The "Where were you?" thread..

[Olorin401]

Crossposted at DailyKos

Well here we are, six years later.

All politics aside, just for a moment, use this spot to tell us where you were when you first heard what was happening. Then let us know how you feel about these events six years later and how they have shaped your life.

I was inspired to write this today by an older gentleman who called into C-Span this morning. He was reflecting on the Pearl Harbor attacks and World War II, and how it shaped the minds and attitudes he had towards the Japanese and Germans for the rest of his life.
-=-
I must have told my story so many times over the past few years, to friends and family and folks on the various blogs and online games that I use to relax in the evening.

I was 24 years old, full of energy and reeling from breaking off a 2-year engagement a few weeks before. I had a busy morning ahead of me - had to go to court to take care of a traffic violation, then off to work. I remember it being one of the more stunningly beautiful days of late Summer, with a autumn chill to the air that made me turn around and grab a light sweater before I left the apartment. I drove around downtown New Haven, CT for a few minutes looking for a parking spot, finally finding a spot behind one of the lawyer's offices near the Yale University campus. As I pulled in, the morning radio DJ went to a commercial break, but not before mentioning "...something about a plane hitting the World Trade Center..." with a laugh to his voice that made it sound like he was joking. I didn't think too much of it, and shut off the car.

About an hour and a half later, I was sitting in the courtroom waiting for things to start when the bailiff came into the room and confirmed that not one, but two planes had crashed. There was a bit of a hushed silence that fell over us, and some people left the room hurriedly, probably to step outside and check the news. Within the next hour, after the plane had crashed into the Pentagon, the bailiff appeared again. This time, he told us all that proceedings for the day were cancelled as a matter of national security, and we would be informed by mail of new court dates.

I went to work, and all of us were distracted for the entire day by the constant broadcast on the salesroom television of what had happened. We knew we wouldn't be getting any work done that day. Some still tried to make calls, only to be rebuffed angrily by scared folks from all over the Northeast.

More to come, I have to get going to work. I'll post the rest in a couple hours.

[Skoal]

Re: The "Where were you?" thread..

I was in college on my way to work when I heard something about it on a comedy morning show. I walked into the bar to clean and saw the second tower fall. They let me off work and I went to my frat house where I lived. We have about 60 guys downstairs in front of our huge TV. I remember seeing campus police picking up students who were middle eastern and escorting them to their homes. They didn't want some fanatic attacking them.

It was a wake up call to a few of friends since they knew that this would lead us to war and that they would be called up.

[Wise Donkey]

Re: The "Where were you?" thread..

Great post. I remember the day, like everyone does (or should). It was about 9am and I was asleep, and the phone starts ringing. It started me awake and I answered it - it was my roommate's Mom calling to talk to him. I let her know he was at work, so she told me the news instead - that a plane had hit the WTC and it was all over the news. Better than any cup of coffee, it woke me up and I rushed down stairs, I was glued to the TV all day, watching it all unfold. I was in college, and classes were canceled, and I didn't have to work. I called all my family, had stunned conversations with them.

Six years to the day later, I am in Iraq. I joined the FL Army National Guard in November of '02 and I am here today without a doubt because of what was done to those innocent people in Sept '01.

If you haven't done so yet today, or whatever day you read this, have a moment of silence to remember those that we lost, not just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but those that sacrificed their lives to try and save who they could.

Never forget them.

[BurningPanther]

Re: The "Where were you?" thread..

Ironically, I'd just joined the Air Force then.

I was a week out of Basic Training, still awaiting a course date for my Tech training. I was assigned to do details at Dolan Hall, the same building I was to begin Tech training at Keesler AFB in Mississippi.

MSgt King was our reporting official for the day, and had no qualms with us fucking off. He had nothing in particular he wanted us to do, so our only instructions were to hide out. This meant most of the day spent holed up in the maintenance locker on the fist floor, just bullshitting. There were about six of us.

We didn't hear about the attack right away, just one guy, away moving furniture, rushed in saying the twin towers had been bombed. MSgt King came in, apparently agitated, urging us to stay hidden in the locker room. There we remained, all work effectively stopped, for the rest of the day.

We didn't get an opportunity to know what happened until about 3pm, when the classes were concluding. Then, we were in a snack bar, transfixed to the image on a 16 inch television screen, of the first and second towers being hit. We all knew war would be declared, we all knew our time in training and beyond was irrevocably altered. We were right.

[Jonastb]

Re: The "Where were you?" thread..

I was on Active Duty for the Army reserve in Saipan, a tiny island in the Pacific. Unfortunately, I didn't find out about it til the next morning. It was very surreal being halfway around the world when it happened.
I saw it first when I was checking my email on Yahoo, and thought someone was playing a prank. Then I watched on the news and was horrified. I sped to work to see what was happening. We were told to close the "post" and just sit for instructions.

Nothing happened for the next few days and things calmed down.
I was the admin NCO for the Infantry Company on Saipan, we had MANY people come and try to sign up right then and there.

[Telera]

Re: The "Where were you?" thread..

I was a senior in High School.

It was during first period, my Chorus class, and we had a TV in there, but it wasn't on. Our class was working on getting ready for our winter recital, and was in the middle of Phantom of the Opera snippets.

No one came to tell us what was happening, even though the band and art classes were right next door. The first inkling I had that something was wrong was actually at class change. We all know high school, it isn't quiet at class change. You can barely hear the person next to you. But as we went out into the hall, there was a hushed silence. A few whispers here and there, but otherwise everyone was acting as if they were... well.. scared.

I was baffled, remember telling my friend Autumn that something wierd was going on, but thought nothing more of it than a drug raid or something. Ha...

It wasn't until I walked into my second period class room that I saw something horrible had happened. The teacher never let us have the TV on in there, and he was quite upset whenever any of us turned it on near the end of class. But it was on, and he was staring at it, and that wasn't a good sign. I looked up as I put my books down and saw two gaping, smoking holes in the WTC. I was shocked, stunned, as I suppose most all of us were. I asked the teacher 'What the hell is going on?' when by rule I try to keep my language clean around my 'elders.'

So he simply said 'We're under attack.' and I sat down and well... we all just watched the TV. When they fell I felt sick inside. And terrified, even though my hometown was thousands of miles from NYC and I didn't know a soul in it. We all knew everything was changing now, and it wouldn't be for the better.

I turned to Samantha and told her, "This has got to be one of my sicker nightmares." (I'm prone to some vivid, bad ones.) But she just looked at me and said, "No, I don't think so." Which sounds cliche to say, I suppose, or to ask, but it felt that surreal to me.

Needless to say, we got zero work done that day. Our math teacher actually tried to get us to, but one of the girls in the class had someone flying in from one of the cities the planes were hijacked from, and she was in hysterics. The rest of us couldn't stop watching the TV. Thankfully, the girl's relative wasn't on any of the planes.

The next day I came down with the worst case of laryngitis I've ever had, and I was still trying to talk about it around it. Think I strained myself as I lost a few notes in my upper singing range after that, but as they're the psychotically high ones I had only rare reason to hit, I wasn't bothered.

[Omni]

Re: The "Where were you?" thread..

I was in college and in my bed when a friend called me from work. He was told to take the rest of the day off because he worked in a high rise. He told me to check the news and when I went downstairs to turn on the tv, I was complete shock.

[neokaril]

Re: The "Where were you?" thread..

I was in the Pentagon watching the WTC when the other shoe fell

[Olorin401]

Re: The "Where were you?" thread..

Ok here's the second part.. in regards to the C-Span caller I mentioned earlier:

It's been echoed many countless times that the 9/11 attacks will be remembered in our minds in a similar way to the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. I have no doubt that this is true, as it's plainly obvious in our remembrance of this event each year of those that were innocent victims of tragedy and those who risked and gave their lives to help save others.

As to the parallels of a generation of animosity against others for the attack, well I suppose only many more years will be able to answer this question. Hearing this older gentleman describe how it took him decades to overcome his anger towards the Japanese, Germans, and those Americans of such descent sounded a lot like how some people today (including political leaders and well-known media figures) react towards those from the Middle East, Northern Africa, or southern Asia. I can only imagine it will take decades for us to come to the realization that not everyone in the world is determined to create conflict, and that all of us as human beings have our angels and demons on our shoulders guiding us.

[Feba]

Re: The "Where were you?" thread..

I remember the day, like everyone does (or should).

http://kutv.com/local/local_story_253163632.html



Anyway, I was riding to school, and the radio mentioned a plane hitting the WTC (I honestly had no clue what it was at the time, as I was in elementary school. I just knew it was a big skyscraper.) - I remembered how a plane had hit the Empire State Building once, figuring it was similar circumstances. Got to school, and I don't really remember very clearly after that but I remember a lot of people coming in with more and more news, and talking about it. I also remember one of the teachers turning on a TV so we could watch (a very rare event), and one of my friend's dads getting off work early because he worked at a financial institution (I thought he was lucky). I don't remember it, but I got in a conversation the other day about 'where you were', and my mom mentioned that apparently I got in trouble with the school because I seemed "happy" that it had happened. Which I honestly believe because that school was run by fucking psychopaths and retards.

[eticket109]

Re: The "Where were you?" thread..

I was at home asleep. I was typically in bed til 8:00 pst back then which was well after everything happened. My mom called me at about 6:30 or so in tears. I really couldn't catch much of what she was saying except something about "World Trade Center" and "both gone". I turned on the tv and just sat there for a while before I went into work. I think I took about one call that day, maybe two. Our usual volume was anywhere between 50-200 calls per agent back then. It was eerie because every tv in the center is typically tapped into a video feed that shows the call queue. That day they were all on CNBC. We all just sat around talking about what happened and speculated when the market would open again and whether we'd stay open. (I worked for a brokerage firm back then.)

Oddly enough, I was scheduled to fly out of town that Thursday. I was flying to our center in Atlanta to do some training and to meet a bunch of forum friends at an auto show. There was a girl out there I had been trying to hook up with as well. lol. Of course everyone from the forum pretty much canceled on the meet because they were unsure of flight status or just concerned in general. My flight happened to be one of the first ones cleared after the airports reopened so I left as scheduled. The trip was just surreal. All the flights seemed pretty empty and the airports (Sacramento, St. Louis and Atlanta) were ghost towns. There were armed National Guardsmen everywhere. I remember that the 'special' security screenings resulted in a red tag attached to your carry-on. Oddly, I only saw those on passengers that looked like they may be middle eastern.

In the end, about 5 people showed up instead of the planned 50 or so. I never did meet up with the girl I had flown out to see. I spent my week in the hotel room watching HBO or eating at the Waffle House down the street. Turns out I had picked a hotel that was completely across town from the call center so I only ended up heading out there once. The flights back were much more 'normal' though security was still heavy and there was still an armed presence there. Shortly after I flew back someone managed to run past security and get all the way to the gate in the Atlanta airport before being stopped by security personnel. He had forgotten his hat.

[Caspian]

Re: The "Where were you?" thread..

In college on my way to class, listening to Bob and Tom in my car. I thought it was a joke until I got to class and everyone was talking about it. Class was quickly cancelled and most everyone went to the main auditorium to watch the news for awhile. Took awhile to digest it all. And thought we've gotten away from it in the last couple years, it was a single event that really united the country and made us feel like one people again. I've always been pretty patriotic, but that one event solidified it 100x more than any other in my life. Always have to rememer that freedom is something we have to fight for everyday and I have nothing but respect and love for those fighting to defend it, here at home and overseas.

[Jarre]

Re: The "Where were you?" thread..

I was at work in the UK, the boss heard it on the radio and bought the portable Tv we had up to the main office area. We watched it on the BBC news which froze the schedule all day.

As a part time firefighter then, I knew what the consequences the 300+ firefighters who died faced, they ran in where other ran away from. Peace guys...