9/11: Remembering a tragedy

[dan k]

One month to the day prior to the attacks, I had been at the WTC at the exact time frame that the attacks happened. If they had done it on 8/11, I would have been there in all that chaos trying to figure out what the crap was going on. I was a counselor at a summer camp in NY state, and a few of us had gone into the city on a day off to do some shopping and sight-seeing. The WTC was the first place we went to when we got off the ferry from Hoboken. I took a picture of the towers, standing in the courtyard behind them:

How precious this photo is to me now...
I remember waking up that morning to the phone ringing. My mom was crying and screaming "My God, you were just there!" over and over again. I kept saying "What are you talking about?" and she finally said "Just turn it on CNN." So I did and I turned it on just in time to see the first tower fall.... I was in shock, and then when it hit me what was going on I just started crying. My girls I had that summer at the camp lost relatives in the attack on NYC, and I had a distant cousin who was injured in the Pentagon attack. It's such a sad, sad day in history and my thoughts and prayers are always with the victims and their families.

That's unbelievable, i bet you frequently sit and ponder what if i went just a month later?

 

[Misty]

I was in elementary school when it happened, and I remember coming home and finding out about it that day.

 

[Hero]

I had two uncles there that day, one actually in one of the towers and the other in one of the buildings next to them. Both survived, thank god, but they lost people close to them obviously.

One of my best friend's friend died. She was 8 months pregnant and still working. After the plane hit she called someone. She was on one of the upper floors. She said taking that many flights of stairs was too much for her at 8 months, and the paramedics/fighter fighters told her it was safe enough for her to wait where she was. Once the stairs were cleared of people and smoke, they'd come back for her. Needless to say, she and her unborn child both died that day.

It's just a really terrible day in our history, and this year I tried not to think about it. While it's always important to remember those who died, and those who died tried to save others, it's just a very dark subject. I'd tend to dwell on it again if I sat around and watched those specials all day. One of the movies always breaks my heart. The one where they rush the cockpit at the end after the one guy goes, "let's roll." Gets me every time.

 

[BuffyElevated]

That's unbelievable, i bet you frequently sit and ponder what if i went just a month later?

I can't lie... I get chills everytime I think about it. I own the movie "World Trade Center" and the scenes where the firefighters are walking past the mall are surreal; we shopped in that very mall. The part where the man comes up to them, worried about the daycare center in one of the towers- that was my very first thought that morning as I watched it all happening on the news. It's so shocking... I just thank God I wasn't there. 🙁

 

[zobothehobo]

I had two uncles there that day, one actually in one of the towers and the other in one of the buildings next to them. Both survived, thank god, but they lost people close to them obviously.

One of my best friend's friend died. She was 8 months pregnant and still working. After the plane hit she called someone. She was on one of the upper floors. She said taking that many flights of stairs was too much for her at 8 months, and the paramedics/fighter fighters told her it was safe enough for her to wait where she was. Once the stairs were cleared of people and smoke, they'd come back for her. Needless to say, she and her unborn child both died that day.

It's just a really terrible day in our history, and this year I tried not to think about it. While it's always important to remember those who died, and those who died tried to save others, it's just a very dark subject. I'd tend to dwell on it again if I sat around and watched those specials all day. One of the movies always breaks my heart. The one where they rush the cockpit at the end after the one guy goes, "let's roll." Gets me every time.

Oh my god. I'm so sorry for your friend's friend and her unborn child.

I was in the fifth grade. We were in math class. My teacher was playing a game with us... We often played this game where we were supposed to figure out the code for something important from math clues he'd give us. He was thinking up another scenario when the principal came to the door to tell him what happened. He came back in and said "Two planes have hit the World Trade Center in New York. The towers have fallen." We all thought it was another scenario and we were waiting for the important code we had to find. Then he said "This isn't part of the game. I'm serious. We're not supposed to turn on the TV, but when you get home you can see for yourself." I had just been to New York two months before and I was so glad I had gotten the chance to be there when the towers were still standing. I remember crying when I got home and saw the footage thinking "the world will never be the same."

 

[white avenger]

The thing that I remember most about that day and what came afterward was the initial sense of shock, obviously. It must have been something like what the nation felt after Pearl Harbor. Being vulnerable to attack wasn't any longer just an abstract idea. We actually HAD BEEN attacked. People from another country, organized and with cold forethought, had killed American men and women here on our own soil. This was something far more frightening to me than some deranged psycho with a shotgun in a shopping mall or a couple of kids trying to play "Matrix" for real. Terrorist attacks were something that took place in other countries, never here. Learning differently was a very painful slap in the face, something that we will never fully recover from.

(There will be more later, but I have to leave for now)

 

[Taake]

I remember the day with perfect clarity, I was in high school at the time, it was a horrible shock. I spent the rest of the day calling friends in the US and the evening trying to console a friend whose dad worked at WTC because we couldn't get a hold of him.

As mentioned above, I don't think anyone will forget it.