10 yrs later, WHERE were you on 9-11-01?

I had come home from work and fed the animals, then talked to my husband who was working in Delaware. A few minutes after that I was playing on the computer, when he called me back and said, “Turn on the TV, breaking news!” I turned on CNN and just stared at the smoking ruins of the first tower. “What is going on?” he asked me and told him a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. “Oh my God, it’s true. Someone just told me and I didn’t believe it! They told us to shut down work, I’ll call you back.” (He was doing maintenance on cable lines.) I sat transfixed for the next couple hours and watched the horror go from bad to worse.

I was working at my computer and our group secretary, Martha Jane, came into my cubicle to tell me about the first plane hitting the World Trade Center. “Terrible accident!” and we both went back to work.

When Martha Jane told me the second plane hit another tower, I said in a loud voice, “We’re at war.” I called my director and said our group was coming into his office to listen to the radio.

The office followed me down the hall — we were all running — when we heard the drone of planes above us.

Pilots were being told to land at the nearest airport, and these great planes were everywhere, dropping out of the sky into the small local airport across the street from us.

And we were at war.

School was in session on that beautiful cloudless day. When we heard about the first plane, it was assumed it was a small one, then heard it was full sized and another had hit the other tower, another hit the Pentagon and we were under attack. Internet and cell phone service went down; dust landed on cars and other surfaces. The district received a bomb threat and we spent most of the afternoon at the far end of the campus. Though many children’s parents work in NYC, not one was lost.

I knew a flight attendant on flight 93. I just saw Lorraine Bay’s picture on tv the other evening. Jeremy Glick was from the town I live in. Today there is a scenic hiking trail named for him. There is a memorial at town hall for the citizens in the town lost that day.

Father Mychal Judge, the first official casualty, was originally in the town I live in before he left for NYC. I’ll never get that picture of him out of my head.

Putting on my shoes to go for a walk I was sitting on the end of my bed that morning watching the news and seeing the very first indications that the plane was flying into the tower. Couldn’t move from that spot for hours just watching the whole thing 🙁 Now the day is a day for prayers of those who lost their lives and their families

I worked in Boston at the time and remember a coworker coming in and telling us what happened and just staring at her in complete disbelief. Then immediately going online to see what was happening. We were then sent home as they didn’t know if Boston could be a target. I got home to find my husband and his friend passed out on the couches completely clueless as to what was going on. His friend was a state trooper from CT and was getting calls to go into work but was so hung-over he couldn’t even function. I remember being so disgusted with both of them. I spent the rest of the day sitting on the couch just staring at the TV in complete disbelief. About 5 years ago, we moved to NY and now my husband works in NYC and I’m so scared for him because I have friends who lost so much on that day. Living in Boston, I was distanced from it but now living closer to it, I can’t even fathom what it was like.

I was asleep, I was freelancing then, and often worked until the wee hours and slept til 10 am. My phone rang early, and it was my mom, who said, “Lis, you need to get up and turn on the TV, one of the WTC towers has been hit by a plane, and so has the Pentagon. The world is on fire!”

I got to the TV just in time to see the first tower collapse. I looked at Misty (she was a baby) and said, “Well beautiful, I guess this changes everything. Nothing will ever be the same. And mommy can forget vacation.” (I was leaving the next day for Pawley’s Island SC).

And I was right. I cried for days.

I was in middle school. Some teachers found out about what was going on, but the general consensus became “don’t tell the kids, it’s their parents job”. Of course word slipped out, but since no teachers were allowed to let us know what was going on, rumors were flying out of control. My classmates were saying that Philadelphia was being bombed and that there were explosions everywhere (I lived about 10 min from philly). About 30% of the parents of my classmates came in to school, picked up their kids mid day, and took them home. They put our school under lock down mode and we stayed in one classroom. I was in my science classroom and my teacher decided we should know what was going on and he told us that planes had crashed into buildings in New York. The principal sent us home with a letter for our parents saying it is up to them whether or not they tell us what is going on and ways to deal with grief etc. Eventually the school went out of ‘lock down’ mode, but they cancelled classes so we all got to hang out in the cafeteria or other classrooms or hallway with friends until the buses came (it seems strange that they didn’t want to tell us what was going on but they cancelled middle school classes – it is obvious to us that something was up and by the end of the day most students figured out the true story)

The night that NYC had the car bomb that failed last year I was a block or two away playing games at Dave and Busters completely oblivious to what was going on. It’s scary how close you can get to acts of terrorism sometimes when you think it’ll never happen to you (not that I can even begin to compare being blocks from something that didn’t even explode to the tragedy of 9/11, but it reminded me of that)

I was a junior in high school and 9-11 happened to be the birthday of a good friend. Our circle had brought in homemade stuff to eat to celebrate the birthday during lunch that day. We even convinced one of out favorite teachers to let us hang out in a spare classroom so we weren’t in the noisy lunch room. The block before lunch is called seminar (study hall) and I was roaming the hallways when I noticed it was unusually quiet in all of the classrooms and everyone was transfixed to the TV’s. I peaked my head in my history teacher’s class and looked up at the TV just in time to see the second plane hit the WTC. By the time the bell rang for lunch time, my brother (who was a freshman) had managed to find me and I just remember still sitting in that empty classroom with our friends, eating cupcakes and feeling like a schmuck. Here we were, eating sweets, safe and sound in our school…and yet there were unspeakable horrors happening on the East Coast. It’s amazing how lives can change in a nanosecond.