how the time quickly passes.....4 years since the fateful morning on 9/11....I remember how crisp the air was and how blue the sky was that morning.....how quickly things can change. Remember those who were lost that morning......their family and friends......and all of the hero's who gave all that day. Prayers for all of them this Sunday morning as we pray for those victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Amen.

The day was truely a day in September that we all hope to be on the water. I was walking down from Tribeca a little after 0900 that day. Heading to the WTC to take the PATH to NJ and another day in the Office. I looked to the water hoping to see a school of bass driving bait into a ball on the surface and wishing I could be in my boat chasing them. I heard animated discussion around me, looking to the south I saw near the top of the WTC flames!!!! At a distance it seemed unreal, something staged by some group to make a marketing point. In minutes, I smelled a odor of something I left years ago across the Pacific, burning AV fuel. If you have been on a carrier you know never forget that smell, I looked up turned around caught the IRT to the PortAuthority and a cab to La Guardia to rent a car and home to PVD later in the day. I never drove as fast as I had that day to see my babies, that day brought back memories I thought I had forgotten thru various means over the last 30 years. I haven't flown since I left the Forces in 1977 and it was so vivid again on that day.

We truly live, regardless of our sentiments, in a country with so much, so much to appreciate, it is difficult to accept that places in this world, things like 9/11 happen everyday. You don't know if you could be on a bus with when a bomb goes off, or a jet could drop napalm on the road you are walking along.

We are so fortunate to life in the country we are, I lost 3 people I had worked with that day. Every day I get out on to the water I think of them, it doesn't take an anniversary to think of them nor at times what may of happened when I was dirt down at 0000 with a green pickle over a full load.


Striperman36

i have not forgotten. a prayer sent for those who survived and those that perished and their families.

It started as just one of those very rare days in NY, cool and so clear you could see for miles, with the promise of it warming into the mid-70s. The kind of day you'd order if you could dictate the weather year-round.

I was doing my usual thing, driving into the City from LI, listening to Imus on the radio. As I neared JFK airport on the Belt Parkway, I saw a plume of smoke in the sky, coming from (as it looked at the time) near Aqueduct race track. My first thought was that one of the horsebarns at the track went up, as those old firetraps often do. Then, Chuck McCord interrupted whatever was going on and reported that a plane had crashed into the WTC and the building was on fire. Early reports mentioned a "small twin-engined" plane. I was thinking, pilot must have had a heart attack or something, how else could he fly into that building on a day like this? Said a prayer for the folks on the plane. Then, they cut away to a locally famous sportscaster, Warner Wolff, who lived a few blocks north of the WTC and could see the buildings. He reported that a "large" plane had flown very low over his building seconds before he heard an explosion and saw the building on fire.

As I neared Brooklyn, I caught glimpses of the north tower burning. As I reached the bridge over Gerritsen Creek, traffic was slowing, as it often does, and it was compounded by folks gawking at the WTC. I saw a plane nearing the skyline. In the next few seconds seconds, thought processes were all over the place--"WTF is that plane doing there---looks like a United 737?? Mike, you're seeing things, it's a news helicopter. Effin' no, it's an effin' airliner, OMFG he's going to crash the other building. HOLY #####!!! (AS A FIREBALL ENGULFS THE ENTIRE TOP OF THE SOUTH TOWER). Christ, this isn't an accident, we're under a terrorist attack---HTF did they get their hands on a United???" Right then and there, I should have got off the highway, turned around and went home. but I proceeded in to work, my office being on Staten Island. The rest of the way, you can see lower Manhattan fairly regularly. The south tower was much more heavily damaged, and burning much more fiercely. I knew right then and there they were never going to save that building, and my only hope was that it wouldn't take down the north tower when it went. I was still thinking they crashed a small twin into the north one and that the FD would save it.

As I approached the Verrazano Bridge, I saw a small, single engine plane and thought, "aw, s###, here we go again, he's going to crash the bridge". But it was just a guy being vectored out of Dodge by ATC. But I realized how exposed my ass was on that bridge, but still crossed it and went to the office. I must have hit 90 crossing the bridge. From the office window, we watched the fires. We saw little black dots falling from the south tower. At first we thought it was just fire debris. Then, the news reports mentioned people jumping to their deaths to escape the fire, and we realized that was what we were seeing. The chief clerk called the office and asked that we send every lawyer who could make it down there, so they could just clear the calendars and get everyone out of the building. I drove down, and the court officers in the lobby are all dressed in flak vests, and one of them is standing with his hand on the butt of his gun. I'm thinking, "Jesus, man, this is Staten Island, relax, even lawyers from other parts of the City can't find this place". The towers went down while we were in court, and that's when I first heard the scope of it all---that the plane that hit the north tower was also a 767, that the planes that were used were hijacked in flight with passengers aboard and not "stolen", that the Pentagon was also hit, that a number of planes were still "unaccounted for", that hundreds of police and firemen were in the south tower when it went down, that there were still firemen in the other tower when it went down, the crash outside of Pittsburgh.

We spent the afternoon watching the huge cloud of smoke that enveloped Manhattan and watching TV, wondering how the three of us who lived on Long Island were going to get home. Our office investigator, who was a retired detective, took us in his car, "tinned" us over the bridge with some official looking passes and a load of Blarney, drove us to his house in Queens and let us borrow his other car to drive home. Which is where I stayed until Friday.

4 years later it's still clear, every step of the way. A day I'll never forget.

The weather was earily similar to today......a real beauty! Don't think I will ever get the site of the towers pancaking on top of themselves....I was just glad there were not more killed...as they fell I was sure there were tens of thousands in those buildings! :(

Was sitting in the chair on the first hit and was getting up, paying my barber and getting ready to leave when the second plane hit. Thirty people from the surrounding office building had squeezed into the shop to watch in horror. As I walked out I said we are at war. We just need to figure out who to shoot at. Some woman looked at me and said you full of s#@t. Wish I was.

jeez mike holy %@#& what an awful experience you had.

I lost two of my childhood friends in the South Tower and it bothers me to this day. They worked in Cantor and my only hope was that it was fast. ALL the rest of the folks whether in NY, Washington or PA are still in my thoughts as well.

The anger that this kind of experience inflames is checked by what George and Company said when asked why we were heading to Afghanistan AND then Iraq a couple of years later. To paraphrase he said "It will be a LONG haul".



:mad:

I'm still amazed by the fact that no one I knew personally died that day. The closest I could come was, when I worked in Brooklyn, I worked with a young lawyer named Jennifer Glick. Her brother (I think his name was Jeremy) was one of the heroes of Flt 93 who tried to re-take the plane from the hijackers.

Some of the poeple I worked with in Brooklyn were working at 225 Broadway that day, two blocks from the WTC. They were standing in their office kitchen watching the north tower burn when the second plane hit. The fireball was so intense that some suffered the equivalent of sunburn on their faces. Later, they saw the jumpers and even had eye contact with some of them as they fell. :(

The police had their building cordoned off, weren't allowing anyone to leave, and they were terrified that one of the towers would fall in their direction. One later walked all the way from lower Manhattan to Jamaica, Queens to get a Long Island RR train home.

All in all, I was fortunate. I got to watch from 2 miles or so away.

At 7:30 that morning i had just finished my coffee and as i headed upstairs,i felt a need to pray for my son in law. At 8:00 he was due to pilot a 767 American Airlines non stop from Kennedy to San Francisco. I would bet the farm "they" had looked at his flight,it was the same MO and departing time as the other planes.
Why the need to pray, and what the prayers did, i don't know, but my wife had the same feeling to pray at the same time that morning.
As they didn't know how many planes were involved our Daughter called crying not knowing what to do. We just kept talking to her with the obscene pictures on the TV in the background, until her call waiting clicked in arond 11:00 am, and we found out he had landed his plane in St Louis on hearing from the flight controlers what had happened.
We lost two of our young friends in the trade center. No matter where you were that morning it was very close to home for everybody.

Please let us all take time today to remember and never forget these circumstancesa and those that we lost on 9/11. I was out today in this clear, Tom. kara and Stephen along with my father as I was able to reel in a good quanitity of seabass that my family and friends will enjoy this evening.

May we all go in peace and happiness, forever morel

Bill

i was coming back from vacation to brasil with my ex-wife. i believe that we were one of the last planes to leave newark and were in the air above or just outside new york when the first plane hit. got to providence and then heard the news from my very freaked out, crying mother. my good friend's cousin is a stewardess out of logan and she called in sick that morning. she was scheduled to be on one of those planes. seems no matter who you are or where you are from, you've got a story. what a shame.

It is so important to remember how painful that day really was for all of us.

A coworker is now married to a woman whose husband was on the American Airline flight which hit the first tower. I cannot imagine how this poor woman dealt with such crushing grief. But, she did. Life has to go on somehow. In fact, she is now pregnant with their first child, who oddly enough, was due on September 11th. Coincidence? :angel:

BTW, I heard this on the G. Gordon Liddy show awhile back. Can we all refer to this event as September 11th, not 911? I agree, it shows more respect for the date and the event. nine eleven is a car by Porsche, 911 brings police and fire, September 11th is another day of infamy.

Mike P, thanks for the first hand account.