9/11 10th anniversary memorial thread

[CoffeeIncluded]

Okay, this is the elephant in the room, but I'm going to go and call attention to it. No politics, please. This is just a memorial thread, where people remember their reactions, remember those who died, but no politics.

Seriously, no politics. I really don't want this thread locked, and I really don't want to get in trouble.

My dad works downtown, a block from the World Trade Center. I remember looking out the fire escape and seeing the towers rising up to my left, blocking out the sun. I remember walking down Pierrepont Street and down to the boardwalk and walking across the Brooklyn Bridge and seeing the twin towers so much taller than anything else.

I was about a week, week and a half into third grade on 9/11. It was my brother's first day of preschool, so my dad missed the train and was late for work. He would have gone into the world trade center to buy stamps that day. There's a definite chance that he could have been in the subway tunnel when it was crushed. But he was late, and he missed the train, and by the time he had gotten into Penn Station, the city had basically shut down. He told me that the eeriest thing was when he was driving home with a bunch of other businessmen who worked downtown, all of them blocked off, and when they were driving home on the Long Island Expressway, the westbound (citybound) side of the highway was packed, bumper-to-bumper, with every single fire truck and every single ambulance that every single town on Long Island could spare, from Great Neck to Islip to Montauk.

I had moved right outside the city to Long Island (literally right outside), and my school didn't tell us until the end of the day. If I had stayed in the city I wouldn't need anyone to tell me; I would have just had to look out the window. The kids who went to Stuyvesant High School would have been close enough to see people jumping.

I took this photo out of my dad's fire escape in April. Seeing the sun and sky and a clear view of the horizon trapped between skyscrapers, especially with my memory of what used to be there...it's wrong. It feels wrong on some deep visceral level. They've finished the memorial pool since then. If I were to retake the photo you'd see water, and trees. We're rebuilding. We'll be okay.

Spoiler

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What about you?

[Mauve Shirt]

Wow. I'm so glad your dad made it out alright.
My story is unimpressive. We live near DC, and though many of my family members went to the Pentagon sometimes none of them were there that day.
10 years ago, I was in middle school, in 7th grade social studies class. I came back from the restroom and the class was watching the 2 towers burning on TV. My mother came and picked me up from school. We went back to the apartment we were living in temporarily and stared at the TV for hours, mouths agape. My mother was distraught about the Pentagon, her father used to work there.

[smellie_hippie]

The early parts of the day were a little foggy. I saw the news that morning after the first plane hit the tower. I think everyone was still calling it an "accident" at that point... The footage of the second hit brought it all into sharp focus.

The next thing I remember was trying to call my brother who lives in manhattan, and not being able to get through. I never really panicked, but it wasn't until around 5:00 that evening until I heard from him directly.

Kinda odd side story. A friend called him immediately after the first tower was hit and asked him about it...
Friend "dude, a plane just hit the world trade center."
Brother "well THAT was dumb..."
Friend "no, they are thinking it was INTENTIONAL..."

[CoffeeIncluded]

The early parts of the day were a little foggy. I saw the news that morning after the first plane hit the tower. I think everyone was still calling it an "accident" at that point... The footage of the second hit brought it all into sharp focus.

The next thing I remember was trying to call my brother who lives in manhattan, and not being able to get through. I never really panicked, but it wasn't until around 5:00 that evening until I heard from him directly.

Kinda odd side story. A friend called him immediately after the first tower was hit and asked him about it...
Friend "dude, a plane just hit the world trade center."
Brother "well THAT was dumb..."
Friend "no, they are thinking it was INTENTIONAL..."

That's what everybody thought. Several years earlier, a plane accidentally hit the Empire State Building. Most people thought it was a horrible accident...until the second plane hit.

Thank goodness your brother was okay.

[Diva De]

10 years ago today - I had not gone to school because I had worked until 2 AM. I was asleep, and our roommate almost beat the door down, screaming how we were under attack and the whole world was burning. After looking out the window to make sure our apartment building wasn't on fire, I turned on the TV. We saw the second plane hit, watched the towers fall. I remember screaming at the TV "They did it on purpose!" and crying until I thought I couldn't anymore.

Pretty sure I spent the rest of the day sobbing and clinging to my boyfriend like we were next.

It was, hopefully, the one great tragedy for my generation that we will always remember where we are. I say hopefully because I don't want to go through that again, and feeling afraid all the time.

[Eon]

I was in kindergarten where we only had half days. I came home and asked my mom why she looked so worried. She simply said a plane crashed into the World Trade Center and that it wasn't looking good. Then she told me to go do my homework because she figured it was too graphic for me.

I wandered into the next room and stared at the news, trying to comprehend why they did it. When my mom went to check on me, she realized I had wanted to know what was going on, so she sat with me and we watched, total disbelief.

[dragonsamurai77]

I was in elementary school (remember the grade, but don't want to say), with one of my favorite teachers. In one of the greatest ironies I have ever known, it was her birthday . Anyway, we didn't actually hear about, but everyone started getting called to the office to leave early, and no one knew why. My mom told me when we were driving home, I don't know who else was told.

[Chess435]

I live WAY over on the other side of the country, in Washington state. I don't really remember a whole lot about where I was at or what I was doing at the time, as I was in third grade back then. It does however, make me really sad just to think about so many innocent lives wasted because of the actions of a few individuals.

[blackfox]

I was in 5th grade, with a complete dumbass history teacher who had been teaching us about how to tell the difference between 'hard news' and 'sensationalism...' He opened his class by saying 'Hey remember how we were studying current events, blah blah blah? Here is an example of hard news!' and turning the TV to CNN.

Needless to say, we had a different history teacher the next year.

I lived in central VA at the time, so my family was all safe. I still don't think I know anyone who lost anyone in their immediate family, even since going off to college and meeting a billion people.

[arguskos]

I'm actually attending a memorial service at my university this evening. An alumnus whose daughter now attends the university died in the towers, so to honor his memory, a tree is being planted (a cherry tree; his last name was Cherry, or so I was told) and then we're walking across campus to the nearby fire department to give them some homemade bread and sing a few songs. It's gonna be a nice little event.

[Trog]

I was at work at the newspaper. I walked through the newsroom and the TV was on - usually only something they do during elections, There was a smoldering building that a plane had crashed into. I remember thinking that it must have happened overseas somewhere. Shortly after at work I heard that it was in New York. Then I heard the second plane had hit.

Heedless of my supervisor and my deadlines I got up and walked over to the newsroom side of the building where the TV was. Everyone in the room just stood there with their mouths hanging open - stunned. This room full of people whose job it was to cover events, to respond immediately to events and report them... could do little but watch in horror.

I remember the stillness. I remember one guy typing furiously into his computer and another hunched over the top of him pointing at the screen as he wrote faster and harder than I've ever seen anyone do before or since. I watched, live, as the towers fell.

I went back to work but I don't remember the rest of the day. I just remember getting home to my wide-eyed wife who had the TV on and sitting, stunned, next to her as we watched the nonstop coverage of the attack late into the night.

It was truly a horrible day.

[JoseB]

Well, I was working at my desk in the European Patent Office. A colleague had a radio, and at about ten minutes to 3 PM he went around, saying: "A plane has hit the WTC in New York!". I thought: "My, that's bad..." But I thought it was an accident -- I remembered that an airplane hit the Empire State Building in 1944, so I never thought it could be anything else but an accident.

Our colleague brought his radio out, and we gathered around it. We were listening to the news. Suddenly, they say that *another* plane has hit the second WTC! It hit me then: This was no coincidence. This was planned. This was REAL bad.

I was thousands of miles away, but my memories of being on top of the WTC towers (I went there in 1989 and 1992) flooded my mind, and my spine ran cold when I realized that, whatever happened, there was no way the emergency services would be able to save the people in the upper floors.

And the guy in the radio began saying that there were people jumping off the towers, and the chaos, and... I began to feel ill. I went to my boss and asked him for permission to go home. He gave it to me.

I went home. My girlfriend at the time, who was living with me, was glued to the TV, watching CNN, with an expression of absolute horror fixed in her face. We sat next to each other, held hands, and watched TV for the rest of the day.

I saw the towers fall; I heard my girlfriend cry next to me, but I felt as if in a dream. The only thing going through my mind was: "This cannot be real. I am going to wake up any moment now". But I didn't. We were sitting there, not speaking, absolutely transfixed. At the end of the day I told my girlfriend: "The world that we knew is no more".

Today is September 11, 10 years later. I remember how I felt, what I felt. I also remember a friend of mine, who died in the WTC on that day. We met during one of my visits to the US. It was hard to learn that he was dead.

[Mando Knight]

An alumni

*twitch* *twitch* *twitch* (It's an alumnus. Alumni is the plural.)

I was twelve. And homeschooled at the time. When I saw the attacks on TV (not entirely sure when I saw it, probably around when the towers were collapsing, since that's probably when most of the national media coverage was.

Of course, being 12 and a bit nationalistic, I was filled with RIGHTEOUS FURY.

It was my brother's first day of preschool, so my dad missed the train and was late for work.

Depending on how late he was, that might have saved his life.

They've finished the memorial pool since then. If I were to retake the photo you'd see water, and trees. We're rebuilding. We'll be okay.

Actually, you might have to look a bit to see the pool right now. I went to the Financial Center while on vacation in late July/early August, and the site was very much dominated by the construction of the new towers. (Actually going there also really drove in the scale of skyscrapers. If you're from a more rural area, you just don't understand how righteously huge these things are.)

[Obrysii]

I was in 9th grade, going to my Honors Biology class; as I went in, the teacher had just finished setting up the TV. I saw the smoke rising from the first tower, and I said, "Oh, they're showing this again?" ...meaning the previous WTC bombing.

He said simply (not sternly, just totally neutral) said, "No, it's happening now."

Then the second plane hit, and we watched in confused and stunned silence for the rest of the hour.

[arguskos]

*twitch* *twitch* *twitch* (It's an alumnus. Alumni is the plural.)

Sorry, I always get that mixed up. You'd think I'd remember, being a writer and everything, but that one term always gets me.

[Eldritch Knight]

10 years ago, I was 17. Still in high school, planning out where I was going to college. I remember the discussion we had in class that morning, and the fact that one of my classmates scoffed about it. The class happened to be a World Religions class, so there was a lot of interesting discussion that day. It made me seriously consider following through on my original plan of joining the Canadian Forces; but my teacher said something to me that significantly changed that plan. I am not sure exactly what was said, but it was along the lines of: 'Other people can handle the seeking of justice for this crime, but the harder fight is in dealing with the the wounded souls of the day.'

[Zevox]

I seem to be an anomaly on this. I was 14 at the time, in my freshmen year of High School, and I do remember first hearing about this after lunch when I arrived at an English class. But I really didn't have the kind of reaction most Americans did. I didn't have any family or know anyone who lived in New York, and had never been there myself - heck, at the time I had never heard of the World Trade Center - so I was rather emotionally removed from it. I of course thought it was a terrible tragedy, but my reaction was more comparable to, say, how I felt about the earthquake and tsunami that Japan suffered earlier this year. Terrible event, but not one that hit me personally.

I don't know if it's being brought up again nowadays (I've avoided the vast bulk of media anniversary reminiscing), but I remember back then hearing people say that part of why many Americans reacted as strongly as they did was because they had an innate assumption of America's security, that no one could cause any harm on that level here, since nothing had at least since the bombing of Pearl Harbor. I can only guess that I never had that, because I certainly don't recall any reaction or feeling hitting me that you would expect from having such a delusion shattered.

So, yeah, I'm weird on this. I honestly can't even say that that day left any huge impact on my life, outside of politics which we can't discuss (and which isn't personal but tied to the overall impact it had politically). And that in spite of it being as horrible an event as it was, right my own geographic backyard (I live in Michigan, near Detroit), and me being plenty old enough at the time to understand it. I'm almost baffled by the discrepancy between my reactions and those of other Americans in full spite of knowing the above reasons are the likely cause.

Zevox

[LaZodiac]

I don't remember what I was doing on this day (but then I don't remember what I do most days).

I do have a question though, and I'm sorry if this sounds bad but..those of you who watched the live footage of the planes crashing into the buildings, how are you able to handle that..well, you've seen people die? It seem's like a traumatic expierance (and one I never hope to get) so I'm curious as to how it has effected people.

[Whiffet]

I was in third grade. They stopped class to tell us what was going on. I didn't understand. It wasn't until I got home and my mom talked to me that I realized something really important had happened, and I still didn't understand that it had been on purpose. I remember saying, "Wow, those were some terrible pilots." My mom tried to explain it wasn't an accident, and I just asked her why anyone would do that, and she didn't know what to say...

... it was so hard for my eight-year-old self to comprehend it all.

[arguskos]

I do have a question though, and I'm sorry if this sounds bad but..those of you who watched the live footage of the planes crashing into the buildings, how are you able to handle that..well, you've seen people die? It seem's like a traumatic expierance (and one I never hope to get) so I'm curious as to how it has effected people.

There is a difference between seeing that style of footage and actually seeing death up close and personal. 9/11 was impersonal, there was no up close detailed footage of people being killed, meaning that the impact of what you saw was lessened. Other forms of death are more powerful, as anyone who's been with a dying family member in their last moments knows.

[ArlEammon]

I was watching it on TV and I thought, "Well, that would make an interesting movie, I'll watch it when it comes out on DVD." And then the next day I realized it wasn't a fictional film's premise.

[CoffeeIncluded]

Depending on how late he was, that might have saved his life.

Actually, you might have to look a bit to see the pool right now. I went to the Financial Center while on vacation in late July/early August, and the site was very much dominated by the construction of the new towers. (Actually going there also really drove in the scale of skyscrapers. If you're from a more rural area, you just don't understand how righteously huge these things are.)

It probably did. I'm pretty sure that he took the one in to work every day from Penn Station (he drives now), but the one goes right under the World Trade Center and the station was destroyed, absolutely demolished, in the attack. This is what the station looked like after the attack. By the time my dad got to Penn Station, the subways had all shut down. If he hadn't seen my brother off to preschool, if he had taken the train that came in just a few minutes before...

It didn't hit me until the second day, where I completely broke down in the middle of class. It's hitting me again right now.

(And as for the pool, I think it's the angle from where I took the photos)

[Douglas]

I was in 11th grade in high school. I heard a very little bit about it in one class, or maybe on my way between classes, then got to my next class where the TV was on. Both planes had already hit, and I think the first tower was already down, but I watched the second one collapse live. As I recall I felt a sort of bizarre mix between personal/emotional (it was real and in my home country, and that just doesn't happen) and distanced/clinical (it was on TV and 1000+ miles away, and even the TV footage was from a distance).

I was watching it on TV and I thought, "Well, that would make an interesting movie, I'll watch it when it comes out on DVD." And then the next day I realized it wasn't a fictional film's premise.

Please note this is not intended to be hostile, I'm genuinely curious: what tipped you off? The front page coverage in every single newspaper?

[Haruki-kun]

I was just a 12 year old kid in Mexico going to school on a regular day. I had an exam that day that I was sure was not gonna go too well. I sucked at Social Studies. I remember it was during the exam, that another teacher walked in in a hurry and whispered something to my teacher. My teacher just said "WHAT?" and then stayed calm for the rest of the period.

Class ended, I went to the next class, and just as we were settling down, a fire drill was called. We were kept outside the school for a while before they finally decided to cancel classes for the day.

Behind the scenes, there was a lot of confusion. Some prankster decided to phone the school that day and give them a bomb threat, by coincidence just as this happened.

Aside from that, the teachers were all very stressed. I went to a school where all of our classes were in English, and a whole bunch of the teachers were Americans, and they were all very shocked about it and desperately trying to contact their loved ones. One of the male teachers broke down crying because his brother worked in the upper floors of WTC North Tower (and had miraculously called in sick to work that day).

While we were outside the school waiting (it was a couple of hours), the teachers and administrators were wondering whether it would be a good idea to let us, pre-teens, know what happened, whether we could take it. In the end they decided to give us a quick summary of the events, which just left me, I remember, quite confused. They gave us a summary and then left us there waiting for our parents to pick us up, which quickly turned into rumors and speculation. "New York was just bombed!" I remember someone saying. "A plane hit the tower, but it's still standing!" Which I guess it was at that precise moment.

By the time I got home, I watched the videos on the news. All television was cancelled that day to make room for the newscasters. The towers had already collapsed by the time I finally arrived, my mom was just watching it in the kitchen.

I still have the newspaper from September 12, 2011. It was all dedicated to the events and had the most horrifying pictures I'd ever seen.

[Maxios]

I don't really remember a lot of that day (probably because I was fairly young at the time, as in, under the age of five). I remember sitting the living room of our old apartment, my father was taking a shower, and my mother was watching the news right when the airplanes crashed into the tower. We headed over to my mother's parent's apartment, which was close by ours.
It's strange, really. I remember stuff from when I was a baby; like the time I unpaused a videogame my father was playing and killed the boss or when I woke up in the middle of the night and found a fish in our fishtank devouring the remains of another fish, but such an important day and I can barely even remember it.

[THAC0]

I was a junior in high school. While the towers were falling, we were in chorus singing Jericho ("and the walls come a'tumblin' down"). I'd heard something from a friend who was working with the tech/av guys, but it didn't hit till later. Last period was study hall - we all just sat there and stared at the teacher until she let us go across the hall to a class with a tv in.

My uncle was in the city and later helped with evacuation efforts on the Jersey side: http://artsedresearch.typepad.com/bl...1th-story.html

[H Birchgrove]

I was home alone since my dad was living in Spain* and my mother worked in a restaurant, reading/studying something for gymnasium/high school (don't remember what subject it was), when around 18:00 my sister called on the phone and told me to turn on the TV because "someone is attacking USA!".

After doing so, I soon got speechless.

There was obviously much talk about it in school the day after.

* He would later call when al Qaida bombed the commuter train system in Madrid 2004.

[Dusk Eclipse]

I was eight years old, I just remember playing in the playground of my school at recess when either a teacher or the nurse ran out yelling about the incident, at that time I really had no idea what where the WTC.

I was sent home early and I watched the broadcast with my parents, it never did fully settle in, I couldn't understand it at the time.

[THEChanger]

I was in Second Grade. I remember school that day going mostly as normal. The one thing that was odd was my teacher recieving a note from the principal, and him going a little pale. But school went as normal.

This week, I found out from another of my teachers what the note said. Four words. "Don't tell the children."

I went home that day on the bus. I got home, and found my mum on the couch, with the TV on. My little brother was asleep upstairs, and my dad was on the phone. My aunt flies for Southwest. We had no idea if she was on the planes or not. It turns out she wasn't flying that day, but it was still frightening. Mum did her best to explain what had happened, but to tell a seven year old that thousands of people had lost their lives in a senseless act of violence and hatred, well, she couldn't find the words.

My birthday had been four days before. My current girlfriend's birthday is tomorrow. Those days are bittersweet now.

But that isn't my strongest memory about this day. No, that came about four years later. When I was eleven, I visited New York City with my family. My parents decided it was time we saw where the World Trade Center once stood. We drove up, and I could see the scar on the land. That's when I heard it. A woman, screaming in pain. I refused to get out of the car. The place just had such an aura of wrongness about it, coupled with the scream, terrified me. None of my family remembers hearing that scream. I still hear it sometimes, just before I go to sleep.

[The Giant]

I was living in Queens at the time and working at a graphic design company located in a storefront in Manhattan, on Washington Street between 11th and Perry St. Not immediately in the WTC's shadow, but close enough to where I could see it from street level, rising above lower buildings of the West Village. But I hadn't gone to work yet that day; I overslept. I heard about the first plane when they broke into whatever morning show I had on the radio to try to wake me up. I got up immediately and turned on the news, where I watched it all. I called work between the two planes hitting, when everyone thought it was just a terrible accident, and my boss told me not to come in before I could tell her I wasn't coming in. My more punctual co-workers would later tell me that it took them most of the day to get home because of the chaos.

I didn't go in to work until a week and a half later, because the office was below 14th street, and that was the part of Manhattan that was closed off. What I remember most distinctly when I got off the subway—a different line than I usually took, because I usually took the E—was that everything smelled different. The air was heavy and all the colors seemed just slightly more saturated—probably the result of particulates in the air. On the walk to the office, there were soldiers with machine guns standing around the local police precinct. Our receptionist was cleaning a layer of grime that hadn't been there before off of the display window that didn't actually display anything. She said she couldn't stand to look at it. I don't think we did any work that day, we just sat and traded stories.

I was laid off from that job a week later; the related losses in the stock market caused the owner to freak out and cut her workforce in half. I heard she closed the company altogether the next year. I always suspected she just didn't want to be working in NYC anymore. So I was out of work until the following March, with nothing to do but sit and watch the news, all day. I slept on my couch with CNN on some nights. Most nights.

When I finally got back to work, it was at a company that was on Wall Street, directly across from the Stock Exchange and a few blocks from Ground Zero. More soldiers, on most corners. Concrete barricades turned the whole area into a maze. I never once walked over to see the site. I didn't think I had the right. I didn't have one of those stories where someone I knew was in the towers, or would have been in the towers, or would have known someone who would have been in the towers. I was just another New Yorker. Two years later, I was back at that company for a second project and I did finally go see it. Everything had been scabbed over by then.

I had considered going back to NY for the memorial today, but I didn't. I don't know why. I don't really have an appropriate summation or conclusion, or a lesson learned or anything. It was a bad day.