9/11

Was wondering how long before this post showed up. Sophomore in gym class. I didn’t know what it meant at the time. Still one of the most somber and chilling moments of my life, visiting the site...

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I was at work and we got a phone call from a coworker who was on his way to a customer's site. He said he heard on the radio that a plan flew into one of the twin towers. At the time we thought it was a small plane, like a small Cessna prop plane. Little did we how how much our lives would change over the hours, days and years to come.
 
10th grade, Mr Foster's Science class. They wheeled a tv in and we watched most of the day. My cousins husband was supposed to be in one of the towers that day for a meeting but it got rescheduled at the last minute.
 
Sophomore in hs. Skipped school that day. When I found out what happened, I was just confused. Didnt really understand what it meant. I knew charlotte was a major target with the nuclear stations in proximity to 2nd largest banking city in the US. Last year around thanksgiving I connected with my paternal 1st cousin on 23andme (i was adopted) and found out I had an aunt who died in tower 2. It is kind of a strange feeling for me today. Not that it didnt mean anything to me before, but it feels different this year. I learned so much about my paternal family by reading stories about my aunts death. They actually endowed a scholarship in her name at university of nebraska.

R.I.P. Julie Geis

Geis' legacy alive through scholarship
 
I've posted it on here before but I was 21 working at the local Ford dealership at my first full time job. I built a 5 speed transmission for a focus the day before, came in early and finished buttoning it up. Ford wanted 10 mile test drives back then on major repairs so I left the shop between 830 and 845. I was on Bragg Blvd headed back to the shop when the radio broke in with breaking news of a plane hitting a tower. I got back to the shop told the others. It was slow that morning we all rushed to the tv in the break room just after the second plane hit, we missed seeing it by seconds.

I spent the rest of the morning watching TV. At lunch I needed some resistors so I stopped at radio shack. There was a long line of people buying hand held TV's and radios.

Around 2 parts came in for a ranger transmission. I spent the afternoon looking out the window over my workbench towards Ft Bragg waiting for a big explosion from there honestly. Even back then everyone knew the 82nd was who answered when America called 911. I didn't put it past terrorists to do something here.

The days after were real crazy here in Fayetteville. Ft Bragg wasn't an open post anymore so I couldn't short cut through to get to work, and everyone knew a family member or neighbor was fixing to get deployed somewhere.
 
Taking care of my then 3 year old twins..... We were in the pediatricians office for a lot of the morning.
 
Working in the parts dept at the Jeep dealer. Our BG rep got a phone call from his office, and suggested we turn on the TV in the back of the parts room. Called the gf to tell her to turn on the TV, she did, and said she just watched it happen again. But it was live, the second plane hitting.
 
I was in 7th grade science class. A teacher had come into our room, whispered something to our teacher, he turned the TV on and we all saw what happened. I think even though we were all kids, everyone shut up and could hear a pin drop...its like we all knew this was a huge deal. Lots of kids left school early that day and all you could hear in the halls on the way to our classes were footsteps.
 
10th grade English class. Second period.

It was common for our teacher to instantly propose a statement at the beginning of class for us to write about.

Walking in at 9:25, she explained what was happening.

The few around me, we all looked at each other in confusion. We initially thought this was another thought experiment from her.

After another few seconds, the 2nd teacher was pushing in a tv and unrolling a cable wire from the hallway.

This class was a dual class setup. It was mix of English and social studies with a focus on creative writing and did a good job to push our brains to think.

As she turned on the tv to the live news feed, we all soon realized our world was changing instantaneously.

This was no thought provoking creative writing exercise. This was real.

We all watched in horror and silence. This was absolutely unimaginable.

Several students had parents working at the pentagon and we soon realized cell phones were pointless. No one could be reached as all circuits were busy.

The strangest thing I remember, is hearing all the fighter jets leave from Seymour Johnson and cherry point headed north.

It’s not unusual to hear them pass over living in east Nc, But that morning, it became constant and deafening for a few hours.

Our school was downtown in rocky
mount, and it was not uncommon to have the windows open and hear the sounds of cars, trucks and busses passing nearby.

Despite the noise from the jets passing overhead, the city was unusually still and quiet. It was eerie.

As 2nd period ended, the teachers insisted that we keep about our day and continue to 3rd period at 11:05.

Arriving at 3rd period, math, algebra 3/ trig, our teacher tried to prep us and get started with the daily lesson.

I was a quiet reserved kid back then. I was not one to speak against authority.

I couldn’t stand the thought of what was happening and us working on algebra. I couldn’t even begin to focus on anything other that the attacks.

Without thinking, I spoke out of line, interrupting the teacher. I pointed out the ludicrous thought of doing monotonous algebra while our world was so shaken.

I explained what was going on, and that we needed to to continue to watch the live feed of what was happening.

At this moment I realized she didn’t know what had happened, no one had told her. She also realized that I was not lying, and this was no stunt to get out of class work.

She then ran to another teachers adjacent room to confirm what me, and the class had just told her.

She came back in, and allowed us to go to that adjacent room, to continue to watch the live feed.

As the day went on, through the remaining classes, we continued to watch the news feed.

During the last class, from 1:05 to 2:35, our teacher turned off the news and had a chat with us.

She explained the gravity of what has happened, how it will impact us for the rest of our lives, and ways to cope with this horror.

She tried to give us positive thoughts of hope, but allowed us all to engage in conversation freely.

Upon going home that afternoon, I remember my dad sitting and talking with my sister and I about how the world had just changed.

He told us we would be ok, but to always be aware of our surroundings and to look for anomaly’s and things out of place or that didn’t make logical sense.

I distinctly remember the horror, shock, sadness, and fear that I felt that day. Along with all those I also remember the care and compassion we all had for each other as a country that day, and the following Weeks.

I hate that we have gotten away from that level of unity and car and compassion for each other.

So much changed that day. I will never forget all those feelings and the earth shattering events that occurred.

For the people of my age/generation we went from being childish minded kids and teens to young adults.
 
The secondary thing I remember most was how quiet the skies were for the next couple of weeks.
 
I was in kindergarten. I remember them wheeling in the TV cart and all of the kindergartners gathered in our class room and saw the second plane hit. All too young to understand what was happening. We only cried because the teachers were crying, we coculdnt possibly fathom what we had just saw. We spent the day on lockdown and went home before lunch. After we got home, the Sheriffs office was going around and telling folks to stay inside. This event was "the cherry on top" of a lot of bad things that happened in my life around that time. The loss of two family members, and my parents getting divorced.

I guess mine is a somewhat unique view. I distinctly and vividly remember it, yet didnt understand it for many years. Crazy to think that I saw it, but to all of my siblings, its just history. Two of them were alive (brother was a year old, and step sister was less than a year old) and my youngest brother wasnt even born.
 
I was at work, making some custom variable inductors that day for tunable analog filters. I took my stuff into the conference room and watched the coverage with everyone else while I was winding super small magnet wire onto little inductor cores.

We had been hearing jets scramble from Langley AFB down the road and then it all made sense.
 
MCRD San Diego. We were doing martial arts training along the fence line between MCRD and the San Diego airport. The instructor stopped us for a second and said, "Anyone notice there are no planes flying? Kinda spooky, huh?"

Obviously, none of us had access to TV or radio, so we didn't know what happened. It was during the noon chow break that the company CO got us all together and told us what happened. From then on, we trained as if we were going to war tomorrow.
 
I have never seen this video before. It is staggering to me. Cris Melendez
 
Freshman at App. I woke up, turned on the TV, and the coverage began after the first plane hit. I didn't leave sight of the TV much that day. The entire campus was eerily quiet.

This video chokes me up every time.

 
Taking breakfast break between machining classes at community college. Won't forget watching it on TV in the cafeteria. Left school and went to work. A guy had a small portable tv that we watched for a good while.

My birthday has meant something different, ever since....

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I had flown to south Dakota, was supposed to fly home the day after they fell. I remember watching on a television in the office
 
Atla said:
Where were you?
Click to expand...

I was living in Charlotte in the flight path of one of Charlotte Douglas airport's runways, still pissed off about being let go from Price Waterhouse Coopers that had cut our entire division when the dot-com bubble had burst. Just 6 months prior I had been in NYC doing a project for Coty Fragrances through PWC. That morning I was finally thankful for the experience and thankful for being let go of a 100% travel job. I was still unemployed - but life, and all the problems that went along with it seemed to have a different meaning since that morning.


And man.... was it quiet. For the first time since moving there I didn't hear a single plane.
 
Was sitting at work when an admin walked by and told me a plane hit the WTC. Immediately hit the internet to see what was she was talking about. After the news started to catch up I spent the rest of the day trying to reach my sister who worked at the Marriott in 3 WTC.
She was on the escalator coming up from the PATH stop when the first plane hit. Heard/felt the explosion and thought there was another bombing (she was there in 93 when one was set off in the parking garage). Was outside with coworkers trying to figure out what was going on and saw the 2nd one hit and other things she doesn’t like to talk about.
Luckily she got away safely and we reached her late that afternoon but it has scarred her for sure.
 
I was flat on my back under a 90’s model Superduty, pulling the trans to put a clutch in.No tv but they were telling it on the radio.Didnt see video until we went to lunch at the diner we always ate at.


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