Do you remember where you were & what you were doing on 9-11-01?

[Just Beachy]

I was at home. We had just celebrated my oldest's 2nd birthday a few days earlier. My husband (an airline pilot) was on a trip, and I was about 10 weeks pregnant with my youngest. My FIL called and in a slightly paniced voice asked where dh was. He was so relieved when I answered Mexico City. He then told me an airliner had crashed into the WTC. I didn't believe him and thought it must've been a private plane or at the most a commuter plane. I turned on the tv and saw the footage. As we were talking on the phone, the 2nd plane hit. It was the only time during my pregnancy that I became physically ill.

 

I watched the news all morning. I remember being struck by what a gorgeous day it was and how the black smoke contrasted against the blue sky. I also remember thinking how quickly the world just changed.

 

As I said, dh is a pilot and I was a f/a (but on medical leave). I nervously waited for the names of the crews to be released. Unfortunately, one of the f/as on flt 11 was in my initial training class.

 

I still find it hard to watch some of the footage from that day, and Alan Jackson's song about 9/11 still makes me cry.

[jelbe5]

I went and got my 7 yr old from school, the school was advising parents against that, but I just wanted to hold my babies.

 

:iagree:

 

Wise move. One of my friends called me to tell me the teacher rolled in a TV to her daughter's class and they watched the events all day. My friend's daughter was in first grade! My friend was livid! I was so glad all mine were with me that day!

[Annie Laurie]

:iagree:

 

Wise move. One of my friends called me to tell me the teacher rolled in a TV to her daughter's class and they watched the events all day. My friend's daughter was in first grade! My friend was livid! I was so glad all mine were with me that day!

 

Yikes! I was really concerned about what he would see and kept the tv off after I picked him up, until quiet time. I don't think the teachers at that school turned on tvs, but I don't know for certain!

[Barb_]

I notice that a few people mention how blue the sky was. We were living in SE Oklahoma at the time, where the weather is basically Texas: miserably hot and humid for about 1/3 of the year. I remember waking up the morning of 9/11 and the heat had broken. My kids were 11, 7, 5, and 2 and I was due any day with Mia. We were homeschooling, but I was spinning my wheels because of my pregnancy, so when I realized the weather was so beautiful--clear and sunny with a mild breeze--I decided to call school on account of the weather and send them outside to play. In fact if I remember correctly, I think the entire country was under a huge high pressure system because I was checking the weather and rejoicing over the forecast when my mom called. I remember later being struck by the fact that the entire country was having such incredibly beautiful weather as an unspeakable tragedy was unfolding.

 

When my mom called, she said, "I can't believe it, some idiot just flew an airliner into the World Trade Center." We were busy speculating...was he drinking? Suicidal? Heart attack? Why wouldn't auto-pilot had taken over? Why not a co-pilot?...when the second plane hit. We both cussed out loud and she hung up to call my dad back. I just sat there stunned. I recalled how I'd sat in front of the television for days after Timothy McVeigh blew up the building in OKC years earlier and decided I had to focus. I had kids to take care of and a baby to birth, and I willfully turned off the television and took them to the park. Now I sort of regret removing myself and my kids the way I did, but at the time I just felt unable to cope.

 

Barb

[Joker]

I was at home. I wanted to put on PBS while I made breakfast and saw a headline. When I turned the channel I couldn't believe what I saw. I watched all day and night. I remember trying to turn it off and thinking the people there couldn't just "turn it off". So, I turned it back on and fell asleep watching.

[Aquinas Academy]

I was at home doing reading to DDs who were five and three at the time. Suddenly, one of our neighbours was banging on the door and shouting something about, "NYC... my son... attack... TV..." I didn't have TV so I waddled (I was just days away from giving birth to DS) over to her house. We were just in time to see the second plane hit. I spent the rest of the day trying to keep DDs away from the TV while watching it myself, and trying to console my neighbour whose son lived in NYC (he was not injured).

[BMW]

I was in our school room, teaching my kids... we were learning the song, "Take your hat off when the flag goes by..." and had just started a patriotic themed lesson plan...

 

I went into the kitchen to get a drink or something and my phone rang and it was a fellow-homeschooler saying "We are at war!" We didn't have tv, but I went on-line several times to look for new updates.

[annandatje]

Actually no. I rarely listen to radio news, and have no TV. I thought the weather might be going bad, because there were no jets overhead. I thought they had radically changed the flight path. I don't think I knew for a couple days. We were chopping blackberries off acreage at the time.

 

We only found out because friends and associates told us about it.

[mazakaal]

I was running some errands in our village. I went into a jewelry shop to get a new battery for my watch, and the owners had the news on a little tv. The first plane had just flown into the tower. I stood and watched with them for a long time and saw the second plane hit. I walked home weeping and worrying about some friends that I had who worked in NYC. We didn't have a tv so I had to go to our next-door neighbor's house to watch on their tv. I was back and forth into their house all day. Fortunately, dh was at home at the time so he could look after our boys. I wasn't much help that day.

[BatmansWife]

Thank you all for sharing. Somehow...it helps to read your stories. I don't know why, but it does...for me at least.

 

I didn't realize some of you were so young when it happened. I stopped in at a Chinese restaurant yesterday and while I was writing out my check, I commented on the date as I was writing 9-11-11. The girl working there said she couldn't believe that it was 10 years already and that she was in 2nd grade and can remember. She said, "Remember when President Bush was reading to the second graders? That was the age that I was!" I didn't know about him reading to the 2nd graders until just a few days before she commented on that (I saw some footage of that on tv this week).

 

I didn't know that this affected some of you so much.....such as Melissa, nono, and Mrs. Mungo. :grouphug: :grouphug: :grouphug:. And, :grouphug: to you all. It affects everyone. It reminds me how my mom used to say she can still vividly remember where she was and what she was doing when she heard that JFK got shot. You just never forget.

[SailorMom]

We were on an AF base, living in base housing. I had one child with me, and another was at pre-school at the base Child Development Center. I went to the thrift shop to drop some stuff off, and the lady at the counter asked me if I'd seen the news. After talking briefly, she said, "you'd better get your son out of the pre-school, they'll be locking the base down soon...."

As I was rushing out the door, a SSGT was walking up, getting ready to close the store....

Got to the pre-school and barely made it out with DS before the school was locked down.

As I was getting to the house, my DS called from work and told me not to go anywhere. He had to get off the phone right away... The sirens were going off on the base, there was an announcement that we were at ThreatCon Charlie (maybe it was Delta) and I hadn't even seen the news yet. Honestly, I was starting to get a bit freaked out.

All of this had happened in about 10 minutes....

Finally was able to turn on the tv... I believe it was right as the second tower fell.

[thessa516]

I was teaching public school first grade. We had been put on lockdown, but told nothing. I figured that there was a police chase in the area and thought nothing of it (unfortunately, it was not uncommon). For some reason, I had to call my DH during the day. I called and he was concerned and asked if I was doing okay. I replied I was fine, why? Then he told me what had happened.

 

The teachers rolled a TV into the teachers' lounge and we tried to piece together what was happening. All I could think was that I couldn't get home to my husband and son. Oh, and how angry I was with the administration for keeping us in the dark (they later issued an apology :glare: ).

 

My DH and I made lots of decisions that evening. Within the next year we had purchased our first home, I quit my job to become a stay-at-home Mom, and we started homeschooling. It took a national tragedy, but it solidified in our mind how we wanted our family to live.

[QueenCat]

I had just arrived at church for the first day of a new Bible Study. I was early so I went to the church office. The secretary was sitting in shock, staring at her computer. As we watched, news of the second plane came on. We just started crying, and walked down to the classroom, telling those who had arrived. One guy came in over an hour late, as he sat in his car listening to the news. He told us about the other two planes. Dh tracked me down at church (phone was off), and told me they were sending everyone home. At the time, he worked for Delta in Atlanta, and their office buildings are adjacent to the airport property. I got home at about the same time he did, and we just watched the tv until the kids got home. And then we huddled and hugged, worrying about dh's brother, who was active duty at the time. A day I'll never forget.

[MrsBasil]

 

The teachers rolled a TV into the teachers' lounge and we tried to piece together what was happening. All I could think was that I couldn't get home to my husband and son. Oh, and how angry I was with the administration for keeping us in the dark (they later issued an apology :glare: ).

 

My husband worked in a regional warehouse for a large retailer at the time. After a few hours they pulled everyone off the floor and into a large conference room, told them what happened, and sent people back to work. If someone had a relative in the vicinity they could leave(without pay) to make phone calls, but otherwise it was to be business as usual. He and most of his co-workers didn't realize how bad things actually were until they got to their cars and could listen to the news.

[PinkInTheBlue]

I was working on Kindergarten with the 5 yr old and K3 with the little brother. :) My MIL called us and said that a plane had hit the WTC. We turned the television on and saw the second plane hit. I felt numb and surreal. When she called I was devastated that such a terrible accident had happened. When we saw the second hit, I was in quiet panic. Two accidents don't happen.

 

Within a couple of weeks after that I was walking through the small town mall where we lived with our, then, 5 and 3 year old boys. The mailed anthrax letters were another big source of panic as well. It hit me in that mall on that day that living in America didn't give me a bubble of protection. We could be walking by a trash can or table that someone had left something with anthrax on it or something blow up that mall. It really could happen in our country too. It's the closest to a panic attack I've ever been. All I wanted to do was take us home and board up the windows. It was something I always knew but realized I never REALLY knew.

[JaniceO]

We were living in upstate New York, about 3.5 hours north of NYC, in military housing. DH was an instructor at a nuclear training plant (US Navy). He was at work and I dropped my older two boys off at preschool. When I got home with the baby, DH called and told me to turn on the tv. They had heard something about a plane flying into a building in NYC, and wanted more details. So I turned the news on and there it was. I stayed on the phone with DH and explained to him what was happening. I saw the second plane hit and just couldn't believe it. My first instinct was to go pick my babies up from school and hold them close, but I didn't want to worry them. So I just sat at home and watched the news in shock. It was eerily quiet in the hallway that day when it was time to pick the boys up from preschool.

 

I remember going apple picking not too long after that day and looking up at the sky whenever I heard a plane go over. I was never one to really notice planes in the sky before, but after that, it took awhile for me to stop looking up when I heard one.

 

A few months later, we went to visit NYC and walk around Ground Zero. It was just an unbelievable feeling.

 

I have been subconciously avoiding watching footage from that day for all these years. Although I've seen pictures, I haven't watched what happened since it happened. Last night, I was flipping through stations and landed on the History Channel. It was SO hard to watch it. I couldn't believe how upset it made me after all these years. I didn't sleep very well last night.

[Momling]

We were getting ready to go to our OB ultrasound visit. My mom called and told me to turn on the news. We watched for a minute but had to run out the door. We listened to the news on the way to the office. Everyone was cheery in the OB office so I think they must not have heard. We didn't tell them. We were focused on the ultrasound screen and the information and figured everyone there would know soon enough. Or maybe the OB and nurses did know, but didn't want to spoil our first ultrasound moment.

[Mimm]

I had just woken up and my husband called me from work. I had a five month old baby and was still getting up in the middle of the night to feed her. He just said, "Turn on the news." Both planes had hit and the first thought that went through my sleep deprived foggy brain was "Two people accidentally crashed into those towers on the same morning?? How likely is that??" Then immediately, "Oh... not likely at all...." My dad had spent the night at our place the night before (he worked in Houston where we lived but lived two hours away) and was still getting ready as I watched the news. I remember him saying, "This will change everything." And it has. I spent the next week glued in front of a television that until then barely got turned on. We never had cable so it was just whatever news stations that we could get, but of course, they were covering it like crazy so it wasn't exactly hard to obsess about it.

[Barry Goldwater]

from last year...

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=210933

[Jennifer3141]

DH and I had gotten married in April of 2001 so 9/11 has always made it easy for us to figure out how many years we've been married. Last years, "Next year is the 10th anniversary of 9/11!" clued us into our 10th anniversary.

 

We went to NYC and Cape Cod on our honeymoon. We didn't go into the WTC but we drove past it for what felt like a couple hundred times because we were hicks and couldn't figure out how to get back into Manhattan (so.many.cars!!) I had to call my Dad for help on my cell phone (Dad was born on Long Island and my grandfather had an office in the Empire State building).

 

So when 9/11 happened a few months later, NY was still fresh to us.

 

We were shocked how a couple of nuts from rural Michigan had felt so safe there. And we both kinda fell in love with the place - me more more than DH though.

 

The first attack happened while I was getting ready for work. I told DH about it while he was in the shower. At that point, everyone thought it was a horrific accident and then the second plane hit and we heard about the Pentagon and it felt like we were all under attack.

 

I went to work for about 2 hours and then went home. My parents wanted me safe at home with DH (I worked for them). DH was off work at the time and we spent the day glued to the TV.

 

I vividly remember the video of the people jumping out of the WTC who felt like or actually did have no chance of surviving. I remember some commentator saying that doing that was actually a very healthy thing to do since those jumpers were choosing their destiny. When the attacks first happened, there seemed to be NO censorship at all. All the networks showed everything and they were in competition with each other to show the newest events. Later in playbacks, I think they stopped showing the jumpers. It traumatized people. :(

 

What I most remember about that time was how utterly weird it was to look up in the sky and see NO planes for days. At that time, we lived in Michigan's second largest city and planes were coming and going all the time. It was so weird to go on our nightly walk and be utterly alone in the neighborhood at night (everyone else was in their living rooms watching TV) and there wasn't a plane in the sky.

 

We had a neighbor panic and start stockpiling water and cereal. She ended up having a nervous breakdown a few weeks later. It hit some people really hard.

 

I'd had the "priviledge" of traveling outside the US during a small terrorist attack and I think that calmed me a bit. DH never panics so we were a bit of stability for our friends who felt more unhinged. I cooked a LOT of chickens the month of September 2001. Chickens and lasagnas and tons and tons of wine. As the month went on, the wine got cheaper!! But I remember hanging out with friends and neighbors like we never did before. and then I remember eating out at our nieghborhood restaurants because the president told us to. We love eating out so we loved the excuse. We were just being patritotic! :001_smile:

[Mommamia]

My husband was scheduled to fly that day, so I remember it fairly well. I was sitting in the car dealership waiting for my oil change....the news was on and everyone gasped. I remember trying to reach my husband (who was at an airport in either Chicago or Michigan-can't remember). At the same time, my cell started ringing with news that an old friend worked in one of the towers. My husband's plane was grounded so he ended up renting a car and driving home from Chicago to Minneapolis. Later that day, I learned that my friend from junior high had died(he was on one of higher floors-Canter Fitzgerald). His sister in law and brother in law also died.

 

Another thing I remember....my husband and I had been in NYC the week before(for a getaway). We flew out of NYC on the day that the terrorists were supposedly doing a "test run" at the airport.

[chiguirre]

I was at my desk in Caracas and a friend called from the NY office to say he'd heard a plane flew into the WTC. I checked Reuters and they had only one line about a report of a small plane crashing into one of the towers. I started dialing my sister's number because BIL worked in the WTC, but she wasn't answering. I finally got ahold of my dad and he hadn't heard yet. The worst part was that it took a long time for CNN's Spanish network to pick up the story and I couldn't get any more information. After about an hour, my ds called to say BIL was at a meeting in midtown and the TV coverage started. I spent the rest of the day watching in the trading room with everyone else.

[lailasmum]

It was a few days after we had moved into London and were staying with friends for a few weeks. I was at a loose end watching TV anyway when a newsflash cut in. I remember the pure shock, it just didn't seem real, more like scenes from a movie.

[The Girls' Mom]

I was actually in the parking lot of K-mart when it came over the radio that the first plane had hit. I was headed home, where my dh was packing for a business trip. By the time I got home, he was watching the TV and we both watched as the 2nd plane hit. We were horrified. We debated on whether or not to go pick up my oldest dd from preschool. We wondered if our area would be hit (we lived near several large government facilities) and actually were discussing evacuation routes. We decided to leave dd where she was so that she wouldn't be as exposed to the horror of the news that we couldn't turn off. Dh's trip was cancelled, and I was never more thankful that he wasn't on a plane. (which he often was)

[Lisa in the UP of MI]

I found out during my Spanish class. It was my first year of college. We were supposed to watch a movie that day and the teacher sent one of the other students to get a tv. He came back telling us what happened and we were watching when the second tower fell.

[mcconnellboys]

Oh, my. How could we forget?

 

We had taken my younger son to Montessori pre-school. My older son had settled in our dining room that year for doing school. He was in fourth grade. I was doing some work with him and my mom called. She told me to turn on the television; that America was under attack. I thought she was being melodramatic.

 

I was watching as the second plane hit the second tower. I simply could not believe it. I was watching as the towers fell. I was watching as the Pentagon was struck. Oh, my. I was watching TV for most of that year, constantly worried - watching for the next attack.... Remember all the scare about white powder in envelopes? The excesses of airport security? We could hardly drive through to drop people off at our small airport....

[Susan in TN]

The whole family was in the car driving dh to work, then taking my oldest to a hs enrichment day. When the radio dj's first mentioned it, we wondered if it was some kind of weird joke. Then the dj's themselves realized that something was very very wrong.

 

Everyone seemed to be driving very slowly that day - not the usual morning rush hour traffic.

 

We just returned from our trip to the East coast - our Moonlight Monuments tour guide mentioned that all that security that is everywhere in D.C. did not exist before 9/11/01.

Edited September 13, 2011 by Susan in TN

[Janie Grace]

I was putting a video on for dd, who was a year old at the time. I was pregnant, and dh was home sick. I paused to watch an interview on a morning show for a minute before I popped in Barney. They cut to the first tower just after it had been hit. I watched as the second tower was hit. The newscaster said something about how there must be a huge problem with traffic control (as if these planes had been misdirected into the towers). :confused: I think when something that senseless happens, we all start thinking and saying things that make no sense.

 

I woke my dh, and then called my dad. We weren't close at the time, but for some reason, I wanted to talk to him right away. He was on the west coast, and I woke him. He was annoyed, and then... not, when he learned why I had called.

 

Dh and I watched the coverage in shock all day. We were numb. I remember talking to a friend who said "they think Osama bin Ladin was behind it", and I had no idea who he was.

 

I can't believe it has been ten years. It feels like yesterday. The sadness is still so real.

[FairyMom]

I did a post about it.... remembering my friends.

 

We Remember