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October 2006
Posts: 5575
Location: big island | i was living on kaua'i and it was around 4am on 9-11. i was startled out of my sleep by the phone ringing so early. could not imagine what my sister-in-law was calling us so early for. it remains a foggy nightmare memory for me as i stumbled to turn the tv on at her instructions. i sat glued to the tube for several hours but beyond my grief for the human tragedy, almost immediately found myself incredulous at the media's spin and "official" government reports and responses. oh, how i want to rant about now but i will spare us all... |
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Joined:
January 2006
Posts: 5881
Location: Colorado Rocky Mountains | Helplessness, sorrow, and numbness are the feelings that I recall having that morning. Thanks for sharing the words of J. Hendrix, Lanaki. |
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Joined:
September 2004
Posts: 1180
Location: Vermont USA | Remember Me a song for 9/11 Paul Ciampaglia
Remember me, remember me
Voices whisper remember me
Clear skies covered in thick black smoke
Dear God it still makes us choke
Tears in my eyes deaf to the cries
Fear in our hearts after all these years
Remember me, remember me
Voices whisper remember me
Brave young souls running up the stairs
As we watched with cold blank stares
Crushing sound of those smoke filled halls
As they crumble beneath the fall
Remember me, remember me
Voices whisper remember me
Americas resolve is united we stand
Turn to one another and take their hand
One God, one country, and one true love
What the world needs now is Grace and Love
Remember me, remember me
Voices whisper remember me
As we show our respect and never forget
Those who showed us the power of love
Never forget no never forget
Show one another the power of Love
Remember me, remember me
Voices whisper remember me
Still under construction Pauly |
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Joined:
November 2006
Posts: 2241
Location: Simpsonville, SC | I was in a client's home. She had gone out for a run, after a few minutes she about broke down the back door and ran to turn the TV on. Shortly after that the second plane hit.
I was speechless, confused, pissed off, worried, etc.
Trying to explain what had happened to my children (11 and 16 at the time) was extremely difficult. Still is. |
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February 2005
Posts: 11840
Location: closely held secret | Very nice, Pauly. Well done.
Let us know when the 'construction' is finished! |
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Joined:
December 2003
Posts: 1889
Location: Central Massachusetts | I was just waking up, my wife was in the shower. The phone rang and a friend from California asked if any of my wife's relatives were "on those airplanes" .. (My wife's family are centered around Boston/Cape Cod.) "Terrorists are flying airplanes into buildings!" The computer was closer than the tv so I tried to bring up cnn.com and nothing happened. I knew then that it was true. Got my wife out of the shower and we turned on the tv. The first tower had already collapsed.
I will always remember this part, in the midst of the endless reruns of the first tower collapsing, they showed the 2nd collapse live. The anchor (Peter Jennings?) kept on referring to it as a replay and all I could think was, Oh my God, he's so terribly wrong.
After a while I had to go in to work. Very somber. I work in a support center and we received almost no calls that day.
We had friends that were "trapped" in Florida for a conference. Three of them ended up renting a moving van and driving straight through from Florida to Oregon to get home.
They arrived in time for us all to go see James Taylor, who somehow managed to get to Portland in for his scheduled show on the 15th.... the first, and probably only time I'll ever see JT.. can't imagine him ever topping the emotional power of that set.
Randy, great quote, thanks for that. |
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Joined:
January 2005
Posts: 161
Location: Atlanta GA | I was at an Industry show in Los Vegas. My wife called and woke me up and I watched it unfold on TV. All flights were cancelled, all rental cars were booked and we wanted to get back to Atlanta. Myself and five other guys from Atlanta rented a U-Haul truck, swung by WalMart and bought some lawn chairs and coolers then we headed back cross country non stop. The truck had a door connecting the cab to the back and we listened to the radio coverage. I remenber how glad I was to get home and the feeling of uncertainty of the future. I guess under different circumstances that trip home would have been a pleasurable memory. |
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Joined:
September 2006
Posts: 10777
Location: Keepin' It Weird in Portland, OR | I was had spent the night in the Kingman, AZ jail for hitch-hiking. The deputies hurried-in and turned on the TV after the first plane hit.
Watching it with the locals, I was explaining to those who had never been to NYC just how big the towers really were. How there were many subway lines and parking structures under them. That there were restaurants, and stores, and a post office and all that stuff in there.
How more people worked in there than the population of Kingman.
We saw the second plane hit, Live.
We also heard about the Pentagon and rumors of another hijacking.
Soon after, I went to court and was released (dumb reason to be in jail).
Only then did I learn of the whole scope of the ordeal.
Used to be that Everyone remembered where they were when they heard that John F. Kennedy was shot.
Marting Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, John Lennon...
Now this! |
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Joined:
April 2006
Posts: 1017
Location: Budd Lake, NJ | I was at work, too, glued to the small radio that could only get one station. Wishing I was home, to be able to find out more. Leaning into the cab of my normally unemotional nineteen-year-old son's pickup as I met him in the driveway, and then crying together. Knowing that I would shortly lose my husband, too, but thankful for the preparation time I still had. So many emotions, so few words.
--Karen |
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Joined:
January 2004
Posts: 627
Location: Cherry Hill, NJ | I called my son immediately, who worked in the building across the street from the WTC. All circuits were busy. When I got his call, to tell me he was alright, and described the scene in Manhattan, I was relieved, then I was pissed. |
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Joined:
August 2003
Posts: 4619
Location: SoCal | The night before, my daughter was upset that she couldn't get on the Boston flight. She called me to turn on the TV. Only a couple of days later, she traveled to D.C. escorting Jessica Stern. Stern, a terrorism expert had interviewed Bin Laden and was going to testify to the Senate. Concern was security on the train. Secret Service protection. The afternoon of 9/11, standing outside of the Dean's office at Harvard, the administrative assistant gets a call that her boyfriend was on the plane. Although she was a student at the J.F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard put her on the payroll to handle the media during the months following the attack. A few days later, although retired, I was on a Marine T-39 (Saberliner) to Quantico (with a fresh haircut). Until age 60, you might be retired but the Marines still "own" you. |
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Joined:
January 2007
Posts: 146
Location: Japan | I was walking back home in Shibuya, Japan when my girlfriend called and told me about the plane crashing into the towers, then about the Pentagon too.
Too much of a coincidence and I told her that it was a tv show or a mistake because it was so unlikely for both to have been hit by planes in the same time period.
There's a street near Starbucks where the middle eastern guys always hang out and they try to sell you fake phone cards or whatever, but that night as I walked by they gave me a look that said nothing but contempt; later I found out why when my girlfriend turned out to be right. |
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Joined:
July 2003
Posts: 3111
Location: Nashville TN. | I was woken up by a phone call.
I saw the second plane hit live.
I'm still very angery.
If I was not too old to enlist I would have.
You can see my feeling on my lyrics page.
http://pezmusiccom.nationprotect.net/Lyric.html |
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Joined:
March 2002
Posts: 14842
Location: NJ | On the morning of the 11th, we had two separate shows at the Javits Center that were scheduled to open at 9 a.m. that day.
Even though it was more than 30 blocks away, horrified exhibitors, attendees, and staff watched the whole thing unfold from the glass atrium of the Center known as the Crystal Palace.
(For those who’ve never been to Manhattan, if you looked “up” in the right direction, you could see the Towers from pretty much ANYwhere on the Island).
Needless t’say, the shows didn’t happen. What DID happen was that FEMA came in and took possession of the entire building as their Command Center.
We were told to IMMEDIATELY vacate the building of everyone and everyTHING. Anyone who exhibits in a tradeshow knows that your booth and equipment arrives in massive crates,
which are emptied, the booths set up, and the empty crates are taken away and stored on empty trailers (offsite) to be returned for the “break” of the Show.
Depending on the size show, it generally takes two days to move a Show in (and about the same to move it out).
We had 24hours to move two ENTIRE shows out, a goodly part of the “empties” were in Jersey, and the bridges and tunnels were CLOSED.
We were told that if we didn’t get it out, FEMA would bulldoze-out the entire facility through the back loading dock.
It took every available pair of hands the entire night to cram everything onto trailers (often without crates), back to our office, . . . to be sorted out later.
FEMA’s intent was to use the facility as a morgue.
Being that nowhere NEAR the amount of bodies they anticipated were to be “recovered”, it wasn’t used for that purpose.
It became the storage/distribution center for bottled water, food, workboots, masks, gloves, and the like . . .
It was several months before we ever got back into the building.
The eeriest thing was being on any major Eastbound highway in NewJersey with the overhead digital sign reading “New York City CLOSED”. |
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Joined:
March 2007
Posts: 665
Location: Tychy, Poland | i was seventeen then. i remember that i came back from school and my mother was watching TV, and i was in time to see plane hitting second tower. My first thoughts were - it's war. But who. To be honest, i wasn't thinking much about people who were in towers. too much people die every day on the world from diseases, wars, local conflicts or aids
But i was thinking about how USA will react. if USA will act calm and find out who is behind this, or there will be sudden reaction which might threaten to peace in the world.
I think 9/11 will be for long remembered as "symbol" of beginning of this century. |
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Joined:
March 2005
Posts: 5563
Location: Blue Ridge Mountains | As the originator of this thread, I want to thank everyone for the most part in controlling emotions, politics, supposition, etc. and just tell your stories...it is fascinating reading: I still remember where I was the day Kennedy was shot and nearly every thing associated with it that next week...this is very much the same...wouldn’t it be great to never again have memories like these...
Thank you all! |
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Joined:
June 2005
Posts: 231
Location: N.J. | It was today, the 12th, that really hit home for me. I live about a half mile from the bay and on a clear day gives you a beautiful view of Manhattan. I found out they were running supply boats over and people were asked to donate clothes, dog food, etc. My first sense of how overwhelming this was came when I walked out of the store with some stuff and noticed a running Fedex truck parked right out front, and this horrid smell like some type of plastic burning. At first I was annoyed that this guy would leave his truck running so close to the entrance with the exhaust fumes being so bad. I see him get in the truck and drive off as i'm loading my car. I walked back in to the store to get my 2nd load of stuff and as i'm walking back out this smell is even more intense. Then it hits me that it wasnt the truck but the fire from the towers that drifted over here. Later that day when I got down to the docks in the Highlands to drop everything off I found out I just drove into a bomb scare. We were all detained for almost 2 hrs. but nobody searched anything. It was just a chaotic scene. |
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Joined:
February 2005
Posts: 1132
Location: Parrish, FL | I’m not sure I should write this, because in many ways I feel guilty. 9/11 was a very different experience for me and my family. We were on the hard in a little marina in Grenada, repainting the bottom of the boat and performing the annual maintenance on our ‘home’. The guy on the boat next to us (doing the same thing) shouted over that a plane had just hit the WTC. My first reaction was, ‘Ya right’, but he insisted that it was true. Then I asked what kind of plane, a Cessna? When he said no a jet liner, we dropped what we were doing and went to watch on his TV. We didn’t have that luxury on board.
We watched for a while and then went back to work, discussing what had happened and stopping every hour or so to get an update.
At that time, Grenada had a rather large American sailing community, but it still numbered less than 200 people. Over the next several days we got tidbits of information, but nowhere near anything like the saturation I’m told took place back home. As such, I don’t think the whole tragedy impacted us as much as the rest of the country, we were so far removed.
My days went almost immediately back to taking care of my family. That meant washing clothes by hand, grocery shopping several miles inland and carrying everything back on our backs, watching the approach of a new weather systems and soon after an approaching hurricane which could potentially destroy all we owned or even kill one or all of us. The Challenger disaster, I’m sorry to say had a bigger personal effect on me.
I understand the magnitude of the event and feel the offense against my country, but I never bonded with the experience. I guess it’s like hearing about the tsunami in Indonesia, an earth quake in Peru, or the monthly body count of Iraqis due to internal violence. You feel empathy towards those involved, but little attachment to the event. |
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Joined:
August 2003
Posts: 4619
Location: SoCal | BluesSailor,
All of us were affected on different levels as we first heard or watched the intense coverage. My reaction was more composed than if my daughter had been on the plane. Maybe it was also the fact that, other than the enormous amount of casualties and destruction, I had been involved in and shared wanton death and destruction.
Did I expect the level of destruction? No. However, it was not the 1st time that the Trade Center was attacked (1993). It was not the 1st time that we had been attacked by ideology (Oklahoma City bombing in 1995). We have had disasters such as Katrina. Is it different when 100 families lose their loved ones or when 3,000. To that individual family, the loss is overwhelming.
As told by Sir. John Hackett in his "Third World War August 1985", in the 1980's, we were resolved that the initial onslaught would be mass casualties for civilians and our military forces (battlefield nuc's) by the Soviets. Our commanders on the front line had to determine how they would react to losing 75-80% of their combat forces (personel, equipment) and possibly all communication.
Callous?
My heart went out to those injured and the families of those killed.
Resolve? Yes.
I was reminded that the North American Saberliner is actually Sabreliner. My apologies to any and all affiliated with North American or flight crews. :eek: |
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9/11
