Remembering the victims:Sept. 11, 2001

Today is Sept.11th. Four years ago, just as I am doing right now, I logged into my computer and saw the news that did not even sound 'real'. I turned on the TV and spent the rest of my day watching the news.

We all know how the event changed our lives forever (in the USA)....the security checks at airports, the heightened awareness of danger, the war.

Here is to the victims and their families- the wounds may not have completely healed, but I hope there are some rays of light in the survivors' lives.

May they all be peaceful.

Vash

I too will never forget that day as long as I live. The kids were watching Little House on the Prairie on TBS before school. I had just returned from taking them to school, and plopped myself down on the couch. Suddenly, TBS cut from Little House to this vision of the WTC collapsing. I had to check my channel to make sure I was watching what I thought I was watching. TBS never interrupts programming like the major networks do, and sure enough, they had interrupted programming for the most shocking news of my 30 years. I remember sitting there thinking "how does the WTC just collapse" I didn't know at that point that it had been hit by a plane, never mind that it was terrorism. I sat there spellbound, thinking "whoever built that is going to have some explaining to do. How can it just collapse like that" Then came the news of the terrorism. I called my hubby on his cell phone and sat glued to the television for the whole day. When I went to get the kids from school, my 6 year old daughter said to me "I will never ever forget this birthday mommy - it's the day the planes flew into those buildings and killed all those people" To this day she always talks about it as that is what she associates her birthday with.

God Bless all the survivors, the families, and the heroes of September 11th.

Canuck

Thank you for starting this thread, Vash, and you too Canuck for contributing what you too were doing on that awful day.

Here in NYC, the Memorial Service started at 8:00 AM and didn't finish until 2:00 PM. The networks started at either 8:30 or 9:00 AM and finished coverage at noon -- there was football to cover. Only New York 1, the city's local 24-hour news channel covered the whole service.

The names of all those who were killed in the Twin Towers attack were read by family members. Many said the loss has gotten harder instead of easier as time has gone by. A few spoke out against the war. A few spoke out in support of it, though indirectly. Many spoke out in support of the troops and their hope that they come home soon.

I had the TV on as I as doing things around the apartment and cleaning out my email. Every so often I'd stop and just listen for five or 10 minutes to the names of the dead. That would be, I'm guessing, about 25 to 50 names. They had almost 3,000 to get through. And for every name there are family and friends of, again guessing, 25 to 50. I don't even want to do the math.

A lot went on for me on 9/11/01. Too much to write it all. A few things:
--I was in the subway waiting with a group of people for the train. We'd heard there had been a terrorist attack, but we figured it was another car bomb like before. A couple of us were even joking a little about how maybe this time they got two vans, ha ha. Then a guy with a palm pilot said that two jet airliners had deliberitely crashed into each of the Twin Towers and that one tower had just collapsed. I hadn't been a screamer or a crier at similar moments in my life, if you can call anything similar, but as soon as I'd heard the man say one of the towers had collapsed, this kind of animal sound came out of me or sort of like I'd had the wind knocked out of me. Of course we all left; some people looking clearly POd that their day would be inconvenienced. I can't judge them. I think they just didn't get it. The woman sitting next to me was walking home the same way I was. We were total strangers and we held onto each other all the way until we had to separate. Virtually at the same time we said, "I'm going to call my mother."

--I was in the subway because I had a doctor's appointment that morning. When I got home I called the doctor's office to say...I didn't know what I would say. When the receptionist answered I just said, "I can't get there. Nothing's running." He said, sounding slightly annoyed, "Can't you get a cab or something?" I was stunned for a moment and even wondered if I could get a cab. Then I thought, "Jesus Christ! NO!" and said to the guy, "Do you know what's going on?!" He said, calmly, "Yes, we have a television here. So are you coming in or do you want to reschedule?" By this time I had the TV on and was watching the second tower collapse live. I hung up on the guy.

--Later, after I'd called my mother, I went out in the hall to talk to my neighbors. One was at the elevator and said people were going up on the roof, so I went with him. About a dozen people were up there. From where I live in northern Manhattan to the WTC is about 10 miles. This was about 11:30 AM, noon. It was a very clear day and it looked as if an enormous smoke machine was just pushing more and more smoke over lower Manhattan and the Hudson River. Some people had their video cameras. Some people talked about everything they'd seen from the first announcement that a plane had hit the WTC. Some just stared in silence. Others wept.

--But the oddest experience I had was in the summer of 2002. I was taking a bus to Pennsylvania. On the way back, you get the normally familiar view of the Manhattan skyline, only this time the Twin Towers were gone. It was like seeing a familiar friend for the first time who has had his arm amputated. That's when it really hit me the WTC was gone and that the towers and just imploded into the earth, taking all those people with them.

Rgirl

Rgirl,

Wonderful post. Thanks for sharing this. For people living in NYC in particular this must have been so close to their hearts.

Vash

I remember some people thought the 2000 election debacle was a "national crisis." I told them, if it was a real national crisis, my son would be wearing his uniform and not laying on my living room couch watching tv. Being old enough to remember the Cuban Missile crisis and Kennedy's assassination and all the awful things that had taken place in the world since and being a student of history, I refused to give the name "cisis" to that mess.

I slept in 9/11. By the time I awoke, my son (who was still home because Ohio State is on quarters and school hadn't started yet) told me "the war has begun." It only took a moment or two to see the pictures of New York and the Pentagon constantly replaying on tv to understand what he meant. From that moment, I knew he'd be called to active duty. I just didn't know when or how long or where he'd have to go. I just knew that he would be put in some danger somewhere.

He wasn't called up immediately. At his Reserve unit that weekend, their normal scheduled meeting, the people told him they wouldn't be the first to be called up for anything. So he went back to school. When we invaded Afghanistan, I knew he would be called up and he was. He spent most of that year at Ft. Bragg because of Army regs and buracracy. (only Mom could find the humor and take comfort in the fact that the Army considered him "undeployable" because he needed a root canal and then kept rescheduling his dental work until his unit went to Afghanistan without him.) And in the meantime, we decided to invade Iraq. Mom didn't know about his trip to the area until after he returned. He was sent on some special mission as an armed escort and thus was sent back to Bragg because that was all they had for him to do there.

I thought that would be the end of it, because his enlistment was up. But he was told he had to stay in the Army and was called up for a tour in Iraq. He made it home this summer, to my enormous relief. He's registered for fall quarter at OSU, but another national emergency may change that, as he will probably be called back to active duty for Hurricane Katrina work. His training and experience will be useful there and since he had tried to volunteer to go down, it will be a slight detour from his plans.

It is so amazing to me that one single moment in time can make such major changes in the lives of so many. Could we have predicted what these changes would be in our lives? Or how widespread those changes would be and continue to be? It isn't just the 3000 people who died that day or their friends' and families' suffering. It lead to over 2000 more American men and women dying in Afghanistan and Iraq. And hundreds of thousands of lives changed by all that has happened since.

September 11 brought us all alot of grief and continues to influence our lives.

It's definitelyl one of the events that mark our lives. I'll never forget driving to work and hearing the news on the radio. By the time I got to my cubicle, people were just starting to become aware of what had happened. My boyfriend at that time had the day off and was planning to meet a friend in the city - his friend cancelled while he was enroute because all doctors were called into theri hospitals. I think I finally left work at 1PM - many others had already left, but with hindsight, it was almost an act of denial to follow a normal routine. Eventually, I got home and my boyfriend came over to watch tne news (his cable wasn't hooked up, yet). The next day we went through with our plans to drive down to Ocean City to not let the terrorists change our plans.

As JOHIO pointed out, this act had so many ramifications for the entire international community. I didn't personally know anyone who died in the mayhem, but I know of people who lost loved ones (family & friends) at WTC and who still miss them.

Katrina is yet another reminder of how disaster can strike and that we need to slow down and appreciate what we have.

Sept 11 2001, I was 19 years old. It was morning and my mom was watching the TV in shock, and I was still sleeping during both towers being hit. Mom woke me up and said "America is being attacked!". I was like, huh?", of course.

I knew Pearl Harbor had been an attack on our land, once, but that was before my time, and it was hard for me to comprehend that we could ever get attacked in this way. I think I was up in time to see at least one of the towers fall, but I still couldn't fathom it. That night, I felt numb, and wondered why I couldn't cry much. I'm a very emotional person, usually. I think I've been in shock about Sept.11 for a long time. I do know that I wanted and still want the evil spawns that were behind this and are still wanting to hurt us, captured.

Yesterday, I got up during the replay of it all on Fox News, and the names being read by the victims' siblings. I was bawling so badly that my stomach was in knots and pain. Later, last night I watched a show on the Discovery channel about, "The Flight that Fought Back". They reenacted and used the actual voices of the people on the plane who called loved ones, and 911. Clips of the family members were interjected inbetween segments. I don't think I've ever cried so hard in my life. I can't believe it took this long for me to fathom what these people went through, and the pain their loved ones felt and still feel. I knew it happened, but like I said, I couldn't wrap my mind around the total reality of it until, now.

I watched "The Flight That Fought Back" too. It was very moving. Showing it on 9/11 and without commercial interruption was the right thing to do, as we never seem to hear about the people who died in that crash and we should. It seems they had a choice and chose not to let those terrorists hit another major target by trying to take back or crash the plane. I was especially glad to see that the producers went out of their way to show that the flight contained adults from many ethnic groups and many different walks of life....a true microcosm of the US. They are just as much "heroes" as the police and fire and medical people who rushed into the Twin Towers. And it seems their choice was made right then, not as a career choice.

Jo-I'm glad you got to see it, too. It's hard to even think about, but this documentary helps a person feel the emotions and fears that these people were going through. I sure know it did for me.

I tried to TiVo it, but it failed to change to the correct station. So, it got cut off short after I restarted it.

I still haven't gotten around to watching the 2 part National Geographic shows. I've also been trying to get a copy of the HBO show about the Yankees and NY after 9/11.