Where were you Sept. 11th, 10 years ago? archived

I worked at 54th and 10th in a recording studio. My wife worked at the Am Ex building across from WTC. We saw the report of the first tower being hit on TV an then saw the second plane crash. I went up on my roof knowing my wife was down there somewhere and un-reachable. Turned out she was on the ferry when the first plane hit and witnessed the second from below on the ground. She quickly got on one of last ferries leaving and got on a NJ Transit train going anywhere. We were able to reach each other about 11 Oclock, but until we spoke, I kept going to the roof to watch the burning buildings and the going back to the news coverage not knowing if she was alive or missing. We canceled work and I headed home about 2 pm. I tried to give blood and then walked down to Penn Station. We heard the fighter jets arrive and I managed to get on a train leaving NYC and home to my family. Months of the towers burning followed.

Don't want to start a new thread but this is for the first responders..

I was working at P.S. 3 in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn and I remember having to leave the building that morning to find a legal parking space for my car - alternate-side parking was in effect. I was idling in front of the school building waiting for the street sweeper to pass and heard on the news that a small plane had accidentally hit one of the World Trade Centers. The news couldn't elaborate any further as they had no more information than that. I went inside to the main office and stood there for a minute, not sure what to do. It was my second day of work in a new job and I knew no one. I spoke up at anyone who would listen and told them what I'd heard on the radio and suggested they turn one on. The assistant principal started to panic - she said her niece was new in town from elsewhere and had an interview in the neighborhood of the towers that morning - and she called her cell phone immediately. I remember her saying, "Find a police officer, look around honey, find a police officer and ask for help." Then we heard on the radio that the second plane hit and it all became clear that this was no small plane accidentally losing its way.

I don't remember the order of events to follow, but I do remember being taken to the roof of the school building by a custodian who pointed out the clear view of the burning towers. I remember the taste of fear in my mouth. I remember the school locking down, no one in or out, and the phones started ringing off the hook. Parents came to pick up their children and teachers escorted them to the main office, one by one, all the while talking frantically on cell phones, listening to radios, and catching glimpses of the news in the teachers' room.

I remember the sound of my father's voice on the other end of my cell phone when he finally was able to get the call through and I remember sobbing for the the first time that day.

I drove to my friend's brownstone in Park Slope where a group of us sat glued to the television for hours. There was burning paper falling from the sky - I still have a piece of that paper tucked away. I've never been able to look at it since.

I was living in NYC and working in Hoboken, across the street from the train station, at the time. I took PATH every morning from 33rd St to Hoboken. It's usually pretty empty. The morning of 9/11, the train was super S L O W and I remember being seriously impatient, knowing I was going to be late to work. When I got to Hoboken and I walked across the street I vaguely recall thinking "Huh. There are sure a lot of people standing here staring at NYC". But I was late and never turned around to see what they saw. I walked right in to my office on the 8th floor (in the first building on the right on the water). When I got there the receptionist told my my mother called, my aunt called, my sister called. I still had no idea what had happened. The receptionist saw the confused look on my face and walked me over to the conference room overlooking the Hudson River, where all my co workers had gathered. I actually can't recall if the 2nd plane had hit already. I only remember the horror of watching them fall. I remember thinking "That can't be real. That's CG."

We stayed for hours, mourning the loss of our beautiful view of downtown Manhattan, along with the loss of our innocence and of way too many lives. The area outside the train station was set up for triage and the some of the people pouring in just broke my heart. Several of my coworkers tried to catch a NJT train west home, but it took them hours. I debated going home with someone in NJ, but all I wanted to do was get home to my apartment in NYC. I needed to be there.
The 33rd St. PATH started running sometime around 7 or 8p. I remember switching from the PATH to the subway and there were only a handful of people on the train, but everyone was simply shell shocked. I felt that way for a long time.

ETA: One of the eeriest things that happened was that I had very coincidentally been at WTC the night before on 9/10 and I was hardly ever there. I had worked late and needed to bring a package to a FedEx that was open past 8. The WTC FedEx was the closest one to Hoboken on my way home. Just a little weird coincidence.

One thing in common is that people remember the tiny little everyday details of the day.

Later in the day, at dusk, I was outside on my back porch and called my friend Sarah Hunt. I said, "I feel like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop."

Also, when I met my husband, he worked at Marsh (before they moved to the WTC). He remembers feeling really unlucky when they had lay offs and he was let go...

The thing that strikes me about this thread is reading the "little" things that people remember about the day. Like pippi's going to fed ex the night before. Probably something that she would have never remembered had it not been for the events of the next morning.

The thing that I will always remember is sitting on the front steps of my house trying to reach my wife by phone without any luck and Jac coming up to me - a pretty much complete stranger - and offering his phone to me. He had nextel at the time and for some reason their service was more reliable that day. And when I was struggling to figure out whether my son would be better off home with me or in school he was the one who told me to go and get him and he offered to watch my house for me as I ran out.

Heh - CQ - cross post.

I was stationed at Dover Air Force Base. When someone interrupted a meeting on labor issues to say a plane had hit the WTC, I thought, "What a terrible accident." We finished the meeting at 9:00, and as I left the civilian personnel office, I saw the footage on a television in the waiting room, and the second plane hit. I ran back to my building and burst into my bosses office and asked if his red phone had rung. He looked confused and I said, "Sir, I think we're being attacked." And then his phone rang. And then the Pentagon was hit. We were in Threatcon Delta for weeks--all blinds closed, 24-hour-ops, an exhausting, dark, and dreary workplace. One of the scariest things was the silence of our flight line as all the planes were grounded. And then the eerie sound of helicopters and other aircraft arriving over the next days as remains from the Pentagon were brought to the Port Mortuary at our Base. In the days and weeks to follow, I prepared countless wills, provided briefings on the Law of Armed Conflict to deploying troops, and coordinated paperwork to cancel my separation orders--I only had four months remaining on my 4-year commission on September 11th, 2001, and was scheduled to separate in January 2002. Instead, I served another six years. Because of that day, I've had life experiences I never dreamed of, been to countries I never thought I'd see, and will never take for granted the freedoms we have and those who defend them.

I am shocked by how rattled I am by today. I realized the memories are almost as painful as they were 10 yrs ago- they haven't been as lessened by time as I thought. We went to the city today and it was quiet and solemn. It was much harder to be there than in thought it would be. But my 12 yr old nephew was interested in how it all was so it was somewhat cathartic to talk about it. I told him the story of Todd Beamer and flight 93 which he hadn't heard about. As we talked, I flashed forward 10, 100, 500 years and hoped the stories would be told again and again.

sportsnut said:

The thing that strikes me about this thread is reading the "little" things that people remember about the day. Like pippi's going to fed ex the night before. Probably something that she would have never remembered had it not been for the events of the next morning.

Heh - CQ - cross post.

cool

tryingmybest said:

I One of the scariest things was the silence of our flight line as all the planes were grounded.

oh yeah, remember how there weren't any contrails?

sportsnut said:

The thing that strikes me about this thread is reading the "little" things that people remember about the day.

On the 10th I read an article about "911" day as they were calling that Tuesday, and they had a bunch of stories of people abusing the 911 system, like the man who dialed 911 to report a woman gardening in her bikini. Stupid memory, but at the same time, ask me to remember any other article read a decade ago and I'll draw a blank. Also, the Parade insert from the 9th had a little picture way in the back of Bin Laden with a reward attached. I never even noticed it until a week or so afterward when going through the papers to put them out for recycling. That was an eerie coincidence.

This is an account from a Hotel Industry Person (friend of my sister-in-law,) writing a piece for her child's class, gathering first hand accounts for their kids' class. The children, now in the 5th grade, were only about 1 years old at the time...
-Ron Carter

September 8, 2011

Dear Katie,

I am glad you asked me to tell you about my memories from 9/11 in anticipation of the upcoming 10 year anniversary. The memories of that day are very vivid for me as they are for many across our country, and what I will share with you now is on a very personal level from my day, not so much from a patriotic stand-point or what 9/11 meant then, or means to us today as Americans.

First, I want you to know how happy and lucky I am to be alive and be your mommy. That is the most important thing to me in the world and it was my absolute first thought when my train pulled in to Penn Station that day just as the second tower from the World Trade Center fell. You had just celebrated your first birthday five days before my trip to NYC on 9/11 and Molly was only 20-months-old.

I had Amtrak tickets to NYC for the trip I was on 9/11 and for a trip on 9/12. Because you were both so little, I wanted to be home with you each night. Ironically, the event I was attending on 9/12 was to be held at Windows on the World which was located at the top of the World Trade Center. Needless to say I never made that trip. I consider myself very fortunate as this event is one that my company had every year, and typically we booked it on the second Tuesday of September, which would have been 9/11. Because of a scheduling conflict with the president of ..., we switched our days to hold our event on 9/12. If our event would have been held on 9/11, I would have gotten off the Amtrak train in Newark to take the Path train to the WTC. When my train passed Newark on 9/11, one of the towers was smoking and one was still standing. My train for the event on 9/12 was scheduled to be in Newark around 9:30, so I know based on my timing I would have not been in Windows on the World yet, but some of my co-workers would have been, so again, we were very lucky.

On 9/11, my train passed by the WTC very slowly on the NJ side looking across the river to NY. Everyone was looking at the tower that was smoking but still standing and the one that had fallen and was trying to figure out what was going on. No one had cell service so we had no idea what was happening. Finally a girl in my train car got through on her cell phone to someone in DC who told her that terrorists had just hit the Pentagon. That was all we knew until we got into Penn Station. I remember coming up the escalator in Penn Station and everyone was crowding around the TVs. It was then that we found out that the second tower had fallen while we were underground going into NYC. We were the last train to enter NY that day.

While I was in the station, one of my co-workers from Atlanta found me as she was traveling in to go to our event the next day. We immediately called for a rental car but there were already none to be had in the city. They evacuated Penn Station and we went out onto the street. We decided to wait by the station as no one really knew what was going on and what might happen next. We went to a Spanish deli and they let us use their landline phone to call Daddy and her husband as our cell phones would not work. I also called Alexis to let her know I was in the city and that I would come to her house to stay if I could not get back out.

Jennifer, my co-worker, had a lot of luggage and there no cabs anywhere, so we hung out on the streets around Penn Station for a long time rather than going to Mommy’s office. We sat in a church office for a while and walked around. It was a little scary to be on the streets as there were a lot of rumors about another attack. One memory I have while we walked around was of a lady kinda just wandering around, I want to say around 31st street and she was all dusty. Since we were on the street, and not in front of a TV, we really didn’t know what was happening and didn’t really understand until later that she had probably walked from downtown and that she had dust on her from the WTC.

Finally, we gave up and walked the mile and a half to Mommy’s office. Kelly was there and she was in charge of canceling our events for the next day. It was pretty crazy. We found out that they were going to open Penn Station back up so we walked back and got on the first train out of NYC heading south. I sat in a seat in the car where you face each other with a table in between. The man I was facing called someone he knew to describe how he was in his office looking out the window and was watching people jumping out of windows from the WTC.

This was a very traumatic day for many, many people and involved lots of loss and terrible memories. I was very scared all day and all of my thoughts were of how important it was for me to get home for you and Molly. I know how lucky I was that day and every day I get to wake up and see your smiling(or sometimes grouchy) little face. 

I love you,

Mommy

conandrob240 said:

I am shocked by how rattled I am by today. I realized the memories are almost as painful as they were 10 yrs ago- they haven't been as lessened by time as I thought. We went to the city today and it was quiet and solemn. It was much harder to be there than in thought it would be. But my 12 yr old nephew was interested in how it all was so it was somewhat cathartic to talk about it. I told him the story of Todd Beamer and flight 93 which he hadn't heard about. As we talked, I flashed forward 10, 100, 500 years and hoped the stories would be told again and again.

On 60 Minutes tonight some remarked that it isn't the 10th anniversary of something that happened but the 10th year of something that is never going away.

My husband was working in midtown and the last thing he said before he left that morning was "I'll probably be home early, because I have a meeting in the Trade Center this afternoon and I'll just come home from there." He left and I took our daughter to high school. I was enjoying my morning coffee and newspaper when hubby called and said "Turn on the tv." I asked him, What channel? and he said, "I don't know. 9? 11? Of course they were off the air, so I guess both planes had already hit. I finally found CNN and was glued to it the rest of the day. Saw both towers fall.
Meanwhile, at CHS they had had the news on the classroom TVs for awhile, until it got too gruesome. Daughter called in hysterics, remembering that her dad had said he would be at the WTC. Luckily I was able to reassure her that he was fine and still in his office. The woman he was supposed to meet with, who worked for Aon and was in NYC from Chicago for the day, was killed.
Later hubby called again to say that his cousin, who worked for Dean Witter on the 62nd floor of Tower 2, had gotten out and managed to reach him, and could I please call Mark's sister in Chicago and his dad in Arizona to let them know that he was okay. Cousin Mark eventually made it home to Hoboken but without his keys and had to find someone to let him into his apartment. Meanwhile hubby was stuck in his office because the trains weren't running and the bridges and tunnels were closed. One of his co-workers had driven into the city and when they heard that the George Washington Bridge had been opened briefly, they made a run for it and he got home late that night.
A couple of days later, I had to drive my son back to college in Chicago. Of course no planes were flying and traveling at all seemed odd. The most surreal experience was approaching Chicago from the south and seeing the Sears Tower still standing when the Twin Towers were gone.

On that Sunday before, so it was the 9th, my parents took my almost five year-old daughter to Liberty State Park. They brought her home that evening, and my mom told me she was about to point out the World Trade Center and the Towers, and tell my daughter how they (my parents) took me to dinner at Windows on the World when I was in college....and, she said, something stopped her from saying anything. She told me all this on Sunday night.

When we spoke again Tuesday morning, that story shot straight up the eerie scale.

I've forgotten nothing about that day nor the day or two that followed. I recall that two of my work friends and I had a quick lunch before leaving the office. My sandwich was roast beef and cheddar. I drove by a car wash that was closed. I later went to get gas, and bought cigarettes, and one of the fellow customers got them for me and said, today we all help each other.

My in-laws visited earlier that summer. I guess my husband took them on a touristy jaunt around the city. A couple years later, I found the most beautiful photo of my in-laws on a boat (Circle Line sort of thing) with the Twin Towers looming behind them. Sending it to them was bittersweet.

But most of all, what I remember is finally reaching my husband while he was still on the train and sobbing over and over that I was so glad he wasn't in the city, and how much I loved him. We had decided two months earlier to separate (although he was still living in the house with no sign of exit). My only wish was for him to come home safely. I needed him to come home safely.

Which he did. He was home with our kids when I got home from work. What follows that is the rest of the story, as yet unable to be shared.

It's now past midnight and I'm glad it is Sept. 12. Yesterday was hard. The gray skies and the stillness in the air seemed eerily fitting for a day set aside for the heavy burden of remembering. The feelings I remember most from Sept. 11, 2001 are the ones during those moments when we didn't know what was happening. We just knew two planes had hit the towers and that there were more planes out there possibly targeting other monuments. At the time, it seemed more than possible that we were witnessing the end of the world. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. Ten years later, I realize that we were watching the destruction of life as we knew it. Ten years from now, I think the memories of that day will be just as clear.

I spent seven of my happiest years in SO/M. Even though I wasn"t living in SO/M during 9/11, it's very hard for me to be in LA today.

http://nj2la.blogspot.com/2011/09/day-we-decided-to-have-kids.html

I was in my office on Spring Street NYC doing work when the owner of the company ran out of his office saying a plane hit the WTC. My friend just emailed me telling me they were staying at some hotel at the WTC for my wedding 2 weeks later. Thinking it was an accident, I still remember responding, "Count that out a plane just hit it.." My sister in NC kept calling me to tell me what was going on when she was able to get through. We were on the 9th floor but our view of the WTC was blocked by other buildings. But we did see smoke and the explosion when the 2nd plane hit. I had no idea it was the 2nd plane that caused that explosion. We went up to the roof and watched both towers eventually collapsed. My co-worker was on the opposite side keeping an eye on the Empire State Building. Down below thousands of people were in the streets walking uptown. I walked back to Brooklyn, amazed by how many people were helping each other out. I also ran into a college friend who I haven't seen since!When I got to our apartment in Prospect Heights I flipped on the TV. After 2 hours my future wife turned it off and we took the dogs for a walk in Prospect Park. It was such a beautiful day! You had no idea that such a horrific event occured but the smell/stream of smoke that was in the sky and the errie silence quickly and constantly reminded you. Most others postponed their weddings but we didnt, looking at it more like a much needed family reunion.

EDITED TO ADD: I almost forgot. About a month earlier my future wife, her brother (up from the Atlanta area) and I went to see Radiohead play a show at Liberty State Park. We had to take a ferry from Mahattan that loads/unloads right by the WTC. It was like 2 in the morning and when we got back to Manhattan we walked to the WTC. I walked right up to the base of one of the towers, placed both feet against the and looked up, sarcastically thinking "you are not that big.." about one month later...

What I found amazing yesterday was when my 7 year old asked me what 9/11 was a couple of times. How do you answer such a question? The fact that he and other kids dont know about it is alien to me but why would they? The only answer I could muster was: "something bad..." The look on his face was pure confusion....can you blame him?

I was in Overlook Hospital and saw the towers burning from my window. I was supposed to be discharged (for depression) and got so upset that a nurse gave me some kind of sedative because she said that the doctor would not discharge me in the state I was in. Horrible day even 10 years later. God bless all of the lost and their families.

Sorry for the length. This is an abbreviated version of a longer detailed narrative I wrote on September 15 and 16, 2001. And sorry for the late post; I stayed offline yesterday. This is a great thread - it really helps to understand how others experienced the day. Thanks.

My Narrative:

I was heading for a job interview at the Empire State Building. As the train approached the tunnel into Penn Station, a passenger listening on headphones announced to the car that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Folks were stunned. But I had a job interview, so, as planned, I headed to a coffee shop and took a booth in the far back corner to review some materials. Other than a vague sense of unease amongst everyone and every cell phone in use, I was unaware of the events playing out.

Just before 10, I headed outside. The “vibe” on the street was off the charts. Sirens, everyone andrenalized, shock and all that. As I headed towards 5th Avenue along 35th Street, I overheard someone say that both towers and the Pentagon had been hit. I asked him if this was for real, not a rumor. He assured me that it was true. This was no accident. A moment later, as I crossed 5th Avenue, the WTC came into view. Or rather, the smoke rising from the first collapse came into view, obscuring the remaining tower. My heart began to race. This was very serious.

The Empire State building had already been evacuated and cordoned off. So I headed to Penn Station.

The feeling on the street was confusion and chaos. No panic. But streets were being shut down, emergency vehicles were racing downtown, everyone was very tense and alert, radios were blaring, every cell phone was in use (mostly futile attempts to make calls), and pay phones had ever longer lines (10, 15 people per phone).

At Penn Station, I was relieved to see that everything seemed to be running on time. There were clusters of people covered in dust, shell-shocked. An injured young man refused my offer of assistance, assuring me that he would hop on a train and get to his hometown hospital in NJ by himself. I got on the first train to NJ (I figured I could transfer in NJ, but I wanted to get across the Hudson). Just three minutes before the train was to depart, they announced that Penn Station was closing and that everyone was to head back to the street.

So it was back onto the streets. The sidewalks were very crowded now, and people were going every which way. While there was no panic, there was a lot of confusion, fear, and tension. I headed for the West Side piers.

A couple of things are worth noting. First, everyone was being very courteous and helpful. Second, as was to be the case all day, rumors swirled. Most of us on the streets did not see any TV all day, and had to rely on overheard snippets and conversations with strangers: the Pentagon’s been hit, they bombed the Supreme Court, the State Department has been hit, etc. I believed, however, what I could see with my own eyes: the destruction of the World Trade Center. And this was enough to convince me that heading home to my family was the most prudent course of action. I’m not a firefighter, an intelligence agent, or doctor. The professionals needed people like me to get out of there, to be ready to rebuild later.

And I could definitely see now that both towers were gone. Smoke and dust billowed up in great clouds; in fact, it was about all that one could see from two miles away. This was bad.

At the ferry terminal, the lines snaked for almost a mile. It would take hours to get onto a ferry. As I headed for the end of the line, a police car passing by announced by bullhorn that the Circle Line Tour boats would be ferrying passengers to NJ.

Many of us headed over, but we had to climb a chain link fence to get to the line, and everyone helped each other over. No one was cutting in line (well, actually, I saw one guy. But everyone ignored him. He was probably freaked, I thought). Circle Line had their act together, got us safely aboard the harbor cruise ship, and pushed off. The boatload of people applauded. Then we turned to look at the city from the water. As on my way to the waterfront, and for the rest of the day, the view was the same: no towers, huge clouds of smoke and dust.

A woman next to me was somehow getting through on her cell phone (mine was useless), and let me call home. I told her I was on a ferry in the Hudson on my way to New Jersey, and that I would find a way home. I thought she would cry. I thought I would.

I thought that putting my feet on the ground in New Jersey would feel better than it did. It was a great relief, however. It took hours of walking, buses, vans, whatever to find my way from Lincoln Harbor to Maplewood, via Journal Square and Penn Station. I met a woman, Janet, from Maplewood, who was trying to get home to her kids. We decided to stick together.

Hours later, the bus dropped us off on Springfield and we walked toward Maplewood Village. There was a huge crowd of parents in front of the Tuscan School. We kept hearing snippets of conversation (“…bomb squad…” “…fourth plane…”) that added to the general weirdness. Janet and I thanked each other for just being there through an arduous journey when we got to town, and I headed home.

After a few minutes at home, my wife and the boys got back from the bus stop. I hugged them all. My older son went to play computer games, and I turned on the TV at 4pm to see, finally, what most everyone else had been seeing all day long. Horror.

A few other memories:

The silence that night. No cars. No planes or trains. No loud voices, no music playing. Crickets and katydids.

The smell the next day when the wind shifted and brought the smoke into our towns.

Flags were flying everywhere. A man on the Maplewood Avenue asked me if I was ready to fight for my country.

I still try to remember all those who lost their lives, just doing their jobs.

Peace.

I was in Utah working as a customer service rep covering clients in the northeast. My shift started at 6 am (8 am EST). I had a bunch of voicemails and needed to make follow-up calls to NYC/NJ clients. Partway through the list, calls stopped going through. Finally I got through and the client was hysterical. She told me what had happened, though I didn't really understand her through the sobs. I took a quick break from the phones, went to my car and flipped on the radio. Then I ran into the office and turned on the tv just before the 2nd plane hit. I was sick and, despite my distance from the danger, felt the need to be home with my family. I drove an hour to my dad's house where we all sat stunned and heartbroken.

My office at the time was a few blocks East of the WTC (Chase Manhattan Plaza). Now I'm in the WFC and look at ground zero out my office window every day. On 9/11/01 I had just come out of the PATH train a little before 8:30 and I remember thinking it was such a glorious day. The weather this past Friday on the ferry going home in the late afternoon reminded me of that day. After I walked through the WTC and left on the PATH train on 9/11/01, I walked to my office and was settling in when a staff person came in to speak to me. My back was to the window and the staff person was looking out. My view was of the northern part of the city and the WTC was just out of the corner of the window. As we were talking she said to me "look at the plane". I turned around and we watched the first plane coming down the center of Manhattan and it was weaving and dipping and flying very low. I remember thinking the plane looked as if it was ill. My heart and stomach plumpted as it fly literally past our window. A HUGE American Airlines plane. As it passed our window it felt like minutes, but it was obviously seconds our building rocked with an explosing and the staff person began screaming that the plane hit the WTC. Papers, and I don't know what went flying past my window. I could only think that planes don't hit buildings and I kept saying "no, the plane didn't hit the building; what you felt was the plane flying too close." Of course she was right and I was wrong. I immediately panicked for many reasons, including the fact that my Dad at that time flew for business all the time. I called his secretary and she said yes he was in the air, but don't worry because he was flying Continental to Washinton, D.C. I then heard the radio report it was a small private plane that hit the WTC and I called 911 - after I had seen first hand it was anything but that. I next called my Mom to assure her I was ok. Her response "it will all be ok, go have a cup of tea." My next move was to call my 9am conference call participant to tell her I would need to reschedule. It was during that call that the second plane hit. My building again rocked with the explosion and I have to say I quite unprofessionally screamed into the phone "There are explosions everywhere; I have to go." We then ignored all the announcements in our building which said not to leave, and a bunch of us went down about 60 flights of stairs and left the building. The plaza of our building was covered in snowdrifts of paper and tapes and I don't know what from the WTC. You could see the gaping hole in the WTC with the horrible smoke and flames coming out of it. I really thought we were leaving for the day and I didn't take anything with me aside from my briefcaase, but of course we were out of the building for over a week. I obviously could nto take the PATH back home, and I instead made it home by hopping on a subway (which was announcing it was bypassing the WTC due to a "smoke condition" - yeah, right), and then went to Penn Station. At Penn Station there were a lot of crazy reports flying around (the White House was hit and demolished, the Pentagon was hit, and one of the WTC towers had collapsed). 2 out of 3 it turned out where true. I caught what they told us was the last train to NJ out of the city and as we emerged from the tunnel under the river we saw the second tower collapse into dust. I got home and looked for where a nuclear war shelter might be because I was convinced that was it and the world as we knew it would be over. 10 years later and it still feels like it was yesterday. And, not to leave the thread hanging, my Dad was very luckily not on the fateful plane that did hit the Pentagon, but we didn't know that for many hours. His flight was next in line and he wound up being diverted to Dulles. All in all, we were very very lucky.

As I said earlier, I (like Reth) avoided the internet for most of yesterday, but I knew this thread would be here and it is helping me process again. And cry. And cry some more.

Does anyone else remember the press conference where, I believe, Giuliani and Pataki were with the state police commandant when he suddenly received an update and broke in to say that a van with explosives had been stopped on the NJ Turnpike near the GW Bridge? I clearly recall seeing this, but then I never heard another word about it after that. Was I hallucinating? Was the misinformation so bad that this actually made it to the news conference?

That reminds me! someone called trying to sell me Chimney inspection. I asked them where they were calling from? Ft. Lee, NJ.
I started yelling at them, are you crazy? why are you calling now when I am sitting by the phone waiting to hear from my husband? Can't you look outside and see what is happening????

I was getting ready to leave the house. My kids, ages 1 1/2 and 2 1/2, were watching cartoons and playing. My littlest bear was in my tummy. Randomly, my phone rang. It was my husband's (now ex's) work number, and due to the time, it was odd for him to call. He was always preparing for the market to open at that time...I never called him and he never called me. It was taboo almost. He quietly told me that a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. His voice sounded weird, almost confused, yet in my mind, some asshat has just hit the top of the Trade Center in his cessna. Never in a million years did I imagine what had happened when I changed the channel to NBC. Not until later, did I know my ex's conference room was buzzed bu the plane before it hit. He had seen the whole thing. I turned on just as they were interrupting programming with the special report. Hubby was telling me he was safe, they weren't sure if they were being evacuated. While he talked, I watched in horror as the second plane hit. I heard the explosion through the phone. He screamed "WTF?! What was that???". From that vantage point, they could see nothing. I told him to get out and hurry, and that another plane had just hit. He yelled it on the trading floor, told me he had to run, he'd call me, and hung up.

After that, like everyone else, I watched in shock as it all unfolded. I got several calls from my ex's cell so I knew he was alive. I just could not hear him. Finally, he got through and gave me a list of people to call to let them know their loved ones were alive. No one could get a connection anywhere. I made the calls, glued to the TV. I also had a multitude of incoming calls from friends and family.

God, there's so much more...not sure I can do this right now...

Interesting, mammabear. I date the breakup of my first marriage to 9/11. Not that it wasn't already heading south, I see now on reflection. But the attacks really unnerved my ex. I recall her insisting on driving me to the train station a few days later, which she never did. She wanted a quiet place to tell me that if something like this ever happened again and I could not reach her cell because the cell towers were out, that I should not panic but instead should know that she had packed the kids up and was heading to Denver where her folks lived. That was the first inkling I had that she was done with this marriage on many levels. She was really freaked when she could not reach me on the phone for a while on 9/11, and I think this helped make up her mind that she needed to change her (and the kids') whole situation. Two years later she pulled the plug and we were done.

Several people in my office on W. 57th St. had a clear view of the towers from their windows. Someone saw the North Tower burning and, while we were speculating on what might have happened, the South Tower was struck. Looking from the North, we didn't see the plane, just the fireball, so we didn't know at first what caused the explosion. We thought it might have been a bomb. After the towers collapsed, I thought about my late father, who worked for Otis Elevator and did a lot of construction paperwork connected with the tower elevators. He was very proud of that work. Sometime during 2012, Otis sent a remembrance pin to every employee who had worked on the project.

One person in our office had a family member working on a high floor (he was lost), while another realized that her uncle was a passenger on one of the planes. I recalled a former co-worker, whose husband worked at the very top of one of the towers--some work related to TV transmission. I later find out that he had become a stay at home dad, and was on sabbatical, thank goodness.

One of the stranger things about the day is that I was able to get my regular NJT train home, right on time. I went into work the next morning and there was just a handful of people on the train. Utter silence as we watched smoke rising from the site. Reaching Columbus Circle on the subway, the streets and sidewalks were eerily empty and quiet, and there were a few pieces of paper like confetti floating in the air.

Early on September 9 (another beautiful day), I was crossing the Verazzano Narrows Bridge, and the view of the towers and lower Manhattan was stunning. I'm glad I had that view to remember the towers by.

I was at work. I remember the day being one of the most beautiful days I could remember, weather-wise. My co-workers and I dug up an old portable tv and watched the horrible images. Then I left to get my kids out of school and daycare and waited at home for their dad (also, now my ex) to get home from a business trip.

The most surreal, horrible, feeling ever. We watched the world fall apart that day. And the next day, we watched the beginning of the world coming together.

Got out of the W4th St. subway station about 8:45 am (still living in Brooklyn), walking east on W.9th saw a couple of people staring southwards. Asked them what they were looking at -- they pointed to the WTC and said a plane just flew into the building. The smoke was billowing out, I thought it was an accident involving a small plane. They said it was a jetliner. I was sure they didn't know what they were talking about. Called my wife to turn on the TV. Next plane hit a few minutes later.

Remember seeing a young woman talking on her cell phone, assuming she was telling the other person what she had just seen, and I remember her saying, emphatically, "No, it's not cool."

Went over to Duane Reade a bought two disposable cameras. Started walking downtown, taking pictures. I was a few blocks away when the first tower fell and the debris wave came roiling up the street. Everyone was running away except one woman who was running towards it screaming that her sister was in the building. I took her by the arm and turned her around and led her away.

Had to walk home to Brooklyn that afternoon with thousands of others. Our Carrol Gardens neighborhood was covered in dust and paper debris.

We lived in California. We always turned on the radio, to listen to Howard Stern, in the master suite while we were getting ready. It was 7:30 Pacific time, so already 10:30 in NY.

I heard Howard talking about it first, so I blurted it out to my husband (also now an ex). It was so strange that it happened while we slept, and yet, heard it all unfold "live", from the re-broadcast of the Stern show. We turned on the tv and sat in stunned silence for what seemed like hours.

The older kids went to school, he went to work and I sat, for hours upon hours, glued to the television and crying for days. My youngest was not quite two so she played quietly while I watched and watched. I was inconsolable. I cannot imagine what people here went through, or how poorly I would have handled it from where I am now.

mfpark...when I look back, I reflect on that as well, with regards to my own marriage. In so many ways and on so many levels, everything changed on that day.

I was speaking with a friend about it all yesterday. I've been bothered by all the horrible images that have been on the news in the past week. I don't get it. I will never forget what I saw unfold that day. I will never forget all the lives that changed and all the loved ones that were lost. But I would much rather concentrate on the good that has come out of that day...on the triumphs, the "feel good" stories, the way people have rallied and evoked change, etc. To me, that's not a mask, nor do I think we should just bury our heads and pretend it's all better, but I'd rather hear about how people healed and overcame it all, than see images of the burning towers, and ash covered firemen. But hey, that's just me...