8 replies to this topic

[Professor Llwellyn]

So i'm not entirely sure why i'm starting this thread, except maybe I feel like I should. I suppose most of you guys are too young to really remember it but i'm still interested to hear about memories and what you think about it now. It's a seminal event, like Pearl Harbour, or the Kennedy assasination, or the moon landings. Sometimes it feels like it was yesterday and sometimes it feels like a lifetime ago.

[Adelaine Beaumont]

I was only in the third grade. All I remember is I was at school, and we watched it on the news. Super scary. My aunt who lived in NYC was on a bridge at the time watching the whole thing, and my cousin Dwayne, who worked in the Pentagon, was on the opposite side of the building when it got hit.

[Professor Llwellyn]

Scary close. As I was pondering why I started this thread, I found this post I picked up on another forum a couple of years ago

9/11
At that time I worked for the American Red Cross: Carolinas Blood Services.
I wasn’t due to be at work until 11AM. So I was enjoying a rare morning with my 3 yo son.
We had finished breakfast, and I turned on the TV, so he could watch Sesame Street.
TV came on to the images of the first Tower burning. My son was a fireman fan at the time, so we discussed how the firemen were going to put out the fire and rescue all the people. My son brought his firetrucks into the room, and we talked more. I was about to turn the channel to Sesame Street when the second plane hit.
I cannot explain nor can I ever forget the heartbreak in my son’s eyes when we saw that. He looked at me, and simply said: “Daddy, all the firemen are dead.” He then went to his room and cried. I finished getting ready, and went directly to work.
My little (40 unit goal) blood drive started 1.5 hours early, and ended up running 8 hours over its scheduled time. We collected 450+ units, and had nearly 1000 potential donors show up.
My son never touched his firetruck collection again.
His firetrucks are boxed up in the shed, because I can’t part with them.
9/11 victimized all of us.
United We Stand.

[Daniella Cruz]

I was seven when it happened, we were actually on vacation in Florida with our grandparents. We were at this Manatee park thing when it happened and didn't even know until the guy running a show thing mentioned it. I didn't understand what the heck everyone was wigging out about at the time especially since our parents rushed us out to go back to our grandparents house... I just remember I was put out over not getting to see a two headed turtle or something.Then I remember everyone obsessively watching the news, grandparents, parents, uncle, and brother and I didn't see why everyone was so obsessed with it and why once wasn't enough. I dunno that it hit home for a while, maybe not until my cousin got deployed to Iraq later (he's in the Army and is actually over there again right now), although one thing I do remember is sending boxes of snacks and games and things to soldiers while they were over there pretty early on.

Granted at the time we were more interested in the Disney portion of the trip and the fact that since no one was traveling the parks were empty. Again, we had just turned seven and three and since no one we knew lived in DC and we didn't see it happen on the news it didn't have an immediate effect on us.

[Alistair Bauldaugh]

I was ten at the time, living near Colorado Springs. There was a lot of talk shortly after about another plane possibly targeting some sort of base near there. My mother talked about moving us.

Anyway, I didn't have a lot of friends so I didn't notice anything while riding the school bus. It wasn't until I got to class and the TV was on (rarest thing ever in that school). I watched it over and over again. My brother had just joined the army a few weeks prior to that. He finished boot camp and was sent out before the year was over. He came home, but one of his last missions he was left out in the desert for a few days and now he suffers from PTSD. He's the world's biggest pain in the butt and my hero.

[Alexander Sowerby]

I was sixteen when it happened. Had just started Grade 11, I was sitting in Religion class about to watch one of the many documentary movies we were subjected to, when one of the 'slacker' kids came in, he was out of breath; he told us that America had been attacked. We were all sceptical, telling him he must have been duped by someone. He said he had just come from home (this was the second lesson, he had first off or was skipping). Since we had a television in the room, we turned it on and put it on the CBC. It was than, that the second plane hit into the building.

We were all shocked, the class sat silently as we watched the footage. I remember feeling absolutely sick to my stomach when those poor desperate souls had no way out but through the window. In many ways, I think that this day has shaped my life in a very powerful way.

Even though we had been far from New York City and Washington, we all were afraid that something was going to happen here as well. The total shock of the event was serious enough for the teachers to talk to all the students during the classes. The next couple of days we did nothing but watch mostly in silence as what was happening in New York and Washington.

[Elisabetta Domenici]

I was in one of my university's computer labs, chatting online when they began talking about the towers being hit, so I got out of there and went to the Catholic student center, where I heard more people talking about it. I then went to a bookstore where I knew there was a TV, and it was showing both of the towers after both planes had hit.

My first reaction was, "What the heck? What's going on?", and then I started feeling so nauseated after I heard what had happened. It didn't feel real, even though it was. You just never expect stuff like this to happen.

[Amelia Hexheart]

I was only 6 then and I live in the UK not America so I cannot say it had a massive effect on me at the time. I can remember all the adults around me freaking out though, obsessively watching the news, reading the papers and talking about it constantly. I think no-one could believe a thing like that had happened in such a powerful country like America and that it had killed so many people. I remember reading the newspapers and thinking what a terribly awful thing it was, although at 6 I really didn't understand it properly but I even realized at the time that it would be something that would be remembered. I also was very scared about war for a long time after, knowing there would probably be big repercussions.

I live by 3 very large shared American and British airbases, one being the largest American airbase in the UK, so they were on high alert for a very long time. My mum works at the largest of the bases and I can remember being very worried about her going to work because I thought the terrorists might attack there next. I know that sounds very selfish considering how many people were truly affected but that was how 6 year old me related to the matter.

I honestly don't know if it was discussed at school, I assume it must have been briefly but I was only very young, adults probably didn't want us worrying about it.

Edited by Amelia Hexheart, 11 September 2011 - 11:03 AM.

[Maddock Glynn]

SO I am late posting to this but I think I need to write about what I remember just for posterity.

I was working in Austin Texas at a large Title Agency as the Administrative Assistant.  I did everything there that didn't require being a manager.  (couldn't resist the sarcasm, I so hated that job)
As I was driving in to work the radio interrupted and announced that a plane had crashed into the tower and it was burning on jet fuel.  As I reached the office the second plane hit the towers as well as a third into the pentagon within a few minutes of each other.  The whole office had stopped working and were listening to the news until someone brought in a portable television set.  Everyone was glued to the tv.  We watched the towers fall, one at a time, smoke billowing out.  On the live news recording you could see people jumping out the windows to die by falling instead of by jet fuel flame.  To see people on the street as the towers fell was mad chaos and everyone was covered in fine white powder.  It was the residue of the concrete mushed to a fine dust, but it was everywhere.

I remember the first minute coverage of the 4th plane.  There was no onsite video of the plane that crashed in a Pennsylvania field.  At the time, it was believed that that specific plane was  targeting either the White House or the Capital Building.  Regardless, at this time the world knew it was an attack.  I would not be surprised if that plane was not crashed but was shot down by American military.  When I watched Battlestar Galactica about the terrorist ship and Apollo had to shoot it down, that was the first and most immediate thing I thought of...9/11.  It was a sad moment to understand why something like that must happen.

That night and for 3 days all television stations were on a permanent news loop of the ground zero and the images of the mangled steel are still in my brain.  There were mounds of debris of the two towers leveled with the other remaining towers still there in the background.  I remember the street light still hanging in the picture that burned the television set.  And when they did the aerial view the verizon building in NYC was the only advertisement you could make out so near to the buildings.  Verizon got a lot of advertisement that week.  Several businesses that had radio and satelite receivers on the tall towers were shut down.  no one could pay their credit card bills, and certain NYC based stations were out.  And if you were relying on cable as your tv service everything was backed to a 2ndary system that was not based in NYC.

I had coworkers on vacation in Mexico that were stuck and could not fly back to America since the planes were grounded immediately.  They were there for a week longer than they should have been and then when they arrived back to America they were scared to death about the planeride the whole way home.  

At the time everyone around me was involved int he great world of chat programs.  I discovered I knew one of the stewardesses on the planes.  It was pathetic I didn't know who I had been chatting with in the past until I asked where she was and everyone else told me what she did for a living and why she would not be coming back to hang out with us anymore.