Where were you Sept.11 2001?

I remember the soon to be wife, waking me up, as I was still in the night club Bizz in Colorado Springs, with a "Get outta bed, somethings happened"
I remember the second plane striking the tower, and the realization that we were under attack....
I remember as all the details unfolded there on TV, I remember thinking of all my employees that only worked for me part time, would soon be shipping out, because they were US military personel... I remember thinking that right then and there, we were at WAR....
I remember the tears that welled up in my fiancés eyes when the towers fell, she was a Manhattan gal....
I remember that night, sitting at the clubs, talking with some of the guys that worked for me, that were Gulf War vets, listening to them say right then, that we would be going back to Iraq....
I remember putting American flags on everything, living in a military town there was a real sense of patriotism very fast....
I remember the silence from the lack of planes in the air, except a pair of F-15 Eagles that would flash down the front range of the mountains every 3-6 hours....
I remember within two days, I had already lost four of my bouncers that were special forces, they were already on alert...
What I also remember was on Sept. 22 when my new bride and I went to Vegas for a quick Honeymoon getaway, (the airlines would not let us cancel) and we found National Guardsmen at the airports, and no one in Vegas, that was a most surreal feeling.....


Yes I remember ......

I still remember it like it was yesterday, I was working for an armored car company servicing ATMs and I finished one of my machines and got back in the van. My driver said we have been attacked! I said Huh? he told me about the planes hitting the towers and the pentagon and a report of a state dept building being blown up, I told him bull ****, then he turned the radio up for me to hear, I literally fell back in my chair and was totally stunned. The worst part for me was later that day when I had to go to Nashville International airport to service those ATMs while still carrying a weapon and everyone kinda freaking out, I approached and airport police officer to ask about extra security concerns and he just told me to go ahead and do my job, they knew who I was and what I was doing. Still kinda sureal though, and I still noticed a uniformed officer within earshot of me the whole time though.

I was at home and my dad called me, told me to turn on CNN and put a tape in the VCR. He heard that some airplane had hit one of the world trade centers, but they weren't sure what was going on. I remember watching it and not really knowing what to think except that there was no way a pilot of one of those planes would screw up that bad on a clear day. When the second plane hit, and they panned down to all the people running away from the towers, I saw what terror in my own country looked like. It brought back memories of the Murrah building in OKC (I heard and felt that one).

It's one thing to see someone from a different country terrified- nothing is familiar, so you can be sort of detached about it. But to see something that is very familiar, and people that you might know with that look on their faces and in their eyes. It's the look of genuine, get me the hell out of here, fear. Realizing that someone, somewhere, planned that fear just made it that much worse.

At the time, I hoped that being the mightiest nation in the world would allow us to seek out the people responsible and make them pay. Little did I know that it would be the American people that would pay.

I was at work in a tower in center city Philadelphia. I was worried sick about my brother who works for the Port Authority of NY/NJ and who's office was in the second WTC Tower hit. To make a long story short I was let go early that day because no one knew how far ranging the attack was and if we were a possible target being a tower in a major US city. The second plane went right through my brother's office but he wasn't there. The reason: he called out sick that day because he was hung over.

I will never forget that day as long as I live.

Regards,
EL

I was on a motorcycle ride, on my way back to San Francisco. I stopped for the night in Paso Robles. I woke up that morning to the TV thinking it was a movie, and remember being scared out of my wits eve before for I realized it wasn't. It took me a few seconds to realize this was really happening.

I had a hard time motivating that morning to get back to SF. I stayed a long time in the motel cafe having breakfast with some locals, listening to the radio, and going through every emotion under the sun.

By the time I was back on my bike I couldn't wait to get home and be with my family. The ride felt like it took forever.

In that summer, I switched jobs. I was hired in the first days of September 2001. That Tuesday, I was on my second day of a 2-week long class.
It was 2 PM here and the class was starting after the lunch break. During that class the teacher told us that "something was happening in NYC". "Lots of planes were falling".
We ended the class earlier. I went home immediately to turn on the TV and watch CNN. I'll never forget the CNN headline: "America under attack". That was when I realized that something really big was happening, I couldn't believe it, it seemed I was watching a movie.
The following days were really weird, even in this small country. In the following Sunday, me and my colleagues went to the airport to rent a car to drive us to another week-long class 300 kms from my town. At the airport entrance there were lots of military men with machine guns. We had to tell them what we wanted. I'll never forget that moment - two heavily armed soldiers escort us from the entrance of the airport to the rent-a-car service inside. That was really weird, again it seemed like I was in a movie.

I was giving a chemistry test. The news came to me, and I hopped on the internet. I didn't tell my students till after they were done with their test. As the students finished I sent them down to the gym where we spent the rest of the day watching the news.

I had just started a project in one of the tallest buildings in Philadelphia. The internet was slow and then someone said a plane had hit one of the towers...I thought they meant a Cessna. A co-worker's dad was in the Pentagon, but was not injured. We evacuated the building for about an hour and watch the news on a TV outside a hotel. We then went back in and got our things. I came back out in time to see the towers fall on TV. We worked from our hotels the next day or so. Our company did a global attendance call - we didn't lose anyone. Local staff were volunteering their homes and hotel rooms for those stranded.

I remember thinking that the world will never be the same.

I was in my first year of law school at the time. I had a criminal law class that morning. When we came in, one of my classmates told me that he had just heard on the radio that a plane had hit the WTC. We thought it must have been a cessna or something, and had no idea. The class went on as usual, but then when we got out, everyone was in the lounge, watching the news. The Dean came in and told everyone to go home. They shut down the campus for the day, except for a prayer service on the quad.

I was in my kitchen when the first plane hit, getting ready for work. We still weren't sure what had happened, and had no idea that it was terrorism. But before I left, the second plane hit.

As I was driving to work, my wife called me on the cell, very upset, to tell me that the first tower had fallen. She's the daughter of a New York City firefighter, and found the entire thing almost unbearable.

At work, we sat around and watched the TV coverage. Everything stopped.

As an aside, this year I started the day on 9/11 participating in a moment of silence on the South Lawn of the White House, with the President, Vice President, their wives, and most of the Cabinet and Joint Chiefs (along with a lot of us government employees). The military did the color guard and the music, and nobody does it better. It was very moving.

j