Our lives were forever changed by the events of September 11. We debate whether we are safer now than before the attack but we are certainly more personally aware of the dangers in the world because terrorism invaded our shores.
My job that horrific day was to explain the unexplainable to young 4th grade students. They had so many questions and I had no answers.
That night, as I viewed the destruction, I remember valuing my friends even more and my family most of all.
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http://www.pjstar.com/services/news/sept11/special/chan.html
The last I had heard about Chip was that he had landed a nice job in NY working in the trade centers through friends of friends. We attended the same high school (he was a year younger) and had mowed lawns together for several summer summers. Throughout college we would run into each other from time to time in Peoria. His older brother Chris was also a really nice guy and I enjoyed running to both of them.
It was early afternoon on 9/11 when the reports started to come in that no one had heard from Chip or Adam. Adam was Chip's best friend who also attended the same high school and UofI - and also worked in the towers. When it all settled, I would learn that Chip didn't make it and Adam arrived later-than-usual just in time to see the first plane crash into their building.
My thoughts will always be with the Chan family on 9/11. If you are spiritual, please say a special prayer for them.
I was hurriedly getting my 3 children ready for school. In my kitchen, the radio, a low drone of background noise, suddenly grabbed my attention. At first I thought the report they were giving was some sort of spoof, not their normal programming. I hadn't remembered any "breaking news" preamble. As the reality of the reporting took hold, I grabbed my portable radio and began the walk to school with my children. As the horror of what was happening took hold, I remember passing a couple of strangers who seemed all too oblivious and telling them that the WTC had been struck.
When I got home, I switched on my TV. My husband was across the country, on the West coast. I was able to reach him, he already knew what was happening. He, and the other men he was with, had begun what would end up being a four day effort to get back home.
A couple friends called with information on the start-of-school meetings. I interrupted them and said that I really couldn't focus on that stuff right now; had they turned on their TV's or radios yet?
I remember wandering outside on our block and talking to neighbors. Everyone was dazed, but there was comfort in being with one another. I wanted to do anything and everything to protect my family. All I could think to do was fill up our cars with gas, load up on groceries and get cash; basically nothing.
Later, watching the coverage on TV, what struck me most were the images from the hospitals, with attendants waiting curbside, ready to receive the injured that never came.
I sat on my couch with my kids on my lap - thinking about those fireman climbing up the stairs while everyone else was climbing down.
My thoughts on that day are here.
I had been married for just a few days, and was getting ready to go to class, when my brother-in-law called.
I was sitting at my desk, having a cup of coffee, checking my messages when a colleague came in to my office and told me. He was white as a sheet. I remember what I was wearing. I never wore that suit again, although it is still hanging in my closet. I just wanted to go home and be with my family. I remember being terrified that my husband would be drafted, and I would not (and could not) turn off the news.
I was working at Circuit City at the time. Tuesday is new release day, and was always a busy morning, getting things ready before we opened at 10am. I arrived at work a little before 8am, and set about putting out new product. As news came in of the WTC attacks, and then the Pentagon attack, many of us at work would try and catch a glance of the TV news reports, watching the footage of smoldering buildings and listening to the voices of obviously unnerved newscasters. Then, our opening manager called us together for a training session before we opened. It was a daily occurrence. Every morning we role-played, with someone acting as a saleperson, and another member of staff acting as a customer. I remember asking the manager, infront of everyone, "Isn't this a little inappropriate this morning?" He didn't understand why it would be. My indignation fell on deaf ears, and we stood around role playing about digital cameras. It just didn't make any sense. Not on that day.
That night, as my partner & I went to bed, I remember feeling far more frightened than I'd ever felt before. The future seemed uncertain and grim that night. But the present and the past were also on my mind. We'd lost a lot of people that day. A lot of good, decent people. There were folks who would otherwise have been alive and well that night, who were now lost to us forever. I thought about their families and friends. I thought of how stunned, shocked, morose and angry they must have been.
It was the end of a terrible, terrible day.
I was living in a house with seven other folks on the UIUC campus, mostly soldiers, either prior service active or guard/reserve, all students.
I got a call that woke me up (with a hangover) from my soon-to-be ex in Iowa. She told me that a plane had flown into the WTC. I complained that she woke me up.
I surfed the net for a few minutes with the radio on the background, but I wasn't paying attention, and I wasn't reading the news.
Only one other person in the house was awake, Anthony, but he had already gone off to class before the plane hit.
I went outside for a smoke, and it started to dawn on me what my gf had said.
I came back in and turned on the TV - both towers were hit and the Pentagon was on fire! I ran upstairs and woke up my buddy, Greg, who'd been out drinking with me the night before. He thought I was full of it, but I literally dragged him down to the main floor to watch TV. Once we picked up our jaws off the floor, we woke everyone else up.
The seven of us in the house proceeded to watch the news on various channels throughout the house for the rest of the day. Anthony came back from class around the time the last plane went down in PA - he didn't have a clue what was going on.
For the rest of the day, myself and the other actively drilling reservists in the house were frantically trying to get ahold of our full-time unit administrators to find out what was going on: the answer was the same across the board - we have no idea, keep the phone lines clear, stay near the phone.
I called my grandfather that evening, the only other prior service individual in my family, who had had his ship shot out from under him the South Pacific in WWII, and said I wanted to go to NYC to help, to do anything, and asked him what his thoughts were.
He said: "Pray now. Your time to help will come."
I heard about the first plane on the radio. I was at home. I turned on the TV, and watched the second plane hit the other Tower. I called my brother, he works in NYC, and had worked for one of the companies in the WTC. He had just left a few weeks before, he had gotten a new job, and was a couple of miles away. He was ok.
I went to work, a government job, and got a call we were to close. Worried about more terrorist threats, even here in central Illinios. I was angry about it. Why should government shut down? The terrorists won that day.
I refuse to alter my life now. I will not allow the terrorists to affect my life. Day to day, my life is the same. I will not be afraid. I will not let them bother me. I will not let them beat me as an American.
A have two close relatives who have been in combat in Iraq. One flew as an F16 pilot (he didn't drop the Al-Zaquari 500 hundred pounder, but it was his route, he had been rotated out just a month before), one was boots on the ground, rifle in hand, an officer leading men in battle almost daily. I was very worried for them. They are both back safe now.
We must win the fight. There, not here. To win here, do not let them get to your daily lives. Do not let them take over your lives with fear. Do not let them change our American way of life.
Today is our wedding anniversary - 13 years. It's still a happy day, but more privately I guess.
Five years ago I was at my previous job at The High School of Saint Thomas More. A secretary came by and told me a plane had hit a building in NYC. We tried to find news on the internet and got nothing. I called my wife and had her check the television and she told me what was happening. It was sad but not scary until the second one hit and the pentagon got hit. I also remember calling my wife and asking her to go out and fill the car with gas, buy some groceries and get some cash from the ATM. It really seemed like WWIII was about to break out for a while. Parents started calling the school like crazy. Wanting us to know, wanting to talk to their child. We quickly got on the PA and let kids know what was happening. We prayed as a school, and several classes headed to the Chapel to pray.
Later that evening after we put our daughter to bed, we stayed up until after midnight watching the news, talking, and wishing there was something we could do.
I remember exactly where and what I was doing on Sept. 11. What concerns me, howerer, is how little I remember about the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. I don't know the date, I don't remember much about it, but I do remember that I wasn't very concerned about it at the time. It makes me feel like an idiot.
John Bramfeld
Good point John. Me too. I only vaguely remember all the names that are now seared in my memory. It was a different world.
I was running late for class but decided to eat a cup of yogurt and turn on CNN for a few minutes before riding my bike to Lincoln Hall. What I saw were the towers burning. I called my brother and best friend quickly, and then took off for class. As a rode my bike down Wright Street at a normally bustling time of morning, no one was there except for three or four pedestrians with sunken heads, and I realized the world had changed.
I didn't hear about it until what was 7pm that evening.
That might be completely unbelievable except that I was teaching on the other side of the world in a small village in Japan. I got to the office and had to go right in and teach my first class. I chucked the normal lesson and tried to put it into perspective. In the same way, it's hard to get Americans to empathize with tragedies abroad, the same is true in reverse. At the time, I had no idea where my parents were as I knew they were flying out that week from NYC to Europe, but I had no idea what time or flight as they are notorious about just flying out without giving me any of the details. I explained this to my students, and it helped bring the events to them with an emotional stake in them.
All in all it was a pretty successful lesson, and it helped me to deal with the events to know that I was responding by teaching. I also integrated a caution against stereotyping large populations through the horrific attack which proved prophetic, as later, when South Asians and Arab Americans were attacked, it sure made me wish one of my students was in the oval office.
(I don't mean that as an attack on Bush--it was a terrible oversight by him, but I wouldn't conjecture that anyone else in office would have necessarily responded differently; at least not among politicians.)
My parents were fine--they had flown out the day before and we experience the strangeness of being Americans travelling in Europe in the 9/11 aftermath.
I met with some of my friends from NYC that following evening as they scrambled to call home and make sure everyone was ok.
These days, I look at the Standard Oil Building now or whatever it is called these days and think of the WTC towers. It's weird, I don't really care about the buildings and if someone had just used a vapor ray to get rid of them without hurting a soul, I wouldn't have cared. But when I see that building and all its bulk and expansiveness, I think of all the people who suffered from 9/11 whether those in the actual towers or those shot in cold-blood as they staffed their posts at their gas stations.
I was part of "MSM."
Congressman Tim Johnson was presiding ("in the chair") on the House floor for the morning session. A house floor aide came and whispered in his ear to evacuate. Thank God for the heroes of Flight 93 for saving the Capitol Building.
[...] Here’s some other blogger’s thoughts: –>IlliniPundit thread –>It’s Matt’s World In a way, we’ve allowed terrorism to change us for the worse, and that is a profoundly sad reality to consider. Why not let it change us for the better? [...]
We must get past the political shenanigans. We all know what went wrong....everybody protects his position and you watch my back and I'll watch yours....don't make waves...save money....and most of all...if we get in power,,,you get the job. But...it is time to STOP. They are trying to kill ALL of us!