9/11....

[Dymphna]

I was just stepping out of the shower, the kid was watching a video in my bedroom. The phone rang, it was huntr telling me to turn on the TV. Boy was the kid mad when I turned off his video. I was watching when the second plane hit. I turned back on the video and went to watch the other TV.

I had an interview with a potential client later that morning. The radio was on the whole time, I couldn't even talk to the woman. While she was there, the radio started talking about smoke rising over DC, at first they were saying the Old Executive Office Building was on fire. (for those that don't know that's across the street from the White House) The reporter could only see smoke from that general direction and from his vantage point it seemed to be coming from that building. I called my mother, who works for the Secret Service. My interview was still there.

I later found out that my brother, who is a contractor with the Navy was on his way to a building next to the Pentagon, but for some reason, made a detour to his company's office. He stayed there. A close friend of a close friend who works in the Pentagon was originally listed as missing because his office was wiped out. He'd been in a meeting in another part of the building. When they were evacuated he left and sat in a nearby bar watching TV.

 

[janey83]

I'm not just saying this to be nice to HollowSoul, but whenever ANYONE posts work that they have written, it's something they chose to share with us. It's hard sometimes to show personal work to others, and while criticism is constructive, it's not really right to just bash someone's work. C'mon now, support the forum arts!

 

[BuddyLee]

~Bump

 

[sockgirl77]

I was asleep in bed. My husband (now ex) called me and told me. I had to go pick my mom up from D.C. She works there and they weren't allowing busses to enter the city. So she got a ride to Waldork and I picked her up from there. She was so shaken. I spent the rest of the day watching t.v. in disbelief.

 

[babybear9120]

i was at school at mcdonough high school in pomfret when the attacks happened, i heard something was going on but i couldnt catch what it was. when i went to history, which was the next period, the teacher had the radio on real low and when every1 was in class, she said we werent going to do any work. then she explained what was going on. the rest of the day seemed to be in a blur and none of the rest of the teachers did any work.

my mom was on the way to take some1 to the glen burnie mva when she heard what happened.

my brother in law was driving on the road when the plane hit the pentagon. he was in shock.

my father was at work when the plane hit the pentagon. my dad is a chief fire fighter at reagan airport which 1 of the runway strips is right across the street from the pentagon. sisne he was so close to the pentagon, his fire department was 1 of the first departments on the scene. he got some excellent pictures, before, during and after the collapse.

 

[Hessian]

In The Classroom.

20% of my kids are active military, another 20% are Fed Govt employees

I heard the news in the hall...got real grim, then went to check the computor in my room....

Then down to the office to get the word on the lock-down at Andrews:Would our kids be able to get back in?

The Rumors started flying by 11 am and we had to make a general announcement: then figure out how many of the kids will we have to take home with us in case the base refused entry.

Parents were pouring in for 4 straight hours and names were called down to the office until we were told to clear the building near 5 pm....drove down to Waldorf for Dinner at Red Hot & Blue....watching the Bar TV most of the time.
I knew this meant war....but against whom?

America still has not identified the real threat so we will continually spend the rest of our existance stamping out fires from Indonesia to the Peshwar and then we will get hit even harder.

Will we figure out then who the enemy is?

 

[BS Gal]

I was at work and the t.v. was on in the back room. The guys in the back called us back there and we all watched together - I think it was the closet moment we have ever had and will tie us together for eternity. My thoughts were that my only child was in boot camp for the Marines and scheduled to graduate the following Friday. My thoughts immediately turned to the fact that he had joined the Marines, not to go to war, but to get an education, etc. I had people come to my office from other offices to share a hug, because they, too, knew that my son was now probably going to war. I called my father, sobbing, and he said, "well, he knew that could happen when he joined." I was angry at my dad, out of contact with my son, and worried. I was also grieving for the people who had lost their life. My son was in what they call the "crucible" during the time of the attack. They set the soon to be marines down and told them what had happened - course, because of the marine training, they soon to be marines thought they were just messing with them, until several of them who had parents at the Pentagon or the Trade Centers, left...after almost 13 weeks of training, they were pulled out to grieve for their relatives. He did graduate, but it was under very high security. I just remember keeping a friend at my house that lived up the road and worrying about my boy and not being able to keep the news off. I'm a weeper, so weeped a lot those days. Mostly, I remember just wanting to get to Parris Island and hold my boy.

 

[Triggerfish]

I was working on a F/A-18 Hornet in Naval Air Facility in Atsugi, Japan. I heard something about a plane hitting one of the WTC towers. A little later I heard that another plane crashed into the second tower and soon after the towers came crashing down. Soon after we were sent back home and the base was pretty much shut down except for essential personnel. We had armed sentries patrolling the base. The front gate had machine guns behind a sand bag shelter. We even had the Japanese SWAT team at the main gate. With in days we were on the Kitty Hawk awaiting orders. When we got those orders we headed for the coast of Pakistan and on route we picked up Army special forces who used the ship as a mobile base to launch their strikes deep into Afghanistan with their helicopters. When they were gone, we launched airstrikes against Taliban strongholds.

 

[Toxick]

When it happened, I was in a cubicle, listening to Iron Maiden. I was preparing for a staff meeting, getting my junk together.

When I heard about it, I was walking up the hall with a part of a software design document, and my supervisor came barrelling up the hallway and told me to follow her, because she wasn't sure if the radio station she was listening to was pulling a prank or if this was real.

We read some of the news on and laughed as CNN was getting a crash-course on bandwidth conservation. (obviously the seriousness of the situation hadn't dawned on us yet). I made an offhand crack about Bin Laden. I don't remember what I said, exactly.

We went to our meeting.

Halfway through my meeting they said the Pentagon was just hit.

A few minutes later they told us the WTC had collapsed. Then we cut our meeting short as our ad-hoc security team was starting to get absolutely frothing-at-the-mouth frantic. Plus we were trying to find out the status of our people who worked at the Pentagon.

Found out that they were safe... but three of our other people were on the plane that hit it. Found out that everyone I personally knew was safe.

2 Hours later, after they closed the base, we all went home with paid time off, because our building couldn't hold that many off-site contractors.

 

[Lenny]

I was sitting in a military control room as we supervised the placement of several hundred nuclear warheads back in their bunkers. . . .and tried to find three-days worth of fruit and water to stock Air Force One as it flew out of Florida.

 

[Bustem' Down]

I was watching on board the USS Cape St. George. in Norfolk. We had a big hole cut in the side od the ship so we couldn't get underway.

 

[jaie]

I was 7 1/2 months pregnant so I was in bed when my Mom called and told me not to wake up my grandmother (lived with the grandparents at the time) and I didn't understand why. I call my Step dad and asked him why Mom was coming home from school and why she told me not not to wake my G ma up. She said " Your Grandfather is at the World Trade Center right now". It was a happy ending for my family he came home that night around AM with a scratch on his arm

 

[itsbob]

I was a Network Administrator at Penn Dot at the time, and my cubicle had the only TV's in the building, set to only display the weather channel and video feeds from interstate cameras. One of the Bosses gave me permission to go to the data closet and set the TV's up to show all cable channels, and probably 20 - 30 of us gathered in and around my cubilce and watched. I don't think any of us thought the first plane was an accident, we all knew it was intentional, and we watched in horror as the second plane flew into the frame, and aimed directly for the other tower. i remember footage from around the White House, and saw something burning in the foreground, like maybe they had shot at something flying close by, but never heard anything more about it. Noon time they told us all to go home because they were afraid of further atttacks.. here we were in a protected Valley, working for PennDOT.. yeah a target of importance... called the college, and the smart brave woman in charge of the university did NOTHING to change the schedule and school conitinued on as scheduled. She felt, and said, that disrupting our lives is what these people intend to do, and she refused to do what they wanted. I think going to class those few days was eyeopening for a lot of people, we got to disuss it, share a little grief and disbelief..

Flight 93 crashed about (not sure exactly how far) 30 - 40 miles away from where we were at the time.. If you missed the documentary on Discovery last night about flight 93 you missed an excellent show.. 40 brave people on that flight changed history.

I had no relatives or friends at the time that worked at the pentagon, or in NY, but I hear stories how illegal Cell Phones just seemed to appear from nowhere as kids were walking out of classrooms and schools.. I can't imagine what life had to be like here, trying to call family and friends and trying to account for each other..

 

[Agee]

If you missed the documentary on Discovery last night about flight 93 you missed an excellent show.. 40 brave people on that flight changed history.

Agreed

Watching the show and a series of 9/11 documentries on the History Channel last night, I kept asking myself...

If I was on any of those planes, what would I have done?

 

[jwwb2000]

I was living in San Diego...just recently out of the navy....asleep in my bed with the baby. I was awoke by a phone call from my dh telling me to get up and watch the news, call my family to let them know nothing was going on and we were okay, and he did not know when he would be home due to the base being on complete lockdown.

 

[Tinkerbell]

I was outside gardening. It wasn't until about an hour after the plane hit the pentagon. My mom called me - to tell me that my cousin Kenny and his wife Jen had been killed (they were flight attendants on the plane that hit the pentagon). I hadn't been watching the news and I didn't understand what she meant. She finally got calm enough to explain to me and I just hung up, sat down in the driveway and cried for a while. I finally went inside to watch the news, but couldn't watch it for long. Hurt too bad. Still does. I'm upset now. People say talking about it helps - not always. I cried at the Redskins game this past weekend when they flashed their names on the screen at half-time. I'm babbling now.... sorry.