Where Were You...

[Brian L]

I'll never forget this day for many reasons...

I was at my house in Kingston, RI preparing for my dad's wake. He'd passed away after a surgical mishap in Arizona on the 5th, and it had taken 6 days to get him home and ready for the services. Was outside with the dog when I heard my wife say, "oh jesus christ..." in a tone I hope I never hear again. Ran into the house just in time to see the second tower hit. Spent the next few hours wondering if WWIII was starting while we were preparing to say goodbye to our dad. Had the worst week of my life previous to the 11th watching him pass very painfully. Seeing those poor folks suffer in NYC put me in a deeper tailspin for the day. The wake was almost surreal.. 2-3000 or so folks showed up a and it was as if it was a wake for everyone who'd passed that morning. I just remember numbness after the first hour or so. It felt selfish grieving, given all that the folks in NYC had suffered such horrible fates. What a nightmare...

[JohnR]

Conspiracy theories / discussion move to a thread in Scuppers if you REALLY feel the need to go down that path. Thanks.

[Swimmer]

Half way through a haircut at Don's in Hanson, Mass. Finished the haircut and by that time thier were about 20 people standing inside the shop including all the girls from the Conway Realty.

I know it sounds melodramatic, but when I went to walk out the door I said that, "we are at war, we just have to figure out who to shoot back at." I could tell that more than shocked a few people. Most everyone there had never been through anything like that.

[Finaddict]

I was at work - in a meeting and the individual's whose office it was had a news site up on her computer, she turned to look at the screen and said, "oh my god, a plane hit the World Trade Center." At the same moment, my boss got on the overhead and called everyone into the main conference room, and we watched the second plane hit ... freaked ...

... I can remember the first feeling I experienced was the need to be on the boat fishing either down in Islamorada on the Down Town flat for bonefish or drifting off Montauk for albies and stripers ... weird how that was my security blanket of sorts ...

My dad's company was previously on the 19th floor of one of the World Trade Center buildings ... he helped his floor get out of the building when it was bombed by the van back in 1991 or whenever that happened. The man who took over my father's position when my dad retired, moved the company in July to Jersey City ... everyone in the company was furious until 9/11 less than two months later ...

But more whacked things were happening that day in my life ... altholugh none compared to what was going on for the people who were victimized.

Doc - hats off to you for helping everyone.

[hardbait]

I was working on Manny Ramirez's condo at the millenium(Ritz Carlton) towers,26th floor, downtown Boston.It was almost coffee break,8:45 when it happened.They evacuated all the high rises in Boston. I remember the T was packed with people, no one said a word the whole ride.

[mikrok]

In law class, senior year of high school. After we first tuned in and were shocked by what was happening we were evacuated to the rear of the building, onto the soccer field because some jackass called in a bomb threat or something (went through a few of them). I remember feeling pretty numb about the direct "threat" because of what I had witnessed. Kids in class had older brothers and sisters at school in NYC and nobody knew if they might have been in the area at the time

[JohnnyD]

At college. My roommate's dad was a head for emergency response in NYC. He dealt with a lot of remote coordination of resources. We were getting updates on what was happening before the news stations got them. We knew within minutes about the plane hitting the pentagon and also very quickly about the forth one that went down. Always wondered if the military had to do the necessary thing and take it down.

[Mike P]

Originally Posted by justplugit

That morning around 7:30 i was walking up the stairs to take a shower
and had a sudden urge to pray for my son-in-law,
a 767 pilot leaving Kennedy at 8:00 AM that morning nonstop to LA.
While i pray for my family and friends every night, that's about it.

My wife had the TV on and as we watched the fire and smoke my daughter called
crying not knowing if Tim would be one of the planes involved..
I told my wife how i had the urge to pray as i went up stairs and she looked at me in amazement
as she had the same feeling and had prayed at the same time.

We didn't know he was safe until 11:30 when he called to say he had asked for
permission to land in ST. Louis as soon as the tower controllers had warned about
what was happening. He had to stay there for 6 days with his plane until he
could fly it home.

There is no doubt in my mind that the terrorists had looked at his flight
as a possible plane as it had the same MO as the others,
767, nonstop to the coast with a full tank, and leaving at 8:00 AM.

I don't want to freak you out, and I want to stress that this has never been officially confirmed, but there were pretty strong rumors floating about NYC in the weeks after 9/11 that a hijacking attempt was intercepted at JFK that morning. Rumor had it that the would-be hijackers were somehow challenged at security, and fled out onto the airport taxiways, and disappeared.

[nightfighter]

It was thought that a total of seventeen planes were actually targeted. And there is still a 737 that is not accounted for.....

[chief10]

I was driving up rt. 3 when I heard the report of the small aircraft on WEEI. I called my cousin Greg who was in the second tower and couldn't get through. I remember getting to work and at the time I worked with my younger brother, as soon as I walked in I knew something was wrong. I stayed until the second tower was hit then drove home. With all the conflicting reports I wasn't really sure what to think until I saw it on TV. I can remember trying to tell myself this wasn't happenning, none of it looked real. A very sad day for everyone who enjoys being an American. A couple of pictures from the 9-11 memorial in Plymouth. If you haven't seen this yet, stop by.It's worth it.

[Backbeach Jake]

I was at work. One of the mechanics, Gil, said Fred, put on a radio. There were conflicting stories, small plane, then airliner, then another airliner, then another, then yet another. Gil came back over to my shop and said let's take an early lunch where there's a TV, bad stuff is going on. I left a grilled tuna sandwich on the bar untouched....and went back to work. One of the Brazilian guys asked me what was going to happen now. I told him that a lot more people were going to die...I've never felt more dejected in my life, never....

[justplugit]

Originally Posted by Mike P

I don't want to freak you out, and I want to stress that this has never been officially confirmed, but there were pretty strong rumors floating about NYC in the weeks after 9/11 that a hijacking attempt was intercepted at JFK that morning. Rumor had it that the would-be hijackers were somehow challenged at security, and fled out onto the airport taxiways, and disappeared.

Thanks Mike, i never heard the rumor about JFK, but not ever having this kind of feeling to pray and having my wife have the same feeling about 1/2 hour before take off was incredible to both of us. He's always flying, that strong feeling never felt before, that day and that time?????

I don't pretend to have an answer, but i have always felt that they had targeted
his flight because it was the exact plane and flight time as the others.
If there were would-be hijackers that were foiled, it would go a long way in lifting
the mystery for us.

Thanks for shedding some light.

[BigBo]

Home from work recovering from hernia surgery. My daughter had just came over to the house to do some laundry and I was laying on the couch with my then 11 month old grandson. We watched in horror and I couldn't help but wonder what the future would be like for my grandson growing up in a world of global terrorism.

[fumifish]

working in Manhattan on wall street. had a trip out of Chicago that am for a baseball game with clients. office address was 1 new york plaza. not close but not far enough...

dont know where to start...

never forget

[Katie]

French class. I was 11, 6th grade. And the tv was staticy so we couldn't really tell what was going on but then we saw the 2nd plane hit after we got it. I couldn't really comprehend what was going on. Now it's just like wow.

[Crafty Angler]

I'd actually slept in a bit that morning until 8 or so and sat having coffee, proof reading the ProJo and watching the morning news after a busy weekend during what had been a very busy season for us. My wife was already downstairs in the studio office when the first news reports came in about the WTC.

When I saw the 2nd plane hit live and in real time, there was little doubt that it was indeed an attack and not just a terrible accident and it sent a cold chill through me - I distinctly remember saying OMFG.

In the eight years since there's been a minute-by-minute replay of the sequence of events on the anniversary. I watched perhaps 10 or 15 minutes of it Friday morning and had to turn it off. I find I can't watch it anymore. As someone who has dealt with imaging for over 25 years, it's too much for me and takes me back to something nightmarish I keep hoping I'll wake up from and can't. There's still an air of unreality to it.

I now find that those images and the heart-rending stories of the unimaginable horror, self-sacrificing heroism and tragedy that go with them are too much for me to revisit through the cold unblinking eye of taped live TV coverage. I suppose that videotape will become the Zapruder film for Gen-X and Gen-Y, documenting the shocking and grisly details of the attack that stunned and saddened us all. Watching it now, in retrospect, it also foreshadows what was yet to come as a result.

Ultimately, whether we knew those people who perished or not, they were a part of us as a nation and that sense of loss and grief is still with us today. The cathartic moment for me was the service at St Patrick's for the fallen police chaplain. My wife and I knew one of the officiants, a Jesuit monk with Newport connections and made us feel a part of the effort to address our grief and sadness as a nation.

Less than 2 weeks later we shot the wedding of a young woman at the NYYC whose boss, the CEO of a well-known software company, was in the first plane to strike the WTC. Her husband and his groomsmen had friends in both towers.

Two weeks after that we shot another big event and the groom was in the 2nd tower when the first was hit and immediately exited the building via the stairs some 80 floors up. It was a joyous occasion for the young couple but there was a pall of sorts over the affair, too, and as an observer I saw the thousand yard stare in that young man's eyes.

Today, without a doubt, post-911 America is a much different place. Eight years later OBL is still at large while we chased other red herrings in Iraq and Afghanistan, killing and wounding tens of thousands of young American men and women with collateral casualties in those countries well in excess of a hundred thousand by conservative estimates.

At this point I'm not so interested in where I was then as where I find myself today after the anniversary.

That place is older, colder and a good bit more cynical when I realize that our great national loss and the shock, anger and determination to bring those responsible to justice was manipulated into an excuse to further someone else's agenda at a staggering cost in human suffering on all sides.

911 will always be a terrible memory for me and for all of us, a day to remember and reflect on a great national tragedy. It is also a day to honor the men and women who gave their lives driven by the hope that others might live.

I pray we never forget.

[luds]

I was sitting in a training class for my first day of post college real work. We also got early. I can remember feeling nervous because I had to drive from Quincy to Wakefield which meant driving through the tunnel. I was pretty relieved once Boston was in my rear view. I spent the rest of the day calling my friends that worked in that area and on the phone with my girlfiend who could see all the smoke out of her dorm room in Hempstead Long Island.

[leo33]

working on the roof at the Black Falcon terminal across from Logan.we had no radio but found it odd when the sky went quiet.we noticed all the fuel trucks getting as far from the terminals as they could and that's when my wife(girlfriend at the time)called.shortly after we got buzzed by a couple of F15's from Otis.

[The Dad Fisherman]

I was at work waithing for a cab ride to Logan so I could catch a flight to the UK. Needless to say.....we didn't make the flight. Not that I wanted to after all that had happened.

[Gloucester2]

I was 100+ miles offshore tuna fishing with Skip Petis of the Dorado II out of Point Judith . . . we started getting blurbs over the marine radio of planes crashing, car bombs, suicide bombers, etc., etc. - many of which turned out to be false, unfortunately some were not. No one much felt like fishing and we headed in . . . I can vividly remember the Coast Guard boats patrolling the shores as we neared port and the nearly non-stop line of police and emergency vehicles flying down the Mass Pike presumable to help in the effort.

[Islander77]

Woke up at 5 am Couldnt fall back asleep... Went fishing for a bit... Headed home for coffee and shower before school at NETTTS to get my CDL.... was running late turned tv on when in shower... Not to news channel to CMT... Mom called like 20 times while in shower... Called her back said turn on the news... saw in disbelief... Grabbed more coffee sat down Called my best friend/ Brother he was coming threw NY that am in his truck on way home... Sat watched news didnt make school... Remember sitting there watching in awe, My family is from a place that has 1000 year round residents.... So this really made me wonder what the world had come to... I remember being sick to my stomach... Couple days later in Wakefield a Man was dragged out of his store and assaulted cause of were his ethnic genealogy comes from...

[Typhoon]

Was in training for work, left work and surfed amazing waves. Since then we've had waves every 9/11 since.

[islander]

I was at my desk at USCG station Gloucester. I still remember how I kept thinking, that this couldn't happen here.

[Mr. Sandman]

I was in my home office and I got a call from my office in Arlington, VA, down the street from the Pentagon. One of my co-workers was at a starbucks and saw the plane approach the building, he said you could hear the engines winding up to full power as they made impact. He said they hit at full throttle. He said the fireball and explosion was huge. The rest of the day I was tuned in to the tube. My young sons who had visited the tower a week or so eailer said..."That is fake, right dad?" No son, its real. He cried for a while and it was 3 years before I could get him into a plane and it was a white-knucle drill for the first few flights.

IMO most of this country nor the current admin still does not have a full grasp of the kind of people we are dealing with.

[MikeToole]

I was in my office at work when I got a call from my wife about it. After that I was sitting in my office with my Admin Assistant waiting for word on her parents who had flown out of Boston that morning. Only to find out just before noon that her parents were on the second aircraft that flew into the towers. Her father had just retired a few days earlier.

It was also my wife's birthday.

[piemma]

Heading for NYC for a meeting with the Port Authority on the 72nd floor of Tower 2. I was working for an imaging company and we did all the scanning and indexing for the Port Authority. We had something like 25 servers at 2 Broadway as the processing facility. I remember I got as far as New Haven and all the trains had been shut down. I went home thinking how if I had gone to NYC on Monday, 9/11 was a Tuesday, I would be dead.

[The Iceman 6]

I was on the top floor of 3 Times Square (Reuters Building) watching in horror. Our building was evacuated real quick. Walking home to U. E. Side, saw the North tower buckle. Was on 45th & 5th, saw it clear as day, couldn't believe it. Eerie quiet, people praying, others crying, most just dumfounded. Proceeded to walk to a good friend's house who worked in the N. Tower, just waited for him to get home, he did, he left everything there and just left WTC, phone, wallet, car keys, he just knew to get out. He told me he left immediately when he saw a bunch of paper's flying around. Then I went home to my then pregnant wife and had a few drinks for both of us. Lost of few Instinet colleagues that day. That night, all up and down First Avenue, everybody had candles out, it was a sight I'll never forget. Rollerbladed with a friend downtown the next day to help out, do anything, give blood, whatever. HEAVY concentration of military, police, fire, and first responders. Never forget there was man with a spray painted sign that read "You Made Us Stronger." My friend whose a FF from New Haven made it to the site and couldn't believe the amount of shoes/sneakers at the recovery site, that's all he kept talking about, the empty shoes/sneakers. RIP

Ice

[JakeF]

I was at Kansas City International Airport that morning with my wife, waiting to board a plane to L.A. on business. The airport monitors happened to be tuned to a news channel and we saw the footage of the first building smoking as we boarded the plane. At that time they weren't sure what had happened and our flight took off as usual.

About 30 minutes into the flight, we suddenly started decending quickly and we all knew something was wrong. The airline crew didn't say anything until we were on final approach to land in Oklahoma City,,, then they broke the news of the details. Everyone was real quiet,,,, stunned. After we got off the plane and into the very crowded airport, I booked it for a rental car counter but they were all sold out by the time I got there. My secretary ended up driving down from Kansas City the next day to pick us up, and we spent that day in a hotel room watching the news and praying.