September 11, 2001, is a date that will forever be known simply as 9-11. As we reflect on the day we think of those we lost in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington DC; and we remember the courage and bravery of the heroic first responders. We will never forget.
This being 9/11, have you heard a word from one of the victims of “somebody did something?”
She is one of many who are quietly celebrating this day.
Ilhan Omar can rot as far as I am concerned. However, Nicholas Haros, Junior, recently spoke at the 9/11 Memorial and gave a rebuttal to Omar’s “somebody did something.”
twitchy.com/sarahd-313035/2020/09/11/ilhan-omar-pretends-to-care-about-the-lives-and-loved-ones-of-all-who-died-when-some-people-did-something-on-9-11/
She just can’t let it go…probably giggled her way thru this tweet.
However, Twitter rose up. Still some great patriots out there.
My father called me which he never did…..he barely spoke to me. He asked if I knew what was happening… I said no. He said the Twin Towers were attacked….and he said he believed it to be the job of Osama bin Laden.
It was also the first day of school for our school district……my daughter’s first day of Kindergarten.
I watched what I could before the kids had to be at school.
A cousin to my husband worked at the Pentagon at that time. He was late to work due to taking a child to the doctor. He told us he saw the plane hit the Pentagon.
How sad and disgusting that Stalinists are working to destroy the Constitution and President Trump today.
I was working in advertising at the time and remember thinking, “Well, there goes all airline and travel advertising out the window.” Sure enough, in the next hours and days there were wholesale cancellations of all kinds of advertising. But, of course, advertising was way at the bottom of concerns as I watched the horror unfold.
I was in the aviation industry and finishing my MBA but I’ll never forget the sight of every plane in the sky headed to the airport that morning and how odd it looked. It changes your worldview.
I was in the aviation industry and finishing my MBA but I’ll never forget the sight of every plane in the sky headed to the airport that morning and how odd it looked. It changes your worldview.
I was in the aviation industry and finishing my MBA but I’ll never forget the sight of every plane in the sky headed to the airport that morning and how odd it looked. It changes your worldview.
I booked a flight a few days after 9-11 so as to show I was not going to be afraid.
Of course I could not travel immediately but I thought if I do it others will too.
Having quit my job the year before to join Compaq, I was caught in the fifth wave of layoffs at Compaq (just before it got purchased by HP). So I was on the computer, both preparing for an interview that afternoon and looking for opportunities for a technical writer. At about 9 a.m., I read an email that had been broadcast to all members of the Society for Technical Communication telling us to get on the news feeds or turn on the television.
I was living in Brooklyn and on the subway heading to midtown for work when the first plane hit. I spent the day in a friend’s apartment watching the news because they had closed all entry/exits to Manhatten. that night when I got home in Brooklyn (After dark) there was still burning embers of paper and ash falling from the sky on my street. I still get choked up when I think about that day. here are the things that I remember most.
1. no one was working for at least a few days, feeling useless and antsy a friend and I went to see what we could do. We couldn’t get past Houston street, everything south was closed but along the west side highway there were convoys of construction workers, emergency workers and supplies heading into the area. I saw a guy in shorts and a t shirt with his police badge hanging from a chain around his neck riding a motorcycle escorting firefighters and construction workers in. A large water truck (carrying cases of water) pulled up and told us that they needed water at the site. We helped him unload his entire truck onto the sidewalk and then proceeded to hand out water to everyone going in while he went back for more. I will never forget the sight of New Yorkers lined up on the street waving signs and cheering the people pulling into the city from NJ, Penn, CT and further to help.
2. That day, shortly after the second tower fell I was leaving my office to get my girlfriend. The streets were so quiet it was unbelievable. All of a sudden I heard the sound of a plane and we ( me and the people around me on the street) all looked up to see what it was. We were all relieved to see it was US fighter jets patrolling over the city. The idea that I would one day look up and feel safer just because a fighter jet was flying overhead right here on US soil was not lost on me.
3. for a time, the city was unbelievable, it brought everyone together. I remember riding the subway into work the first day back (about a week later). Due to damage downtown the route was above ground and took us past the southern tip of the island and we could see the smoke still rising. A guy, younger than I was, standing next to me broke down and started to cry. I hugged him and held him for a minute until he got himself together. I never met him, don’t know his name and not even sure I saw his face. There was a lot of that for a few weeks after.
Thanks for your post, suicde.
The love NY’ers displayed toward each other helped bring the whole country together and calm us all down. I will be forever grateful to NY’ers for that.
Thank you for your part in that.
#3. I had the same thoughts/feelings. The city was different. People were nicer, friendlier, closer. I remember the chill that went thru me every time I heard a plane overhead. I was afraid of busses, trains, tunnels.
Driving to work when I heard about the first plane on the radio. Thought it was some idiot in a Cessna. Earlier they’d reported about the murder two days earlier (via suicide bomb) of Ahmad Shah Massoud. The 9/11 plotters had thought several moves ahead – anticipating a US alliance with the Uzbeks and Tajiks who became the “Northern Alliance”. Just like when Scalia was killed on a Democrat’s ranch to prep for a ballot-tallying legal battle. We’re still up against some evil forces.
I was working offshore in CA around the LAX area. My partner called all excited that two planes hit the WTC. He called back a few minutes later and said they hit the Pentagon and we were under attack.
My dad taught me that the US was a very big country and not to worry when things like refineries and such were on fire on the TV. Perhaps this repetitious training as a kid that the US is a very big country did not raise too much alarm with me over a few planes commandeered by terrorist.
To put 911 into perspective, Governor Cuomo killed three times as many innocent senior citizens as those that died in the WTC. So 911 we started two wars and Cuomo gets to walk around a free man.
If the virus killed 2 million people, the US would be largely unaffected. We are and remain a big country. It would be a blip in your life experience.
In remembrance of all those lost to 9/11
God determines the fate of all us. But I am thankful for the life of Bureau alum John O’Neill and those he saved. I hope he’s in heaven.God rest him. A strange and wonderful person sworn to serve who made serious mistakes with career ending reprimands.. I watched the towers get hit online at my corporate office. The first person I thought of was John and the cast of characters I met in a long, head shaking, but life affirming damn year a decade prior. Incredibly sad when I learned he perished.
I think the corrupt folks we have unearthed here at the CTH somehow think they are in the same deserving sphere to quietly ‘change jobs’, or, would take the heroic steps he took to save the lives he tried to that September day after carving out a new one of his own.
To Strozk, Brennan, McCabe, Comey, Page, and too many to name unfortunately I say: America’s own uniqueness affords you the chance to pass out of public service perhaps without true punishment. Please think, ponder and come to grips with what you did on YOUR watch to our POTUS and our country. You were not fighting the evil of 9/11 but the hubris of your own self affirming world view of how you tell good guys from bad.
I long for indictments but know in the first op you failed and WE WON and pray we will win in the second: MAGA KAG
I was in bed here on the west coast. I grabbed the remote and clicked on the TV to see what was going on in the world – something I did every morning. Just then I saw the second plane hit. I thought to myself “the world has changed forever”.
Never in a million years did I foresee that we’d end up with people like Illian Omar in our Congress and that’d we’d elect a POTUS who was AT LEAST Muslim sympathetic, or that we’d treat Islam with kid gloves while relentlessly disparaging Christianity.
Thank God for Donald Trump!
I will never forget how NY’ers came together that day and the days after.
Day of 9/11 was the largest boat lift in history. Larger than Dunkirk. 10 min. vid.
Watch it and remember how great New Yorkers were. I was on the West Coast, but always felt the country dodged a bullet that this did not happen in a West Coast city because, frankly, I did not believe the people out there would have come together to help each other in the way NY’ers did.
Their kindness towards each other helped bring the whole country together.
Since I’m from that area, I had a lot of friends and family in Manhattan. It was hard to get ahold of them to find out how they were doing cuz the lines were jammed for a few days. Everyone made it thru and had their own stories to tell.
But man, they lived with this and the aftermath for months.
I never knew about the boatlift. Thanks so much for posting this here. What a wonderful effort!
God was truly holding NY in His hands that day.
Juxtapose that video beside what is happening in our country today with the violence and rioting……patriotic and empathetic as opposed to outrageously unpatriotic and wrong. What kind of monsters are we raising in this country today?
I still cry about it because I watched the whole thing unfold on my television standing in my kitchen alone….why have we opened the country’s doors to those barbarians? I fear they won’t stop till they have conquered this country.
Minnesota, please send Ilhan Omar and her ilk home.
Forgive me Lord, but I hate her covered head.
The largest boat evacuation in all of history. 500,000 people evacuated from Manhattan in 9 hours. Ordinary people became extraordinary heroes for such atime as this.
Never forget.
I would never ever want another 9/11, but I do miss the America of 9/12.
Stores ran out of flags to sell because they were being flown everywhere.
People were Americans before they were black or white, Democrat or Republican, Conservative or Progressive.
People hugged each other without caring about their differences.
On 9/12, what mattered more was what united us, than what divided us.
I pray every day we can find and experience that unity again some day.
i am very sorry to write this but on 9/12 the nyc communist party had signs already ,” no war for oil “ .They never sleep
And shortly after that Planned Parenthood was offering free abortions to women who lost husbands/boyfriends on 9/11. Those F*ckn’ ghouls never stop either.
Amen, scrapiron.
But I have a thought about the UNITY
moment of 9/12.It was very real, but the
Uniparty wasn’t on the level with that Unity.
Unipaty deceitfully despised USA then,
and even more so now: THe immediate goal
of the glaobalists was to use
ourtreactionm to 9/11 to divide us and then
sell us off
like clearance items.
The big commemoratives of today, 19 yrs
later seem to have a theme, Never Again,
and a gloat that we “haven’t ley it happen again.”
Well, that’s only because history doesn’t repeat,
it rhymes.
9/11 destroyed a lot, a lit a sense of resolve.
But despite that, in 2020 the Wuhan Virus killed
so many and so much. And China Virus plus
DeBlasio plus “BLM/Antifa” has just about killed
off NYC.
Will it ever come back ? I don’t know.
But if PDJT can outwit the voter fraud,
everything even NYC will come back fast.
This election is our big chance to choose wisdom,
which normally is so in the desolate market
where none come to buy, as Wm Blake put it.
These are challenging times, and CTH seems to be
the meeting place for those who rake it seriously,
with their bullshidt detectors
fully operant, and their idealism equally active.
May we Humbly pray for guidance
in Jesus’ name, now and always.
And this November, glad songs
in the tents of the righteous, God willing.
Justice with indictments and fair trials
for those who abused their citizens
and wiped their phones might be
temptatily a hot button issue. But ultimately
the key
to a sense of real Unity,
which must now and always be founded
on a sense of impartial laws recognized and respected.
most of my typos are forgivable but I’d like to correct one
I made above:
“This election is our big chance to choose wisdom,
which normally is SOLD in the desolate market
where none come to buy, as Wm Blake put it.”
This is a ptayerful moment. And we have different
ways of praying, sometimes perhaps unconscious.
The UNITY of the MAGA movement is a force
as powerful as any force of this world, despite its
ad hoc nature inspired by the unusual and
so gifted genius of PDJT. When we prevail,
it will be because of our moral center.
And we are facing a sancrimoniously immoral
Neo-Marxist
bunch of hypocrites who make the French Revolution
look like a bake sale, and the 1917 Soviet
look like amateur sales reps at their first annual convention.
The unthinkable pain and death of 9/11,
and all the abuses since,
an eternal love for those who lost their lives,
culminating in this year when the Uniparty
tries to blame President Trump for
the Chinese virus:
All this is what resolve is made of.
All this is what MAGA is made of.
I feel boundless eternal gratitude
for those who have sacrificed for us,
and given their lives, and are giving all now.
It is fitting that President Trump is up for
2 Nobel Peace nominations now.
Peace through Strength – so much
truth and so many meanings in that.
I have just read but not yet
heard the words of P45,
a LEADER and unifier of the first rank,
and a divinely perfect leader for this moment:
“The only thing that stood between the enemy and a deadly strike at the heart of American democracy was the courage and resolve of 40 men and women.”
“Our sacred task, our righteous duty, and our solemn pledge, is to carry forward the noble legacy of the brave souls who gave their lives for us 19 years ago.” … “In their memory, we resolve to stand united as one American nation, to defend our freedoms – to uphold our values – to love our neighbors – to cherish our country – to care for our communities – to honor our heroes – and to never forget.”
I got a phone call at work to tell me about the attack. We turned on our radios but when the boss came back, she told us to turn our radios off because there was nothing new to learn. We all had to wait until we got home hours later to see the full horror of what had happened. That began a full 3 months of grieving for me. And I still grieve for the lost souls and the terror they must have been going through and for all the ones left behind.
me too. Grieving. So tragic.
I was living on the west coast and I heard the phone ringing. Still half asleep, I I ignored it but i checked the message as soon as i got up. It was my roommate hysterically crying and I could barely understand what she was saying but I understood that something horrible has happened. I ran to our church which was across the street and they had giant TV screens and the news was on. I watched the news in disbelief and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Slowly the giant sanctuary started filling up with people in the middle of the day, everyone was crying quietly and praying. It was one of the worst days I’ve lived.
The State of Disbelief.
Building an office for my home business, listening to radio while I nailed 2×4 wall section together.
My late father, who was old enough to fly P-51D Mustangs for the USAAF during World War 2, once told me that he could remember exactly where he was and what he was doing when he heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Likewise, my elder brother (the only one of my siblings who is legitimately a baby boomer) can recall exactly where he was and what he was doing when he heard about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In the exact same vein, a certain September day seventeen years ago is irremovably burned into my memory. This op-ed, authored by me two years ago, is still relevant (so please read, and perhaps comment): https://rightmi.com/i-remember-and-i-havent-forgotten/
Jonesboro, Arkansas. I had just returned from Chicago by train earlier that morning. Watched it happen live on Fox News. When the first plane hit, we assumed it had to be a drunk pilot in a smaller passenger jet. When the 2nd one hit, we knew. Then the Pentagon, the towers collapsed, and then the crash in PA. I went immediately to get my 2 kids out of school. We expected to hear about more planes hitting other targets.
My mother and I were across the border in Canada on an island in the St. Lawrence, when my brother called and told us to turn on the tv—he’d heard the radio break the news on his way to work and things were very much in turmoil with no clear picture of what was happening.
So on tv we watched the collapse and the smoke and dust and all those souls rising to heaven on that superbly clear sunny mirror-calm bluebird September day.
Grief was mixed with anxiety over my brothers and my father being on the US side with borders slamming shut—one brother had just landed from overseas predawn at JFK—and fears for family and friends in the city (one was supposed to be at Ground Zero that day but work had been cancelled the evening previous). The deep relief of being reunited by nightfall muted the horror as such things do.
God bless you all, and I look forward to reading your stories this evening. Thank you.
I was working, there were some TVs around and they were always tuned to cable news. I saw the pictures and it just stopped all activities around us. The first thoughts were how could any pilot be so bad on that clear day to run into the tower? It made no sense. The last thought was it was an attack.
Then more news started coming in.
My parents lived on Staten Island, my mother in the hospital. My sister and her family were in NJ, but she frequently worked in NYC, as did her husband.
It soon became clear it was a purposeful attack.
Working in the elevator trade, and having started in NYC in construction I knew some of the people who worked in the Towers and had done work in them myself through the years. Including during the clean up from the earlier bombing. I knew the area well, and many people who worked there through my contacts with them at work.
I lived in Central NY at that time so I wasn’t near by.
My mother passed away on 9/13. We had a hard time with contacting my Dad as cell phones and landlines were down or overwhelmed in the aftermath.
In traveling down for my mother’s funeral, you could smell the burning corruption from 40 or so miles away. I was learning of friends and coworkers who died in the attacks. And in the rescue attempts.
Smoke still poured from the wreckage, the skyline forever changed from what I viewed in my many trips across the harbor on the SI ferry.
In all, 47 people who died were known to me from those attacks. Church members, friends, school mates. It was overwhelming.
It changed the world. And it is always linked, in my mind, to losing my mom. Such emptiness remains from those lives taken away by hate.
oldgoat, oh, my word, 47 people you knew! and then to lose your Mother. There are, I am sure, many like you who lost a good number of friends.
What a horrible tragedy…
God bless you and give you peace on these anniversaries.
First day of my senior year of high school in Boston, MA. In the hallway on the way to homeroom, a friend said, “We got bombed. They bombed us.” And I scoffed aand said, “Yeah, right… We are the USA: we don’t get bombed…” Such was my pride and patriotism for our great country that I couldn’t believe we would be victims of terrorism like that. I was in disbelief but watched the TV in my homeroom, watched the man fall… Watched the towers fall. I cried with many others. A very sad day, indeed.
Walked the children to school, came home turned on the tv to an HGTV show called Your Home, made some coffee and started watching the show. Husband called on his way to work telling me to turn on the tv, news was saying a small craft had crashed into the WTC. Turned to Fox News and saw the building in smoke.
Had recently read about obl and his threats after the first WTC attempt in 1994, my guess, it was him. Was telling husband my opinion while watching in disbelief, a huge plane come around the second building. Was thinking it might be a rerun of earlier, it wasn’t. Watched it hit with speed and trajectory, there was no doubt what was happening and it was unfathomable.
Picked up the kids and close friends children from school, not knowing what would happen throughout the day. Many parents were doing the same.
It is not some trivial Day of Service as it was coined in 2009 to be added to a register of festivals, rallys, recognitions or acts of kindness. It is a scar like Pearl Harbor, It should never be forgotten or rewritten.
Sorry for the long post, but this one is complicated…and a little unusual.
I was at our condo in Kona HI, where I went often to write and do my consulting work uninterrupted. I emailed my client in Connecticut that morning about my project deadline, and she emailed back to say everyone had gone home and all flights were grounded (this was about noon EDT). I thought she was joking, so I emailed back to ask if we had been bombed. She replied back agin with “turn on your TV.” I was glued to the TV the rest of the day, in horror and disbelief.
My flight home to CA had been scheduled for Sept. 12th, and the local TV station had said they had no idea when flights would resume. It was an interesting situation because there is no ferry service between the Hawaiian islands, and everything comes in by air. The interisland flights were grounded, too. After a couple of days, grocery shelves were looking empty. When the flights were grounded, dozens of huge aircraft had been enroute from Asia, and they were forced to land at the airports in Hawaii. The Kona airport looked like a 747 parking lot! All the local Kona hotels provided lodging to all those passengers FREE for three days until flights resumed. Very impressed with their generosity.
There were lots of naval vessels circling the island and the military base on the island was on high alert. I felt like they were going to attack us next! My flight back to CA was finally rescheduled for Sept. 15th, and the United crew was very somber. Tighter security boarding the plane, and everything removed from the seat pockets – not even any magazines. I was lucky that I didn’ t know anyone who perished on the east coast from the attack, but we all felt that the world had changed, even from 5000 miles away. No matter where we were, our hearts were with them. I will never forget.
At that time, I was a U.S. Customs (USCS) Special Agent (S/A) detailed as an Instructor to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC), Glynco, GA.
I was in my office preparing for my next lecture when another S/A ran by yelling Turn on the TV, Turn on the TV!!! It looks like the WTC was attacked, it’s on fire!! Everyone ran to the TV in the break room & a few minutes later saw, live, the 2nd plane hit. That’s when everyone of us said- that ain’t no accident, it’s a g damn attack!
Most of us knew people who worked in those bldgs., many of the agencies we were employed by had offices in one of the bldgs, including USCS, ATF, IRS & several others office was in 6 WTC.
Soon after the Pentagon was hit. My son worked just a few blocks away.The (his) DC phones weren’t working. It wasn’t until that evening that I got through to him. He was ok.
When the Pentagon was hit concerns arose that FLETC might also be a target. What better way to wipe out approx 1,000 law enforcement agents, officers & support staff, etc and shut down the largest law enforcement training center in the country? That would also significantly slow down training new S/A’s to replace those agents retiring.
FLETC provides basic & advanced training to approx.105 federal law enforcement agencies and training for some state,local & international law enforcement. Approx 70,000 S/As & officers are trained at FLETC each year. Agency specific also have add-on basic training academies on the base.
List of LEA that train at FLETC facilities:
https://www.fletc.gov/current-partners
Within hours after the WTC was attacked, USCS HQ asked for volunteers go to NYC to assist in search & rescue (I presume other agencies did the same). Most of the USCS S/As volunteered but, thru our frustration, were told no one detailed to the academy may volunteer. Due to the attack, HQ intended (& did) to ramp up & push thru training as many new hires as possible. HQ also began rehiring annuitants as detailed Instructors to help with the extra caseload.
I might add-
I and some friends who had planned to participate in the bike ride for the Trail Of Tears, the 1st year that included the entire trail. I road w/ a friend who is s Black Feet Indian. The ride was scheduled about a week or 2 (?) after 911.
That was one of the most moving, tearful and proud moment I ever had or seen. The Trail was from Knoxville, TN to Oklahoma (if I recall correctly). And, again if I recall correctly, it had the largest number of bikes the event had to that date.
In addition to the bikers, Hundreds & hundreds of people lined the streets & over passes almost thru the entire trail waving the USA Flag.
Having lived in New Jersey for many years, 36 miles away from NYC, strolling the streets with my very young son. I have a fondness for the NYC of the mid 80’s. Hockey games at Madison Square garden, broadway shows, mama leones, The feast of San Gennaro….oh my so many memories.
My former husband (he passed) and I were here in Orlando Florida driving home from an early appointment. We were listening to Howard Stern on the car radio. Stern said that the 1st tower was hit by a plane….we laughed it off thinking Stern was pulling our leg. A minute later we could tell in Stern’s voice that he was completely serious. We arrived home to turn on the TV only to see the next plane hitting the 2nd tower.
Seeing the poor souls jump to their deaths and the people covered in ash, the brave responders running in and the dreadful feeling that they may never come out changed me forever.
For some reason I knew i had to call my Aunt Annie in Seattle. She was panicked, having lived through the attacks of Pearl Harbor. So we just stayed on the phone for quite awhile. I told her the tv channel I was watching and she admonished me for not watching FOX. So I switched over to Shep. Boy have they changed over the years.
I can only pray that i will rush in and emulate the men and women on flight 93 and the police and firemen, the good citizens that stepped up on this day 19 years ago. God Bless you all. may God Bless our country.
Love and peace to all
I am told that i am elderly at 64. Heh! Got news for anyone…don’t doubt my or anyone else, of a certain age, our RESOLVE to defend our beautiful republic.
Eve
I was at work at McDonald’s corporate HQ when someone ran into the room telling us the trade Center was on fire. No one yet was sure of the cause but the entire floor crowded into our large meeting room/lounge area and stood transfixed and shocked as the tragedy unfolded. Imagining the horror as people leapt to their deaths was unbearable. Many of us there were architects who had learned about the towers in school and it really put into perspective what’s really important in life.
Powerline Blog has a great piece on Rick Rescorla, one of that day’s many heroes who lost their lives saving others.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/09/a-day-to-be-proud-11.php
I was home in Florida, getting ready to go to class, saw the news and my jaw dropped. My sister was in college at GW at the time, luckily I was able to connect with her via AIM to confirm she was ok- cell phones weren’t working and it was crazy. She said she thought snipers were on the buildings around the campus because when she was crossing the street to get back to the dorm, a girl walking next to her dropped dead.
When it is september 11th i always think of this great American Hero…..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Tillman
We have Pat Tilman!
The other side has Kaeperdick, that racist coward…
Two thoughts – 1) Monday , the day before 9/11 was a beautiful evening in NYC , I worked in midtown and walked to Grand Central Station to travel home each day . I cut through Rockefeller Center and there were little store front shops there and one was a tourist/ souvenir NYC Fire Dept . Shop manned by real Firefighters ( on light duty I believe) and they were just closing up and one firefighter (an older fellow around 40 ) was chatting and smiling and laughing with a tourist family and their young children . It was really a nice scene in the early evening sunset . On Tuesday , 9/11 , I got home shaken but ok , but for the next day or so there was total confusion on casualties and who made it out etc . On Thursday morning I reluctantly walked back to my Office ( the midtown streets were almost deserted) and I walked past the store front tourist “firehouse “ shop and it was closed and on the door was the picture of the firefighter I had seen on Monday evening , saying he had been killed in the Towers attack . It really stunned me . If anyone had said to me on Monday evening that this firefighter would lose his life several hours later in a terrorist attack in NYC , I would have thought they belonged in a mental hospital. I stared at that picture for several minutes just thinking of that happy Monday evening scene.
2) Outside of NYC. , I believe , people forget that the tangible human impact of 9/11 lasted for a number of weeks afterward. Almost every morning , for the next 2 or 3 weeks or so , as I would walk out of Grand Central and head toward midtown Fifth Avenue ( or sometimes at lunchtime as well ) , I would hear the bagpipes with their familiar funeral salute, marking another funeral procession at St Patrick’s Cathedral for a fallen fireman or policeman. You couldn’t help but stop and be moved by that continuing remainder of the human cost .
Reading all of the essays of remembrance today is very poignant. It beings back the fear, the pain and the compassion we all felt that day. We live in Maryland now but at that time I was teaching kindergarten in a town about 45 miles west of NYC. One of my co teachers saw the first plane hit on the tv in the teacher’s room. When I had my break right after I saw the towers collapse. The horror was more than anyone could ever imagine. Many of our teachers had spouses working in the city, and we had students whose parents were employed there. Our building had only kindergarten and first grade classrooms so we had to compose ourselves to keep them calm. I remember taking my lunchbreak and going to my church about a half mile away and just saying the rosary. Any parent who was able to came to school to pick up their child. We all just wanted to huddle with our families.
Two months later we went into NYC to pray at Ground Zero. It was humbling and unbearably sad. The iron fences had photos of the missing. There was ash in the street and I truly felt it was holy, as if it had blown in from Auschwitz and were the remains of the loved ones whose portraits hung on the fence.
One of my room mothers was an EMT and went in to help and unfortunately was never needed. My friend’s son in law spent months as a heavy equipment operator clearing the rubble and he now suffers from lung disease.
This day will always be in our hearts. We will remember.
Way out west in San Diego, the awful events transpired as I was driving to my office. I was totally clueless until I saw one of my employees (whose husband is a Navy Seal). I smiled and greeted her. She looked at me quizzically and said “Haven’t you heard? We’re AT WAR.”
While doing various house chores….., up on a ladder watering plants and (ugh) dusting leaves
the phone rang. Begrudginly, I descend and picked up the phoe. It was a friend asking if the tv was on. With calm sterness she said, “Turn on your tv.”. The first tower had just been hit!
The call ended and I promptly called a sister and told her to tum on the tv.
Together, we watched the second tower get hit, and then, watched –in utter disbelief– the building implode.
Today; every year, leaves me –still stunned, saddened and somber.
As well, I listen with reverence to hear the names of all who were murdered that day;
>as their lives –still matter.
I had a plush little cabin on my farm that I used to overnight in sometimes, and my crew came banging on the door early that morning, which was pretty much frowned upon, all excited about what they were hearing on the radio. We sat transfixed in front of the TVs watching it for the next 4 hours. My most vivid memories weren’t of that morning, but of the next week. We would go to the bank on Young Circle in Hollywood and then eat lunch at the sandwich shop next door. From the window we looked straight across the circle to the Shuckums Raw Bar. Mohamed Atta and Marwan al -Shehhi drank their last vodkas four days before the attack at that Shuckums. They lived in the neighborhood, and were regulars there. It kind of freaked me out that mass murderers could be living amongst us, and hanging out at a place I drove by everyday. I visited the Twin Towers once, and went up to the observation deck strangely enough, on September 11th, 1980. I was in New York to see the big Showtime Elton John show in Central Park a couple of days later. Talking to all my guys the morning of the attack, we realize that every single one of us I’ve been on that observation deck at some point. It was one of those things you just did when you went to New York City. And we all felt the loss, for New York, and for our country. Little did we know that George Bush was about to use it as an excuse to unleash the deep state.
Working at a downtown Chicago hospital…was leaving when the first tower was hit, was on an expressway adjacent to Midway Airport when the second tower was hit….when it dawned on me that the city was essentially, being evacuated….
Stationed in Korea I caught news of a plane strike on the first tower on my way in to lead the preparation of our A-10’s for training sorties the following day. Upon my arrival I was told the second tower had been hit and we knew then we were in deep kimchee. We went to high alert, the sorties we prepped for thereafter weren’t training focused, and we were glued to the tube living this incredible surreal hell with our nation and much of the world.
God Bless America today and always….. we need to make sure we keep President Trump where he is …… #MAGA
I was on a train from London to Manchester, England, that day (2nd day of a 2 week trip). All of a sudden everyone’s cell phone started ringing (I did not have one) when the first plane hit and everyone started talking about the news. As a pilot, I knew that a plane flying accidentally into a huge building in Manhattan was highly unlikely, and when the second plane hit, I remember saying, “This is Pearl Harbor.” I felt pretty helpless being so far from home (NH at the time). Three days later one of the major UK newspapers had a full 2-page spread of a British flag and a US flag with a great “We’re with you” message. I didn’t feel so alone after that.
The day was deceptively beautiful and sunny in Northern Virginia when we first heard of the attack in NYC. My kids were at school already. Throughout the day we watched the news; first the Twin Towers, then the Pentagon, then Pennsylvania. Later, I had to pick up the kids. They were traumatized–not from the actual disaster, but the fact that their teachers were told not to discuss it with them. So, they came rushing out to the car and asked me what happened. They said teachers were crying. Some of them knew people at the Pentagon. My daughter (first grader at the time) remembered being corralled outside on the grass and seeing planes (military) flying over head. I guess the school feared attacks could reach them.
My better half worked in the Pentagon and left at the usual zero dark thirty time to beat DC traffic. I was at work when a coworker burst into my office and asked if I had seen the news. I hadn’t. It took several hours for cell service to work, but he was OK. He remarked that it was the first time he ever heard the old PA system being used: “Attention! There has been an incident at the Pentagon. Everyone must evacuate.” He and his fellow Marines have lots of eyewitness accounts from that day, and in the days that followed. One such account includes our friend, a 2 star, who was jogging as the plane flew in front of him and clipped a traffic sign.
I was in my OB’s office for my final pregnancy appointment, & to pick a birthdate for inducing labor. I had no idea until my Dr came in and told us what was happening.
My son was born exactly one week later. I was between 2 final choices in names. One of them being Logan– it seemed the most fitting given the circumstances.
I had enlisted in the Navy several weeks before and was scheduled to leave to bootcamp on Sept 13th, 2001.
The morning of Sept 11th I was staying at a friends house in Hollywood, Ca; I remember how blue and clear the sky was. I had a court appearance for a speeding ticket that morning that I had to take care of before entering bootcamp on the 13th. That morning as I was getting off the freeway to a court house in Santa Clarita I saw some lady crying while driving. I had turned on the radio in my car to KROQ in L.A. and distinctly remember the host saying, “If you havent heard about this terror attack you must be living in a refrigerator”. When I arrived to the court house they had just closed down and an officer was outside telling everyone to go home…thats when I new something big had happened. Later that day I saw everything on the news…life had forever changed.
The FAA had shut down all airline flights for the week, and so we didnt ship out to bootcamp until Sept 17th. That night of the 17th was Roshashanna, the Jewish new year. It was pouring rain with thunder at RTC in Great Lakes, Il. Ive always viewed my life in terms of before 9/11 and entering bootcamp vs afterwards, because during those 7 days (9/11 to 9/17) it seemed everyones reality changed including mine. I miss those days and the way America used to be.
I remember running a quick errand before work and when looking up in the sky, seeing a plane flying and I thought, why so low? Where is it going? Other people looking up too on the street. I was a little less than 2 miles away from the towers.
Then after they fell, leaving work, walking home from midtown to home (downtown), with thousands of other New Yorkers, most of us quiet, some whispering. No cell phones worked, just the sound of radios, and so many sirens. Seeing a line of doctors in their green scrubs standing quietly outside a hospital waiting for ambulances to arrive. But most were already dead.
Calling my mom when I got in —on a landline–reassuring her I was okay. Going out on the roof of my building and seeing the plumes of smoke against the fall sky, already you could smell god knows what in the air. We smelled it for days. It was horrible when it wafted through the windows of my apartment
There were lots of moments in the days that followed, like walking home and hearing the roar of a plane above–military of course, but how it alarmed me then, initially. And of course, thinking about the jumpers. Even today I think of them, knowing that they were facing their execution and had to choose their way of death—burn or jump. For years I wondered if I could make that particular choice. The shrines of candles and pictures in so many places— the flowers. So many signs asking if you have seen so and so, and you knew most would never be found. And of course, seeing the National Guard and having to show them ID, that I was a resident in my neighborhood.
Despite the horrible tragedy, there was American solidarity back then—and I pray it will come back to this country instead of having the leftie apologists, America-hating idiots, the corrupt media all around us, that we all have to deal with day after day.
I got up
I made coffee
turned on the TV
nothing prepared me for what I saw
It has made turning on the TV
ever since then
a reminder of 9-11
for the last 19 years
My wife and had just landed in Austin, TX from Rome, Italy via Frankfurt, Germany a couple of hours before the first plane hit. We were returning from Rome where we had attended a company event.
An interesting historical note was that Todd Beamer was part of our sales group that year. Todd and his wife were on our flight from Rome to Frankfurt and then they connected on to Boston Logan. Todd was headed home to repack a bag and then immediately travel on to San Francisco, CA to attend a customer meeting on behalf of a colleague.
My father had been watching the kids while we were gone and he was anxious to get on the road to get home in Dallas, TX. I convinced him to get some breakfast before he left and it was at the restaurant where we learned that a plane had hit the one of the World Trade Center towers. The waitress didn’t have too much information and there were no TV’s in the restaurant, so we weren’t sure if it was a general aviation accident, bad weather or what.
When I got home I turned on the news was shocked that the weather in NYC was clear and really a beautiful day. A few minutes later the second plane struck. It was later that day that I learned that Todd had been on United flight 93 and perished in the attempt to retake the aircraft.
Truly horrifying and was deeply saddened for all those innocent lives lost on the planes and in the buildings and the families that were forever changed that day.
I lived in Bayonne, NJ at the time. I could see the Twin Towers from my bedroom. I worked in NYC and was waiting for a bus to work when I overheard a couple of people talking about a plane hitting the WTC. I assumed it was a traffic “chopper” because that sort of accident happened before.
As we boarded the bus and murmurs continued, so I called my sister who also lived in NJ. She told me what happened and told me to get off at the next stop and go back home. By that time the bus was in Jersey City and we could all see the thick black smoke.
The next four days went by in a daze. I don’t know what I did besides watch the television and passing out from sheer exhaustion. I would get up and look out the window at the smoke, look at the TV, cry, pray, pass out, look out the window, repeat. I did not know what to do, where to go. It was frightening and horrifying.
That Sunday, September 16, 2001, I went to church. Redeemer Presbyterian Church. I hardly remember the sermon Dr. Tim Keller preached but I remember we sang “Before the Throne of God Above”. When all was said and done it still was/is my Father’s world. My God has always been and will always be in charge.
Even today as I remember and my heart breaks again. I am sure in the knowledge that our God reigns. He has and will save America…again.
we were just starting to fill silo, (corn silage for you non farmers) Mom called us into the house, we watched for a while then we just quit for the day, i went to church and prayed, all i could see were the killed over here and the solders being killed over there in the future, i was 42 years old and I kept thinking about my children i broke down and wept.
I was in my office in South Carolina when one of my employees ran in to tell me she had heard something on the radio about a plane hitting one of the Twin Towers in NY. I turned on the television and watched in horror with my administrative staff as the tragedy unfolded.Later I ordered the agency closed and told all my staff to go home to be with their families and pray.Time marches on but the innocent lives taken and the heroic response of the first responders will never be forgotten.God bless America!
Please take the time to watch this amazing video about what one man did on that fateful day…but have your Kleenex ready!
In a word
>thanks.
On 9/11/2001 I was in my kitchen in NY just before 9:00am brewing a pot of coffee and watching the news reports of a small plane that hit the north tower of the WTC, I just finished making my first cup of coffee when my dog appeared and wanted to go into the backyard, I opened the patio door let my dog out and stepped onto the patio sipping my coffee when I saw a low flying United jetliner (read it on the plane) going towards Manhattan that I thought was odd but I went back into the kitchen watching the tv when the same United jetliner hit the south tower and my heart sank into my stomach realizing that America was under Attack. I could not believe it.
Today is 9/11, that horrible day, 19 years ago. Now, all you see are homegrown Terrorists destroying our country because of BLM (Black Lives Matter). The young Democrat criminals hate our country and hate our USA flag. These ANTIFA mobs are purposely destroying our country because the Far Left Liberal Democrat Professors from many Universities have poisoned their minds against America, the greatest country on earth. The Democrat Hypocrites are being funded by Democrat Billionaires who want our country destroyed, so Senile Joe Biden and his Socialist/Communist comrades can take over our country. Joe Biden can’t speak without his Teleprompter. His writers write everything for Joe Biden to read off the Teleprompter. He could never answer the reporters on his own. The Far Left Liberal reporters tell Senile Joe Biden the questions they will ask him and Joe Biden’s writers put down the answers on the Teleprompter. Is this the kind of person you want for a President? He could never handle the job, so why are the dumb, uninformed Democrat people voting for such a Corrupt Loser??? I know why, because they keep watching the Far Left Liberal Democrat reporters from CNN, MSNBC, ETC. lying to people about how terrible President Trump is, even though President Trump has done so much for our country, but of course, the FAKE NEWS reporters don’t tell their viewers this. Stop these evil reporters from telling their lies. Vote for President Donald J. Trump November 3, 2020 and keep our country free, safe and working for all Americans.
Washington, D.C. At work. Logged in and the breaking news said an “airplane” hit the World Trade Center. Imagined it was a Cessna.
Minutes later a colleague ran down the hall shouting, “a second plane hit the World Trade Center! A second plane hit the World Trade Center!”
We all ran into the conference room, where we watched the towers collapse on the big-screen TV, listened to local reporters mistake the Pentagon attack for a car bomb blast at the State Department, and learned that a fourth plane was headed toward D.C.
I remember saying, “shoot it down.” And the plane was reported crashed minutes later. Only later did we learn what the brave passengers on Flight 93 did that day.
John 15:13.
you all do know that donald trump said, on the day it happened, that bombs not just plane destroyed the world trade center? https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=trump+videos+bombs+not+just+planes&docid=607986065793224636&mid=701BBFDF743C3FE53E6D701BBFDF743C3FE53E6D&view=detail&FORM=VIRE
now ask yourself, especially given how much the media, the democrats, even rinos hate him, why has no one, ever, asked him about this?
When I visited the Flight 93 Memorial, it was painfully obvious that Muslims had come to honor their martyrs…. they had used their fingertips to ‘trace’ over the names of the terrorists… so many times and so often that the material was indented. When I realized this, my heart almost stopped ?… ‘they’ are still here and ‘they’ still want to kill us all.
I was in Las Vegas with my family. After 3 days of no flights, we returned to Hawaii to find a message on our answering machine. it was my college roommate telling me to say a little prayer for our third roommate who had been in the South Tower. There had been no calls from him or hospital sightings. It was a punch to the gut. No remains were ever recovered. The only sighting in the building was from a surviving co-worker that said he stayed back to help another co-worker that had difficulty walking. At least, that how I’ll remember him.
The three days in limbo waiting for a flight were some of the strangest I’ve experienced. People were desperate to get back to their homes. The rental cars were gone. They were buying jalopies for one way trips home and even new cars in some cases. I remember talking to a guy in the elevator who was so happy to rent a motor home for an $1800 one way trip home to Denver. He would have paid double.
Our flight home was a 0800. Since our airline did not base aircraft in Las Vegas, we didn’t leave for the airport until our son (an air traffic controller in Honolulu) confirmed that the aircraft had left Honolulu the night before. I dropped my family off at the terminal before returning my rental car. At 0400 there were already 500+ people lined up on the sidewalk to check in. We were stressing. We were four hours early but too late. I told my wife (there were six of us with two little kids) to check out the line for our airline and call me before I turned in the rental car (they were like gold). Even taxis had been depleted by one way trips out of town. Fortunately, our line was short, and the plane was half empty. But, the flight home was not easy. We had an aborted takeoff from an intermediate stop with a maintenance delay. If you’ve not experienced a takeoff abort, it’s hair raising, especially when you’re suspicious of everything and everybody on the plane. Home free, only to listen to my answering machine.
So well told…I can imagine the tension on the flight back to Hawaii.
too bad you weren’t a relative of osama bin laden. that whole family got to fly back to saudi arabia the next day, when all other planes were grounded.
it’s called a tell.
My Mama and I were in New Orleans, she was undergoing medical tests. Staying at the Embassy Suites there. We were having breakfast when the news came on TV…..the room immediately became quiet. A large group of National Guardsmen and women were having breakfast , their leader’s phone rang, and then they all jumped up and ran out of the door.
My (federal agent) then-fiance called me , frantic…he said the government wasn’t sure if the enemy was attacking all the Trade Centers, or even if our whole country was under attack. We were just a few blocks away from the Trade Center building in N. O. , so he told us to LEAVE, RIGHT NOW!. And to gather supplies on the way back to the Northshore to hunt Kerry down if needed.
A horrible and terrifying day.
Argh..hunker down not hunt Kerry down…
Freudian Slip?
Ha!