached one of the most powerful and moving tributes that I can remember seeing. It is just a short video, one that was created by the US Naval Academy's A cappella group "The Anchormen" for the 10th anniversary of 9-11. But the video is no less moving now, than it was on the day that it was created.

A tribute to those who tragically lost their lives on that fateful day in September, as well as to all those brave men and women who have sacrificed their lives and their futures to protect our nation since.



[yt]gPGuSFNUpBA[/yt]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPGuSFNUpBA

 

[Abby]

I was working in a VA medical center when I when by the Director's conference room where they were just watching the news reports of the first plane hitting the first tower. It was hard to believe that this was actually happening. When I went down to the offices to relate the story of what had just happened, some thought it was just a small plane that had flown off course and was just mis-reported. Later, while I was again in the Director's conference room, I realized the truth of the matter when I witnessed the second plane hit the other tower. If you did not witness this horrific event, how can you not feel for the innocent victims of those poor soles who went to work in those twin towers that day. They had no anomisity toward anyone when they left their home(s) that morning. Well before I left work that day.........both towers fell! God bless America...with the way things are going these days, we'll need some Devine help.

 

[liljohn1368]

I was at work and could hardly wait until lunch to see the news about what had happened..

 

[Rounder]

I was in front of a TV watching people die. Unforgettable tragedy.

 

[Kragax]

I was at work in the office when one of the maintenance folks came in and told us what was going on. the had a TV in the maint. dept office for watching weather and such and we went over there and watched.

 

[TonyL]

A few blocks north of it. Didn't know what happened, but couldn't get home. Went to the mens shoe department in Macy's on 34th street and napped for several hours until the subways were running again. A police officer eventually let me under the barricade to go home. I was one of one of the lucky ones.

 

[TurtleTom]

Northbound on I-95 in an 18 wheeler at Richmond, Va. Do they think we really will forget what they did?

 

[studioseven]

I was working two jobs at the time trying to get two boys through college. I had just finished an 11-7 shift and had a few hours before my other job. Turned TV on and saw the report of the plane flying into the first tower. Went to sleep and didn't learn of the second and third plane until I woke up.

Seven

 

[Crashmph]

I was a young man in the Navy...

I was a young man in the Navy stationed in VA Beach on 9-11. A few months before 9-11 my ship had just shifted home ports form NJ to VA Beach. In NJ we were just across the bay from NYC where we could see the twin towers from our pier. On 9-11 I was in a training course away from my ship. As soon as the second plane hit class was canceled, and we were ordered back to our commands. Once on my ship we were on lock down for 5 days as we prepared our ship to mobilize for the new unknown. I just remember being on my ship on lock down and thinking, why are we not doing something. When in reality, there was nothing we could do at the time. The following February, we were in the Gulf, taking the fight to them.

 

[CrimsonKeel]

I was asleep. i worked midnights and my wife called me from her job and woke me up saying she was coming home because they were shutting her job down for the day because it was a skyscraper (Renaissance center in detroit) and i should turn on the T.V.

 

[TonyL]

This is a good post..especially when we find ourselves engaged in "Who's the smartest", "who invented it first", etc.. Those topics are fair game and protected by the Constitution, but I see how they advance the hobby or mission of the forum.

There was real peace (or more peace) in NYC for 3 or 4 days in NYC after the 9/11 event. Then Mayor Giuliani (who did amazing things to clean-up NYC) asked everyone to go back to "normal". I know what he meant, but for many that meant drape a flag over the hood of your cab and resuming threatening to run-over "old ladies". It was a shame, because for a few days, we all appeared to be on the same side of good.

Please forgive the digression.

 

[bmlewis]

Onboard the USS Enterprise (CVN-65) in the Persian Gulf. We spent a long two weeks waiting for other forces to arrive before beginning air strikes which were preceded by some midnight tomahawk missile launches from the submarine USS Miami. Nothing like seeing tomahawk missiles pop up out of a pitch black ocean and streak off towards their target. Ship's TV broadcast the plane bomb camera feeds as the flyboys started showing them what happens when you awaken the sleeping giant.

 

[robersonjr]

I was a work, watching sailors loading missiles on F18 A/C in preparation for any further attacks which thankfully did not come.

 

[tbroye]

Here is a fact my 11 year old Granddaughter pointed out to me this morning on the way to school. I was born 9 months and 11 days after Pearl Harbor.

On 9-11 I was getting ready to go to work and the news was on the TV in the bedroom and I was in the bathroom shaving. Heard about a plane hitting the twin towers, they thought it was small I went to see and saw the hole in the building and told my wife that it was a big plane and I don't think it was an accident. When the second plane hit I knew what it was and told my wife I gotta go to work now you take your car to work and left.

I was working as a Civilian Employee of the California Highway Patrol and was a supervisor at the facility where the CHP vehicles were equipped. We were located next to the CHP Academy. Got to work and having gone through 2 major Earthquakes and the Rodney King riots, started to think about what was going to happen. We were all watching the TV in the training room when the first building fell and I and other supervisors were summed to the Commanders office and we told to secure the facility. Close all roll up doors lock all gates and place vehicles in front of them. We then started to take inventory of all the equipped vehicles on the property in case they were needed this what we do any time there was something big happening. We had a 100 newly equipped vehicles wait to be exchanged for olds and about 200 old (runout) vehicles waiting to be stripped and the equipment reused. We had our employees start checking, fueling and making sure all emergency equipment was working on all the new and old vehicles and change all radio frequencies to the same "Blue" channel and then run them through the car wash. This was SOP for emergencies we did not have to be told what to do being a semi Military agency we knew what to do.

After the second building fell, all hell broke loose, Armed CHP officers showed up and really secured the place. It was decided to bring the Governor and other officiala out to the Academy for security reasons that ramped the security even higher. By the end of the day we had 300 new and used vehicles ready for use if need and went home.

The following month President Bush was to speak at gathering in Downtown Sacramento and it was decided for Security Reason AF 1 would land at Travis AFB and he would fly to the CHP Academy in Marine 1 and then motorcade into town. All of sudden there were people walking around our facility talking into their wrist and lapels. and they took all our shotguns and AR15 away a few days before he arrived, these were inop weapons that were use to fit the gun racks into the cars. On the morning of the President arrival both facilities were locked down and we all had to be at work at 7am and could not come or go after that. We had more Secret Service and CHP officers around us in the area we felt real safe and these were not talkative they were extremely serious.

The arrival of the President was wild we were watching from a balcony on the back of our building were being watched by the SS on the Academy Grounds. There was big Chinook and the two Marine copters used in his arrival we looked up and about 30K feet up was 4 fighters circling the area and they hung around while the President was here when he left it was just as wild and poof they were all gone. During the month after 9-11 the Capitol Mailroom was move to a secure building on the Academy ground incase of explosives or white powder was set to State officials.

9-11 really changed the way things were done at our facility and even now 12 years after I retired it is still a secure facility along with the Academy. Sorry this was so long but I was involved in 9-11 to some small extent. My niece who was pregnant lived in NYC and was on her way to work and got caught in the flow of people leaving the area as the building fell my sister couldn't get ahold of her until the next morning, some taxi driver had picked her up and drove her and other home for no charge her daughter was born in Nov. 2001. My first Grandson was born in July of 2001. I have often wondered what kind of world they and others born since were brought into. I truly don't understand the current administrations willingness to let Iran off so easily, they evidently didn't learn from the history of 12-7-41 or 9-11-2001 and it will come back to get us in the future.

have a good and thoughtful day and God Bless America.

 

[csr67]

I was up early at 5am West Coast time watching it unfold live on the news... In my arms was my newborn daughter, 9/4/01. She's 14 now and it seems like just yesterday.

 

[tbroye]

Just remembered on other thing. On the Friday when they allowed air service to resume, we were at a community candle light service, with various religious and ethnic people. We were on the Banks of the Sacramento river, beautiful quite place. All of a sudden we heard a jet it was an American Air Lines 757 low and slow going right over us which brought a big cheer form those attending followed a few minuets latter by United Air Lines doing the same thing. The were both scheduled takeoffs but were requested and allowed to do the fly over, very emotional night, for one night and for a while after we were united.

 

[jcm71]

Sadly, we are more complacent now than we were on Sept 10, 2001.

 

[ladycop322]

I was on duty as a detective. In the pd and an officer called and said a plane just hit the Trade Centers. I put the TV on and watched as the second plane hit. From that moment on, I sat, frozen, watching our great nation under attack. I still tear up thinking of the horror. My personalized tag reads, 'NEVR4GT' in remembrance of those that lost their lives so needlessly.

 

[roddesigner]

one of the worst days of my life I was at home and my wife called and told me to put on the TV just in time to see the second plane hit, on top of the major tragedy there was no way to find out if any of my old buddies from NYPD were in the towers as they went down, not to cause any controversy it was a tragedy but referring to all the victims a hero's is wrong they were victims those who actually entered the towers after to try and save lives were hero's as were some of the victims who tried to lead others to safety who will never be recognized for their acts are the hero's touchy subject for me sorry

 

[Sandsini]

I was working as the Director of IT for the St Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, CA . We had just opened for business at the end of July and our first corporate client was scheduled to launch their event the morning of 9/11. I had been working relentlessly on their event for a full month (and before that had worked equally hard getting the hotel ready to open). The client was very demanding and needed more infrastructure than we had available. I worked long nights and did things that I didn't know I could ever do to make their event successful.

On the morning of the 11th I left home for work earlier than usual, and flipped the radio in my car over to NPR to catch some news on my short commute. I remember hearing some kind of live broadcast and it sounded like whatever they were reporting, was a big deal, but I didn't get enough of the broadcast to know what it was. I turned the radio off and switched over to my music, because I was stressed out already and didn't want to hear any bad news.

When I arrived at work the corporate client, Credit Suisse, was fully setup and ready to go, but all of their meeting rooms and grand ballrooms were overtaken with theatrical sized video screens showing news broadcasts of the attack. Credit Suisse's offices were right across the street from the towers and every one of the participants was on a phone or a computer or the concierge desk trying to book a flight back to New York. A lot of the people in the resort that day had lost friends and/or family. The pall over the St Regis was palatable and I was there to feel it first hand.

In addition to the horror of the act itself, I was surrounded by good people who were personally affected by the tragedy. The loss and grief that overwhelmed me on that day still haunts me.

 

[firewhatfire]

Asleep after a 12 hour shift in dispatch. I didn't know anything until just after 4 p.m. My wife chose not to wake me as I had to go back to work the next night.

I wanted to call in sick and drive 18 hours to relieve their dispatchers so they could go take care of their families. In the end I stayed at my post in hopes that we were not next on the target list.

Phil (17 year veteran to fire dispatch and 24 year veteran to volunteer fire and ems response)

 

[tdsmart]

In my office, a few blocks from the Pentagon. I was looking at the news on my computer about the Trade Center when I saw the smoke from the Pentagon out my window. Because we had folks working there, hurriedly went the short distance to the Pentagon's north parking and was standing on the road (Rt 27 if you are familiar with the area) when the outer wall collapsed. Could hear the hand held police radios telling about another inbound aircraft, flight 93 as we now know.

 

[bobleibo]

I remember exactly where I was and for the next 2 days I sat glued to the TV with my heart in my throat. All I could think of were the folks I knew who worked and lived in the area, their families and those who died in this horrible tragedy. I do know that I was very angry then.
At the time, I was flying a lot, 2-3 times a week. Salt Lake airport pretty much stays out of the limelight, thus not a lot of attention yet but on Sept. 13th, I flew to Atlanta and when I got off the plane, I saw something that I had never seen in any US airport - military personnel in full gear armed with automatic weapons patrolling the airport. I'm still not sure why, but that scene really hit home with me. It was comforting knowing that they were there to protect me, but it was disturbing that there was the need in my own country.
To everyone who threw a safety net around this country that day, Thank you~

 

[bobleibo]

I remember exactly where I was and for the next 2 days I sat glued to the TV with my heart in my throat. All I could think of were the folks I knew who worked and lived in the area, their families and those who died in this horrible tragedy. I do know that I was very angry then.
At the time, I was flying a lot, 2-3 times a week. Salt Lake airport pretty much stays out of the limelight, thus not a lot of attention yet but on Sept. 13th, I flew to Atlanta and when I got off the plane, I saw something that I had never seen in any US airport - military personnel in full gear armed with automatic weapons patrolling the airport. I'm still not sure why, but that scene really hit home with me. It was comforting knowing that they were there to protect me, but it was disturbing that there was the need in my own country.
To everyone who threw a safety net around this country that day, Thank you~

 

[Mortalis]

Working at Stanley Bostitch in East Greenwich RI. They called us all into the cafeteria with TV's set up for the news coverage.

 

[its_virgil]

Teaching a geometry class but here is the rest of the story. Our book cover had the twin towers on the front. But wait! We were going over homework from a section with various pictures of the twin towers taken from different perspectives. We sat there watching the TV coverage with 24 books open to pages with pictures of the twin towers.
Don

 

[djyanan]

I was in Pittsburgh at work trying to work out a schedule for a school renovation project that I was working on in Mt. Pleasant, when one of the other people in the office stuck his head in my door and said that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. First thought through my head was was "what kind of idiot was flying too close, and how quickly will he lose his pilot's license when he lands?" Then the radio cut out to coverage saying that it was an airliner. Soon after my wife called and asked why one of her friends had called asking where another friend worked in NYC. Once we knew what had happened, I called the site super on another school where we had recently removed the flag pole for site improvements and told him to drop everything and get something, either the new flag pole or even a pipe in the ground that could be used for a flag (the assistant principal at that school was in the Marine Reserves, had a huge issue with removing the original flagpole). We figured out later that the crew at the Mt. Pleasant school had seen Flight 93 - probably about the time that the passengers tried to take the plane back. The site is only about 20 miles away from Shanksville as the crow flies.

 

[Rob]

Interesting topic. I've retired twice. Once as a federal agent. On 9-11, I was five years into my second career as a fed, this time as the Director of Emergency Services for a very large and diverse federal facility on the east coast. That morning I had just finished a meeting concerning security requirements for a facility that had weapons grade nuclear materiels within. I walked out of the meeting and was pulled aside by a member of my intel section who told me about the first plane. I returned to my office and turned on the TV. My secretary stood there with me as we watched the second tower get hit. She teared up and said she just didn't understand why someone would do what we watched. A few minutes later my boss (roughly equivalent to a town mayor ) As we talked I brought senior staff (police chief, fire chief, etc) into the office. It was clear our nation was under attack and we were now players. As a federal facility, we shut down roads, air traffic, boat traffic (we had waterfront property) and nothing moved without approval. An absolute nightmare for the 10s of thousands of people that lived and work on our facility. Not to mention we were on the glide path between NY and DC and had things that if hit by a plane would have impacted the whole mid Atlantic region. Lots of sleepless nights for me for a while, but had been blessed with more than 600 cops, firefighters, EMTs, 911 dispatchers and support staff that really stepped to the plate. Our lives and the way we had done things changed forever that day. I attended a fairly high level meeting in DC a few days latter with federal counterparts. Some of us were sent to NYC the next week. One of my most prized possessions is small glass vial that contains debris from Ground Zero. It will forever remind me of those that were lost and those that gave their lives trying to save others.

 

[mark james]

... I was driving kids from my Day Care Center to Elementary School. I heard the first reports. After getting back to the school, we all turned on the media.

I had worked in Elizabeth, NJ for 3 years - directly across from Wall Street. I had friends from 10 years ago that still lived there. I was safe, I was concerned, and I felt anguish.

An event that will never be forgotten...

 

[Leatherman1998]

I was 3 at the time so don't remember anything but my dad tells of driving through Denver just after the first plane hit. It looked like a ghost town. If you have never been to Denver you might not understand how spooky it was to have less than 10 cars on the street.

 

[nativewooder]

Just walked in the front door and turned on the TV set and watched Diane Sawyer talking about the first Tower hit with them as the background and over her shoulder the second plane flew into the other tower! May my God damn all those involved in this devil's idea of war! American has shed more tears over this event again and again, and there will be justice on the fanatics' terms. If I come back in a second life, I will still remember! NEVER FORGET!