9/11 was when I first subscribed to the NY Times. I've never been one to have the radio or TV on early, and so by midmorning I hadn't heard the monstrous news. Then I called someone who was printing a brochure for me to see when it would be done, and when she answered the phone she was weeping and told me why. I immediately went to the TV and then, when stories began to repeat, I came to the computer and went to the Times website. That day I subscribed--so that I'd never again be blindsided by something so important again.
Sometime that morning, I received an email from a young man in Tanzania whom I'd been sponsoring for a journalism program. He said what was happening in New York, D.C., and Pennsylvania reminded him of the embassy bombings in Kenya and his own country. And I suddenly realized that, as of that day, the types of violence that had always happened "over there" had finally come to America. Thankfully we haven't had any other disasters of that scope since then (I'm writing while knocking on wood and saying a prayer), but now we're doing these things to one another; now more terrorist attacks in this country are being carried out by Americans than by foreigners. How I pray that all forms of violence will end. But I fear that that won't be the case.
Thanks, Charles, for telling us about your 9/11--and for being one of those on whom the rest of us could rely for solid information as we attempted to find answers to that still only partially answered question: Why?
3
I will never forget the NYT's lead sentence on the 12th: "It just kept getting worse". Perhaps that will summarize the "forever war" we live with now as well.
1
The opening shot of the movie of "The French Connection" has a very good image of the structure of the WTC towers. One gets a better understanding of how the buildings were built from those few seconds than from the NYT.
Submitted Sept 12th 4:50 PM
I often disagree with your columns, Charles, but I was moved by this personal recollection. I may also have been on one of the last trains into Manhattan that morning, and what a day it was.
On a business trip today, I had a nice chat with a gregarious and clearly very happy Ethiopian cab driver on the way to the airport. I asked him why he was in such a good mood, and he delighted me by telling me that this was the first day of the Ethiopian new year and that he would soon be feasting with family and friends. He told me that many Ethiopians working in the WTC were saved on 9/11 due to preparations for their parties.
We agreed that much of what happens is beyond our control, and we can only strive learn from all our experiences that run the full spectrum from wonderful to awful. I like the annual beams of light because of their reminder to me that life is unpredictable, finite, and worth living as well as possible.
1
I remember the day well. My kids are roughly the same age as Mr. Blow's, and my wife was in California. She called and said put on the TV. Nothing was quite the same afterward. We're still living with the distortions that day created.
1
I can still remember when I was on the Throgs Neck Bridge when the attacks just occurred on my way to my college classes. When I got there, I heard about it all over the place as if it was the only thing being talked about there. I do give my condolences to those who died that day, but I feel that what wound up at the site wasn't the right way to do so. I felt that it was better to have back what we lost that day, which was the Twin Towers, along with a simple memorial. Honestly, when I look at what's there now, I just see a complex dedicated to fear and egoism instead. Also, if it was really disrespecting to have the Twin Towers rebuilt, then why allow for any other buildings to be there such as what we wound up with? What could have been restoring the skyline to what defined it so well turned into a mess with just about everything being a boondoggle, plus most of the buildings didn't even have any unique architecture. Overall, I will always look at the new site as nothing more than building a monument thanking those who did it as if we let them finish the job.
My 9/11
I read “Never Forget”, but as a New Yorker, there is no way to forget that day. A friend in Chicago called to tell us to turn on the TV. The shock we felt watching the second plane slam into the tower, making it clear it was an attack. Then the buildings collapsing and wondering how it could happen. We watched brave firefighters charging into the towers to save lives, then heard a cacophony of their personal alarms beeping, after the buildings came down. I saw people in the middle of Madison Avenue, who’d already walked 5 miles from the WTC, covered in “white dust”, continuing to walk uptown like zombies. Instead of the usual sounds of the city, there was only only a low hum of distress, sadness and shock. Later, I walked downtown and saw pictures and handwritten posters of missing people that were taped to the already filled iron fences of the 21st St Armory. I’d heard that all the hospitals, donated blood, mobilization of ambulances, doctors and nurses were waiting for victims who never came. Never came. Police and soldiers were manning a barrier on 14th Street, not letting anyone pass. So I stood at the barrier, looking downtown to where the Towers once stood, feeling helpless.
1
What a moving piece this is, a snapshot of a moment in a man’s and his family’s life that resonates for all of us.
When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, an overwhelming reaction was dominated by a sense of righteous indignation, and a wholesome desire to exact just retribution. But as these posts indicate, though the carnage was worse this time and was directed at civilians, what we get now is mostly lamentations and an embrace of victimhood.
What has gone wrong with America during the intervening years? How did we lose our sense of self-preservation and the "Greatest Generation's" spirit?
2
I was far away from the sites on a day off and had literally just turned on the TV when the news broke. In those first minutes, there was all manner of speculation until the second plane hit. Then it was quite clear what was going on.
The first thing that went through my mind was training from my time in the Army. The US Army Europe was then under threat from various groups and a Federal Agent started the presentation saying that a major terror attack would happen in America- it was just a matter of when. This class was in the 1980's.
Contacting anyone in New York was almost impossible. If memory serves, the Verizon exchange was near or at the World Trade Center and landline phone service was heavily impacted. I had friends from the NYC area from both college and Army days and could not contact them by phone.
Down in D.C., my brother worked at Crystal City, where the USPTO was then located. That complex is adjacent to both the Pentagon and National Airport for those unfamiliar with the area. Getting a phone call into the D.C. Metro was also almost impossible.
Strangely enough, what did work during those hours was the internet. Instant Messaging and e-mail worked when no phone calls were getting through.
What I remember most clearly is that in the aftermath all of the people felt as one nation regardless of race, faith, background or political viewpoint. We lost that unity and that is another tragedy.
1
Thank you, Charles, for sharing your story. And thank you to all the people who have provided comments sharing theirs. I find the personal remembrances and recollections very moving as I relive my own morning that day.
As I was reading, one theme struck me: "the world changed;" "we lost our innocence;" "we will never be the same." Must it be this way? Have we truly lost hope in finding a better world? It seems so defeatist. The world is what we make of it. Yes we all felt loss that day. Now let's do something better.
60
@Tom best comment of the day.
4
Living in Michigan at the time but born and raised in Brooklyn; I called my parents to check on them and was jarred by what my Mother told me; namely that Ocean Parkway had been entirely shut down for emergency responders. It was then I personally fully realized the magnitude of the attack.
There is one group of heroes of 9/11 who have not gotten the acknowledgement they should: the air traffic controllers. When the order to halt all air traffic was given, those people guided thousands of flights to land safely, many rerouted to airports they were not intending to go to, some at airports not even intended for their type of plane. I can't imagine what was going through their minds -- were they wondering whether any more hijacked flights were out there -- while they performed what must have been an incredibly difficult task under incredibly difficult circumstances. And yet, other than the four hijacked airliners, not a single plane crashed, not another life was lost. The air traffic controllers deserve recognition too.
8
@Nikki
Dateline on NBC did a really fantastic episode on the ATCs probably for the 10th anniversary. It was excruciating to watch and I cried multiple times but it definitely showed how heroic they were.
1
It is striking how that moment still affects us, especially those who lived New York.
I understand your memories and feelings. And while I won't ever be able to appreciate the memories of so many others, yesterday drew tears as well.
I had just returned from a trade show the night before. We had an aircraft mechanical issue in route from Denver to NY and had to land in Cleveland late Monday afternoon. Had it not been for some quick thinking and some priority with the airline, not only would I and my team been stranded in Cleveland for who knows how long, we would not have been home in the NY area to be with our families.
We were fortunate to get bumped onto the last flight that night to NY. I went to sleep in my own bed on Monday night. And I woke up to a beautiful Tuesday morning, September 11th.
As the day after a trade show is typically an official "day off", I helped our three kids get off to school along with my wife who was doing the driving. I turned on the Today Show. But not long into the first minutes, NY NBC took over the Today Show (that never happens) and presented the smoke from one of the World Trade Center Towers. Another few minutes in, Matt Laurer was back on screen taking over the helm regarding that event. And while he was attempting to describe the scene, on the big screen behind him the second plane was hurtling into the second tower. Say what you might about him, but in that moment he told his audience the truth, that this was no mistake.
3
The events of that day are personal for me. I knew five people who were on the planes that crashed into the buildings. I know two others who were booked on those flights but decided that morning to skip the flights. Our daughter was going to Wagner College on Staten Island and had a view of Lower Manhattan. She is near tears every year on 9/11.
And I had an eerie experience about 3 weeks earlier. On a flight back to LA I was reading a computer magazine with a large aerial picture of Lower Manhattan. I ticked off the ferry building, the Coast Guard building, Battery Park. But when I got to the World Trade Center, it was not there. The photo was obviously an old stock image taken before the WTC built. But I still find it strange that that photo was in that magazine.
2
As a retired Flight Attendant, I take pause each September 11th to think about the in-flight crew. What had to be going through their minds; the (AER's) Annual Emergency Reviews each goes through to "prepare". Realizing passengers look to them for reassurance and calm. Knowing nothing they could do could mitigate the inevitable. That's as far as I can get before I cry.
6
Even though we lived far away on the Upper West Side, the day after there was a horrible smell in the air and ash was swirling around and landing on my terrace flower boxes. People walked around in a daze. There was a feeling of connection without words. People were open and raw. Grief and shock was palpable.
We were scheduled to go to Paris for a much needed vacation, five days afterwards. My husband insisted that if we could go, we should go. We were one of the first international flights out of JFK. I had to take Xanax before the flight, which I never had before. I broke into tears every time I thought of flying. And, I felt conflicted about leaving my beloved city. Still, we went.
The Parisians were incredible. Every single resident of Paris enveloped us in love and nurturing. When they heard our accents, and ascertained that we were New Yorkers, they went out of their way for us. We went to a synagogue for High Holiday services and many congregants invited us into their homes for meals. We were hugged over and over. I will always love the Parisians. They’re not difficult people. They’re just like New Yorkers, only they speak French!
I pray for all the souls that went up as the Towers went down. I pray for their survivors. I pray that the responders get the support they need for their lifetimes going forward.
Why does it take tragedies to make us stop and think about how precious life is and how we are all connected in love?
9
The people who went to work that Tuesday at the WTC, maybe thought it was just a regular, uneventful workday - a Tuesday. It was the last day of their for lives for 3000 people. The people on the airplanes - I can’t even imagine. They knew ahead of time that they were going to die. On an airplane. This haunts me.
8
Thank you, Mr. Blow, for sharing your experiences and thoughts of that day. My husband and I had just voted in the Democratic primary and returning home we heard someone scream that the WTC was on fire. We thought it was just the usual New York City nut. But we ended up standing on our corner of 12th and University for hours, watching the horrible events unfold before our eyes.
I used to work at the World Trade Center and remember watching the small planes fly beneath our 52nd floor. Like you, my first thought was also that one of these little planes had crashed into the tower. And like you, I still get chills thinking about the decision each person had to make, whether to jump or burn. I just shuddered again, 18 years later.
So many people helped each other that day; like your babysitter, so many were heroes. You've made us all remember how good people can be.
7
I was teaching seventh graders in a small Michigan town. We watched the TV at first, being what we call a "teachable moment." You know, current events. But then a student mentioned that people were jumping out of windows and I turned the TV off. Eyes followed me to the front of the room. I told them that we were far away from danger. No one cared to hurt us in our little town in the middle of the continent. We are a strong country with a strong President, Congress and military and they would take care of us. And they have, so far, take care of us. At least from this kind of terrorism. Now we only have to fear each other.
2
I still have all the vignettes published by the NYT of the people that lost their lives. They reflected our diversity and what is best about America. The vignettes are put away in a safe place because 18 years after we lost them, I am still moved to tears. The newsprint has yellowed but I must keep it. It hurts to remember. It hurts to see our first responders suffering. We honor those we lost too soon.
6
When I heard the news (my son, walking uptown, called, freaking out, to say he was safe and told me to turn on the tv), I made a quick estimate and thought (mistakenly, thank goodness) that up to 50,000 people could have died when the towers collapsed. My brother-in-law was hit on the head by falling debris and was ferried, unconscious, to NJ. With a skull fracture, broken jaw, and loss of hearing he was kept in a coma for two weeks. We had no idea he was there until he was allowed to wake and could get in contact. My son's college friend was nearly smeared into the street by a wing wheel from the second plane. But at least nobody we knew died. But. Small comfort to all those who suffered great, unimaginable loss. When the Times put up photos and stories of every victim, every single one, each day for weeks, I read them them all, each one, as so many mourners did out of respect. Thank you, NYTimes, for that kindness.
11
Thank you for your personal experiences. They weren't of any political nature to promote one slant or the other - they were just personal. (as they should be)
I was travelling in the air the day before and was jet lagged for the following day - which was THE day. I turned on the television over a coffee and still having not completely woke up - I watched live the 2nd plane crash into the building.
I remember that entire week of trying to get every morsel of information that I could from whatever source. Thankfully I did not have anyone I knew personally that was affected 1st hand, but still feel the shock to this day - that fellow human beings would want to inflict this much harm.
I am of an age that did not have to go to war. I have been watching it on the television for most of me life. I have lived in countries that have not necessarily dealt with war and have not sent troops.
I have felt the effect though. There are refugees and immigrants all around me in whatever country I live in or travel to. They are trying to put all of that behind them, but the aftermath still drags on.
When will it ever end ?
97
I thought at the time that the chickens had come home to roost. I hoped that the United States would not lash out randomly at anyone the powers that be could possibly tie in, no matter how innocent that they might be, but of course, that was a vain hope.
Today, I always remind myself of 9/11/1973 and the atrocity that was carried out with the help of the United States government. It helps remind me that no one in the United States is innocent, that by the power of our technology, this country is the greatest terrorist threat to the rest of the world. We are no better and no worse as people than anyone else, and we do good and evil in the same way as other people, but we have the power to do more than others.
Thank you for sharing and keeping it together that day. Your babysitter is definitely a hero. I can't image the shock and terror you guys felt being in New York City that day.
This made me cry because it brought back my memories of that day as well. I was in Chicago for business (a big international conference) and couldn't get home until 4 days later; the company rented a bus for us all to get back to Atlanta eventually. My husband reached me on my cell phone and wanted to drive to Chicago (with our 6 year old and 3 year old sons). I told him to stay home and protect them. No one knew what was going to happen next.
My mother worked in D.C. and was at the Pentagon frequently. We couldn't reach her. I was trying not to panic. Eventually my stepfather called my husband to let him know they were safe - my mom was in California at the time for a conference and he was at his office in DC. She was traveling along with a General's wife - that general was killed during the Pentagon crash. When she finally returned to D.C., she had to help counsel family and friends of the victims (she was a civilian psychologist for the military).
My stepdad then left for about 5 months to help in Turkmenistan (next to Afghanistan) for an emergency assignment. His background was Special Forces and PsyOps Commander. It was hard on my mom to have him gone so long after dealing with the trauma families at the same time.
96
Charles Blow shared his memories of September 11, 2001 in this Opinion. Many of us did the same this morning, I did. My mind was full of the images of flames, the fallen Trade Center buildings, concern about the safety of my students' parents; death, fear and uncertainty about what was happening filled the day and the next and the next. Americans reached for family and friends, embraced each other, tried to help in any way and cried. Thank you Mr. Blow for reminding us of what is important. It was worthwhile to find a few minutes today to mourn the deaths of our fellows and to remember how vital it is to support democracy and every single one of us.
119
I remember that day like it was yesterday. I was working in midtown and I and more than anything I remember the missing posters all over the city. I don't live in the NY area any longer but I will always be a New Yorker.
139
My SO and I were in NYC early October that year, and one of my main memories is all the missing posters also. They were everywhere. By Ground Zero. By city hall. On a big fence near Battery Park. Hung from a gate in a pocket park. In Times Square. It was so terrible.
7
There are many individual stories of 9/11 that resonate to this day, but one stands out for me.
How can we rightfully venerate the courage and sacrifice of the first responders while ignoring the political officials that unnecessarily risked their health and eventually their lives?
Everyone that I know in Manhattan who lived downtown suspected that the air from the rubble was unsafe. How could it not be?
Plastics, heavy metals from computers, building materials of all types were burning and releasing toxic fumes in the air.
But George Bush instructed his EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman to issue a false report claiming the air to be safe. Police and fire personal relied on that report and dispatched their men and women to the area without air tanks or even sophisticated respirators.
They relied on reports that were false because Bush and Cheney wanted Wall Street to get back to normal. They could have provided funds for proper safety equipment, but didn't want to panic anyone.
In reality they didn't want to drive up the insurance costs. The results of their willful disregard for life has been more deaths since 9/11 from illness and disease than occurred on 9/11 from the building collapse.
If we really want to honor all those who gave their lives believing they were making us safer then we owe them and their families justice.
No one should be above the law, especially those who take an oath to abide by the law.
237
@Drspock
Yes. I lived on Staten Island then. On September 19, I took the ferry to Lower Manhattan. When I got off the boat, it smelled like a chem lab and my sinuses stung from the toxic materials in the air.
40
@Drspock
My tenant was late for work near the WCT, took refuge in a bar, and eventually made her way home walking the Brooklyn Bridge with thousands of others. Her skin was red raw from the acidic dust. She showered and showered to feel clean, but it took days and days.
We all knew that the air was poisoned. We could smell it for weeks and weeks. Heavy metals, plastics, acidic concrete and "other things." That betrayal of the basic health of the first responders cannot be forgotten.
35
I am unaware of the administration's decisions and false information, but it was obvious to me as I read The Times on those days after the attack that the health of all those responders not wearing protection would be affected years down the line. Even a chimney sweeper (me) knows enough to wear a respirator. Not doing so is a personal choice.
5
I saw the second tower fall with my own two eyes, while looking down Sixth Avenue. No screen needed.
My health has never been the same since that day.
Likely PTSD.
My body has been through so much trauma since that day because of the ailments that came into my psychosis and moved through my system. I have never married or had children.
Before that day, I was totally normal and loved life.
But something that day planted a seed I have never recovered from.
239
EC,
Take good care of yourself. On this day and all the days to come. Your words touched me, and I wish you wellness. An American friend.
74
@EC
It’s likely during any life you will witness some horrifing event completely out of our control. A car accident, a parent or sibling getting hurt or even dying. I wish you well in getting past this trauma.
One thing that would help us all is the toning down of the the yearly teleivised, celebration of the event. The ringing of the bell, the hero worship of first responders, and the documenteries. Yes, let’s honor the fallen, and learn and work for this to never happen again. But, there is a case to be made for the rest of us, it’s not helping. If we witnessed a horrific car accident would we it be healthy to go back to the place it happened on it’s anniversary and remember it again? There is always a time after a tragidy to move on. Let’s all move on.
9
@EC
I will add, I had been dealing with the death of two very close friends in that period. I was already fragile and trying to get out of the shock of major personal loss.
Then I was there on 9/11.
Our minds and bodies can only deal with so much tragedy in a small space of time as it turns out. Overload is a thing and you can become like a car veering off the road in bad weather. You cannot control it. Not because you are weak, ut because we are all only human.
15
I read all of your columns Mr. Blow. Thank you for sharing your personal story. My brother, Tom Burnett, was one of the guys who fought back on United 93, and forced that plane into a field in Pennsylvania. Though not in New York, I too will never forget that day as we waited to learn his fate. We are all forever changed.
465
@Martha Burnett Pettee. Your brother and all the passengers on Flight 93 will never be forgotten. We remember them with gratitude and deepest respect for their heroism, as well as with sympathy for the terrible loss that your family and others have suffered.
255
@Martha Burnett Pettee Your brother is among the many heroes of that day. May his soul rest in peace and joy. And God be with you and the loved ones he left behind. We are all forever changed, yes, but together as one when we recall that fateful day.
65
I am so very sorry for your loss, I can’t even imagine the pain the thought of the events of that day must bring you.
Your brother was and is a hero.
73
I learn second hand about the events. I was sitting in my office in Montreal when I learned about the first plane hitting the World Trade tower when a colleague phoned from New Jersey. At the time, I imagined it was a small plane accidental colliding with the tower, and I joked that a certain politician who had been dogged by the press since a former female aide with whom he had allegedly had an affair was found dead would be relieved that the eyes of the media had finally been diverted away from him.
While he was on the phone with me, the second plane struck. When he told me what had just happened, I could only say, “This looks like the opening act of the 21st century.”
1
Great story by Mr. Blow. I hope that it is reprinted.
Wonderful personal account.
The only think I question is the ending. Why oh why would a parent wake up a 7 year old and two 4 year olds from a healthy sleep to burden them with adult issues that children should be shielded from? Couldn't the explanation about bad men attacking the city wait until morning? Did you wake them for you, or because they needed to wake up and know you were home safe? Let sleeping children rest, I say. Plenty of time to burden them with our adult problems. Childhood is precious. Preserve it as best you can, parents.
26
@Midway - you've likely never been through something like what Mr. Blow experienced that day, but regardless, your judgement is misplaced. This was an extraordinary situation. To physically connect with one's own children when something of such inconceivable magnitude is happening is not selfish. Their home was at the center of an international horror, and he had just spent the day helping everyone in the world understand what was happening. He wanted to make sure his children heard from, connected with, and felt nurturing from their own parent on such a day. And I'm sure they all did need the physical reassurance of knowing they were each safely home! I'll say it again: they live in New York City. It's not like they weren't going to be dealing with it very up close. I'm sure Mr. Blow is a wonderful father and knows what is best for his own kids. His perspective is fascinating from many angles, and I appreciate his generosity in sharing a very personal account of that terrible day. Let's live in solidarity as best we can, people.
93
@Midway, I can tell you're a kind person; thank you for caring so much. (There certainly was no normal routine that day, and we don't know what the kids needed. Mr. Blow did; he's their dad.) It was 18 years ago -- I'm sure his kids count themselves lucky to have such a father. Wishing peaceful dreams to you, Midway, and to everyone else. Hard to sleep after re-visiting much trauma and grief today.
14
@Midway
He woke them up because after such a devastating day of death and horror, he needed to connect with his children. And to let them know he was there, after a long day of uncertainty.
There’s nothing at all wrong with that. Children briefly wake up and fall right back to sleep. He wasn’t depriving them of sleep or anything else. He was telling them he loved them, as so many parents were never able to tell their children that night.
Is it really necessary to criticize a detail like that?
8
Monday, September 10, 2001 - 4:55 p.m. at 30 Rock - Time to call it a day and turn the desk calendar page, where a subconscious thought emerges that it looks 'lop-sided'. Forgotten.
Tuesday, September 11, 2001 - 5:30 a.m. at Turtle Bay - listening to the News and classical music; again there is a sense that something is not right. Forgotten.
8:40 a.m. at Rock Plaza - A day of clear skies and sunlight as described by Charles Blow, on the south side viewed from the office desk. A young man wearing a light raincoat and carrying a briefcase appears, looking anxiously to the right and left, he tells this worker to get out of the building and that The World Trade Center has been damaged.
On the same floor, colleagues are watching this from the north view. No emergency alarm has gone off, but I leave for the elevator bank, alone and with no understanding of what is happening.
A more pragmatic friend is awake and in action-mode. Later he tells of how a woman leaving the train-stop exit to reach her office at The World Trade Center is stopped by a stranger coming towards her. 'Go back', he cautions and disappears.
What can one tell one's children, and Mr. Blow in the midst of trauma, remembers to reassure them. He does not know what has really happened, but senses that this might be the beginning of WWIII.
Osama Bin-Laden did not win the War, and we ended up going to Iraq instead. It is time to thank our Military who have little choice in such matters.
1
I worked at 2 WTC and survived the attack. This is an edited version of my comments included in the 9/11 Morgan Stanley collection of the Smithsonian Institution
--------------------------------------------------------
I was one of the lucky ones.
On September 11, 2001, I was getting to my office at 2WTC to be on a 9 a.m. conference call; however, the PATH train I was on was diverted Christopher Street. When I got off, I saw the upper floors of Tower I on fire and a helicopter circling the tower. People were jumping from the burning. 2WTC was also burning fiercely a few floors above my 65th floor office.
I got as close to the buildings as possible and at about 9:48 AM, the top thirty floors of my building started to twist and fall toward Church Street, where we were standing. The tower's deadly remnants hit the ground and began rushing toward us like shrapnel in a debris-laden brown and yellow cloud. Those of us who had made it past the debris turned back to help those who were emerging from it.
I worked until midnight from Morgan Stanley's 7th Ave. offices when I could catch a train home. Even at midnight, the parking lot in my town was still filled. I got home and hugged my family. I then did the only routine thing I remember doing that day-I took the garbage out to the curb for the next day's collection.
Of the many heroes that day, Rick Resorla was ours. Rick got everyone out and went back to clear the floors when he was caught ion the collapse.
3
I was at working in the Upstate of South Carolina, listening to the morning Bob and Sheri show on the radio when they announced that a small plane had smashed into the World Trade Center in NYC. I told my office, which had about 25 people, and half of us went to back and turned on the TV and watched in horror minutes later as another plane crashed into the other Twin Tower. We stood mesmerized and in disbelief as we watching the people plummet out of the windows of the Twin Tours; hearing the bodies thump in the command center of the first floor as the media filmed the fireman in the lobby; the collapse of the first and second tower; people running down the streets of downtown Manhattan like what I imaged as a scene very similar to people fleeing Jericho as the huge dust clouds roared down the streets; the mass exodus of dust covered people walking from every direction to the ferry boats to escape NYC; and the burning carnage of the two collapsed Twin Towers.
After coming home from work, I continued to watch the horror of what was happening in NYC well past midnight. The next day I was incredulous when Christine Todd Whitman said the air was safe and saw first responders walking in the debris field with no masks on. For a couple of weeks, U.S airforce jets roared back and forth over our city as they looped back to protect Charlotte (a major banking center) from an attack.
We had just came home from Cape Cod a week before: I always knew we were back home when I would see the twin towers from the turnpike. A short time from that day a small aircraft had crashed into a building in Florida, those were my initial thoughts. Then they showed the size of the hole, that wasn’t made by a small plane: I even saw the second plane swerving to hit the next tower and thought something is terribly wrong, but I still didn’t realize the true nature of that day. I had to call my sister at work, her husband worked in tower one, my husband, his brother,was working across the River in Jersey City and was trying to reach his brother: luckily he got out : he’s always talked since of the young firefighters going up the staircases as the workers were going down. I have friends who lost husbands, fellow co workers that day: but I keep on going back to the passengers on the planes, their children, the fear that must have gripped them . The world turned upside down: the sadness and terror of that day lives on.
8
I was at a large trade show in Houston at the Convention Center. Tuesday was going to be the first day of the show. I woke around 5AM local time, read emails, watched the news for a bit and decided to take a short nap. Some time later my phone rang: it was a colleague calling. He said "You're from NY, right? You need to turn on the TV, something is happening at the World Trade Center." Like everyone else, I watched in shocked disbelief. Eventually went to breakfast with coworkers and then the trade show. I remember a senior co-worker trying to get everyone focused on the trade show. He thought customers would be arriving soon and we needed to be ready with our presentations. Of course, there were no presentations. Everyone from every company clustered around the few TVs watching the news. The trade show closed in early afternoon. That evening we boarded buses rented by our company to take employees back to our regional offices. I remember looking out the bus window into the dark night and thinking about the inevitable war to come. A few days later I found out that my then 8-year-old son's godmother was killed in tower one. I've never been the same since.
5
I was working at a real estate office. One of my fellow realtors looked up from his desk and said to me: "The U.S. is a mean motor-scooter."
I had lived in Manhattan for several years before 9/11, but in 2001 I was working in Chicago at Loyola University, at the uptown campus right beside Lake Michigan. That morning no one knew whether Chicago would be attacked also, and classes at the downtown campus were canceled. My boss asked me to type a notice and tape it up at the shuttle bus stops on campus. Just writing "no classes downtown today" would not be all that informative, so I added September 11. How many more times, I thought, would people write that date, and what would it mean in the future, whatever that future would be? I printed out copies of the notice and took the tape dispenser from my desk and went out into the sunshine.
The sky was so clear and still that day, all the more so without the air traffic in and out of O'Hare. Looking east there was nothing to see but the blue lake and the blue sky. My heart was so close to New York I wondered for a millisecond why I couldn't see the smoke.
6
Thank you for this compelling column.
My daughter had just started an internship in the WTC complex. I heard from a friend about the twin towers being hit and I waited to hear from her that she had survived. I knew many others were hoping to hear the same news, and some of us would be told the worst.
I missed her phone call because the man from the pest control company was at my house. Rather than horrified, he was excited and happy because, as he said, "this means the rapture is happening." I was so shocked I was unable to speak. That is probably a good thing, because what I might have said would be beyond unkind.
My daughter survived this plane crash from a safe enough distance, and she had an earlier one when she was an infant when a plane crashed into a neighborhood in San Diego, a couple of blocks from her babysitter.
May we always remember this, and hold in our hearts all those whose hearts were broken that day. Thank you to all the genuine first responders. May you be blessed forever.
15
@Mary
Rapture.
I'm sure I'd heard that word before, but I have been especially attuned the meanings after I read the entire Left Behind series.
But even with that, I find it interesting how mankind are captivated about the end of the world and not realizing that the persons behind it were because of greed and selfishness.
As I listen to many of Trump's supporters, many evangelicals express their delight about this man, changing the location of our embassy and such and thinking they are somehow waiting their turn to go to heaven or us entering the End Times, I can't help but think of how naive they are.
They believe in God, but they think that mankind is not responsible for our own possible demise that causes so much turmoil in our world.
And from where do they possibly get this stuff, in all probability, their preachers.
3
i left for work without turning on the tv because my mother was in that room, recovering from surgery. at the bus stop, someone told me a plane had hit the WTC. i thought it would be a small plane, similar to the plane that had hit the empire state building many years ago. at Grand Central, i heard the second plane had hit. i got to the corner of 45th and Fifth and could see the buildings on fire... i was standing there when the first building collapsed. people were so dumbstruck, few screamed or made a sound. one man turned to me and said (in an incredulous tone) "that can't be..." i also remember how people were turned out of their office buildings, with no subway running and no where to go for hours at a time. i sat on the steps of the Library and a man who was in his car, had his radio on very loud so people could hear. i tried to go down to the site to render aide (i had first aid training) but was turned away at 23rd street. i managed to get on the first metro north to leave that afternoon, surrounded by stunned and weeping people and get home to my parents. i also remember when i got home, neighbors went to sit outside the corner grocery to protect the arab owner and his family... one truly american act that i have held onto all these years.
28
Not a fan of mr blow, but great column. Well done
1
Great article.
2
All I can think of is how can this have happened? Were the CIA, FBI, NSA asleep? Who knew this was being planned besides the Saudis? Did George W, Condi, Cheney, Rummy, have top secret info? Somebody knew that this was being planned and was told to keep their mouths shut. I'll always believe this because deep down inside I "know" its true! Our government is run by corrupt and evil people, especially now!
1
Thanks for deep insight, as usual!
1
Perhaps if Mr. Blow's memory were a bit more acute, and his mind not hobbled by the politically correct constraints of the NY Times echo chamber, he might actually recall who perpetrated this crime, where they came me from, what their belief system was and how it inspired their actions on 9/11.
5
@JJ Gross
You missed the point of the column, which was a heartfelt recounting of Mr. Blow's emotions that day. A perfectly reasonable- and appropriate- thing to write about. Not everything about 9/11 and its aftermath is about the "politics". This disastrous day affected, and continues to affect, all of us in our own way, and everyone deserves to be heard. Yet, you seem to have a problem with that. That's unfortunate.
5
Fifteen Saudi hijackers out of nineteen and shortly after, Bush-Cheney decide to invade Iraq; heck of a job.
14
"A plane"? crashed into the tower? That's it? This is personal recollection from a columnist who seems unable to tell the full story. It's like witnessing a murder -- and then recounting the murder without describing the murderer.
4
@Claude
Claude, you've completely missed the point. The opinion piece is called "My Memory of 9/11" - the very definition of "personal recollection from a columnist" as you put it. On that day 18 years ago, we knew nothing about the terrorists, just that it was a terrorist attack. So of course Mr. Blow is not going to be describing them, he didn't know a thing about them on September 11, 2001.
4
Thank you for the description of your emotions, Mr. Blow. It filled a gap I have always had about that day. My wife and I were in the wilderness of Minnesota that Tuesday and knew nothing until the next day when a man with a radio said the country was shut down, because of the attacks. We only heard about one building, and "something in Ohio" and for the next 5 days, hoped he had been telling a cruel joke. The few people we saw said nothing, and so did we. Did they know? Or did they feel like us, stunned, as if not saying anything meant it might not have happened?
When we came out of the woods, the person who picked us up said nothing. On the drive, I finally asked, "Did something bad happen?" Only then did we learn the scope of the attacks.
We drove 5 hour to Minneapolis with the radio on and did not say one word to each other.
I'm grateful I didn't have the TV on to see the same thing over and over, the way I did when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas.
2
Wow. Mr. Blow. You are capable of straight reporting. I guess 9/11 was something we can all remember as a moment that we can unite. God bless you, sir.
1
WCBS radio 880 had all we needed to know about 845: a penthouse eyewitness near Washington Square Park who said: “It was an airliner. It was flying low. It headed right for the tower over my head” or words to that effect. When I got to the little park in Queens near the 7 elevated station I could see the towers. I said to the guy next to me: It just shows you can only push people around so much. Then I went to walk my dog and wait for fighter jets to fill the sky. Ps They never came. One did at around 1 pm. This victimhood is still a little much to me. It was geopolitics. Sorry.
I was working downtown that morning, some 300 yards from Ground Zero. Everyone in the office immediately understood the US had been sneak-attacked a la Pearl Harbor. As time passes people are in danger of forgetting that, as if this was a natural disaster like a hurricane or earthquake. You know: "some people did some things" or the infamous now deleted NYT tweet that "airplanes struck some buildings". As the Bible says: know the truth and the truth will set you free.
3
This is my memory written on that day.
September 11, 2001
In the unconscionable, in the unspeakable, in the
unbearable
please embrace these dust-coated, red remains.
Let us lift them high as prayer into our heavens.
Let us cleanse them free as spirits with our hearts.
In the smoke, in the sorrow, in theshock
please accept these sterile, whit scraps.
Let me wrap them tight as love around your
wounds.
Let me wipe them quiet as compassion on your tears.
In the aftermath, in the anger, in the adversity
please contemplate these endless blue banners
Let them surround us pure as sky throughout our world.
Let them cool us calm as conscience to true peace.
Here in the red fire of renewal,
here in the white clouds of hope, here in the blue harbor of liberty, we join our forefathers in unity, solemnity, and action.
I was at SFO and had just boarded an early morning flight to Atlanta when a flight attendant made an announcement that everyone had to grab their things and leave the aircraft. No explanation as to why. The bar in the concourse had not yet opened but they had their tv on so we gathered around it and watched the disaster unfold. I was stunned. Instinctively I called home to check on our twin baby girls who were about to celebrate their first birthday. Then I went back home.
4
I was supposed to be at a meeting in Manhattan that day, but it had been bumped. It was a beautiful fall day, bright and sunny, I came down from my home office surprised to hear news instead of classical on the radio. I heard enough snippets to turn on the TV and see the two towers burning. Moments later, the coverage split to show the Pentagon burning, then the towers falling. Despite living in a small rural town, I bolted our doors. We're not far from the airport, would more planes crash? Bombs? Nukes? I cannot explain the terror I felt that day to my kids, the grief. Work just stopped. Everything stopped. Time stopped.
I lost a friend and four colleagues that day. A week later, I was in the city; I couldn't bear to look south. Flyers were everywhere. People were in a daze. The smell of smoke lingered. My nightmares started then, I think.
The last time I was in WTC was on 9/11/00 to wrap a project. It had also been a sunny, beautiful day, and as I left 2 WTC, I looked up at the gleaming tower. I never looked up - I wasn't a tourist. But that day I took a moment, smiled, and enjoyed the beautiful view before getting a cab.
Strangers helped strangers. We were gentle with one another. We were wounded, angry, sad, lost. The world responded with love and compassion. I wasn't a Bush fan, but I was comforted by his speech at Ground Zero. We all leaned on Guiliani, who wasn't nuts then. It was a different world, sadder, emptier, but hopeful. We were kind, and we cared.
14
Thanks Mr Blow for articulating what I too felt when I heard the news and watched that day unfold. Your descriptiveness brings me back, as clear as that day. Also reminds me that I wish for the 'normal' that was Sept 10th.
5
Yesterday most of the major media spent their broadcast time mourning those who died on 9-11 and praising our country's leadership, i.e. President Bush 2 riding around in Air Force One called Angel. But the tale of Bush, 9-11 and Angel go back several months before Bush took office. It was at a hi-dollar Washington tea party where Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced that she could not allow Presidential candidate Al Gore to win in Florida and become President because then she could not retire because Gore would appoint a liberal to the Court. And so Sandra voted to make Bush President. A few months later with Bush in office we had 9-11, soon after there was the Iraq War and the missing WMDs followed later by a near financial disaster created by Bush and Vice President Cheney. How does this fit into 9-11? A few months after Bush got "elected" he was asked to have an urgent meeting with the CIA Director who told Bush that something BIG and BAD was going to happen and it probably involved airplanes. Bush's father had been the CIA Director before becoming President and during that period Bush 2 had developed a distaste for the CIA because they seemed so pushy. So when he heard the CIA Director's horror story, he laughed and ushered the surprised lad out of the Oval Office. A few days later we had 9-11 while Bush was reading fairy tales to children. He should have been impeached and Sandra Day should regret the day she was born.
12
@Jim Dwyer impeaching the President in the early stages of a war is always a bad idea.
1
thank you Mr. Blow for sharing your story.
living then in Queens, N.Y., someone phoned and hurriedly said to turn on the tv.
it was like watching a movie.
I can still hear the voice of one of the men in my office, as we stood in a tight knot around a small teevee in our office breakroom, when the first tower fell...
"Did that building just collapse?" he asked incredulously....
The feelings that day are still vivid....fear, dread, the realization that we just watched unknown thousands of people who had got up, went to work, and just died a horrible death on national teevee. Some of us were crying.
Then, there were "the papers".
I remember thinking about all the papers on my own desk, that an hour earlier represented important things I had to get to, and then watching those same kinds of papers fluttering to earth around the burning towers.....in one instant people's workday life and priorities changed so drastically...
For weeks after, I couldn't face trivial tasks like paperwork..
My thoughts today are with the families of all those poor victims, and of the firemen and police and transit and all other people who ran IN to that inferno to help...
How on earth did we evolve into what the USA is today? That moment in time...the photos of all people of all races tacked to poles and buildings, news footage of people helping people beside them to get away, the same horrified expression on all the faces of all people photographed that day, looking up, crying, wailing, clutching thier heads...
NO ONE in that minute cared what party you were in, what race, what beliefs you had.
It was the end of the innocence.
11
Thank you for sharing these memories, Mr. Blow.
1
Thank you for remembering that horrible day 18 years ago , which most of us will never ever forget. As a native New Yorker and life long reader of the NYTimes, I was shocked to wake up today and see that the paper had absolutely no headline, no rememberance, no tribute to those who lost their lives either being trapped in the towers or the brave first responders. What were you thinking!!!!!!!!!
2
My son was a freshman at a university and one of his dorm mates lost his father, a vendor who worked near the WTC.....
I was working as an RN at a Military hospital on a large military base. All elective surgeries (I worked in the OR) were cancelled, as, of course, no one knew what to expect. After the ongoing surgeries were completed, all of us RN's sat in the lounge and watched on the small TV as they showed the buildings collapse over and over. One of the RN's had relatives in Penn. and was concerned about them when we heard an airliner had crashed there. I gave him my cell phone to call there, oddly, mine was the only one working in the lounge that day.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Coincidentally, my husband, son and I had visited NYC a few years earlier. We visited the WTC and went up the elevator to the top.
Up there was some sort of plexiglass through which you could view almost all Manhattan, Statue of Liberty and all the rest of it. As we stood there looking, my husband suddenly became very, very lightheaded and faint. He is not afraid of heights. We got something to eat and drink the small restaurant up there...?The Top of the World? I think? I read later the employees and visitors there that day all died....
It made a powerful impression on us, which we will never forget....thank God the jihadists in the airliners arrived there BEFORE the majority of the employees and visitors.....
3
@RLiss
I think it Windows on the World, not positive though.
Why did the sky have to be so pure and blue? Often when I see such a sky—genuinely blue, as sharp and crisp and new as sky can be—I think of that morning. I suppose I too, like you Charles, will never really stop being reminded. Maybe that’s not so bad.
5
Yes, I, too remember the brilliant blue sky that day. It was one of those crisp pre-Fall mornings that makes you feel all is right with the world. The “reel” that keeps playing over in my mind is that the people who went to work that day thought it was just another Tuesday workday. I couldn’t get that out of my mind and quit my depressing job shortly thereafter.
2
My memory of 9/11 is filed wither and sadness. I recall never being so shaken about what could happen in the days and weeks after that tragic incident.
Over time I've grown to identify with those whose 9/11 is generated by us, in our name, over an over again. Just like us, they are mothers and fathers, kids who go to school, people who work hard to achieve a better life for their families.
But through no fault of their own they are pounded by bombs, hunted by drones and incinerated by our very sophisticated missiles.
We rebuilt our lives, mourned our dead and basically went back to prosperous lives. We were and are emotionally shaken by the events of 9/11. The sense of vulnerability is still with us.
But it's not new at all for those that we hunt and kill. They live in Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen. Some live in Pakistan near the border. Others in Iran wonder about their future fate.
We claim to target the guilty, but the evidence shows that we're not very good at that. The numbers of the innocent are staggering, too many to morally grasp.
But one nation stands out from all those we have lashed out at. And that nation just happens to be the home of most of the 9/11 attackers.
We've never been told why they have gotten a free pass. Maybe because so many others are doing the dying.
But that's not enough, not for me, not for the families of the victims and not for our sense of national purpose.
Monuments can never be a substitute for the truth.
97
@Drspock-Thank you. I wish your post was a NY Times pick so more people read it.
12
I was in the shower when I heard my 16 year old daughter screaming for me to come-she had heard it on the radio. We turned on the TV just as the plane hit the second tower. We were in disbelief, but I grabbed my son, who was in the sixth grade, and shoved him out the door to catch the bus. My husband watched as he ran for the bus stop, and then he tripped. My husband brought him back in the house, covered with blood. When I saw him, I fell apart.
We had lived in Westchester County the first two years of our marriage in 1981. In 2016, we visited New York and went to se the Memorial. As we turned the corner, I burst into tears and could not stop. I’m crying as I write this.
5
I was teaching social studies in Eastern Pa, which was quickly turning into an exurb of NYC. A number of students had parents in the city and we watched the towers collapse in collective shock. The teacher in the next room saw the United 93 crash info flash on the screen and collapsed. The sound of wailng sirens added to our uncertainity. His wife was a flight attendent and that flight out of Newark was her usual route. Later, he found out she had been bumped because of a flight delay. They both quit their jobs and retired to FL.
Me? I happened to be close by NYC on 9/12 and stood watching the ruins from Liberty park across from S. Manhattan with no air traffic in the sky. My wife called me a looky loo but I told her that it isnt often you get to stand at the crossroads of history. I had no idea how right I was, unfortunately. I do have to say that my students were the most attentive they have ever been in the following few weeks as we unpacked what we had all just witnessed.
After all the Bush admin fiascos, I became disenchanted with the entire American project ( lies, torture, unjust wars, etc.Trumps victory only confirmed my cynicism) and after moving to California, quit teaching, and got into the medical marijuana industry as an act of rebellion and self-care.
For what its worth and so it goes.
7
Some People did Something? No we know who did what. But Congresswoman, That is no way to remember! We will never forget.
1
Multiply this experience by the thousands and you see what it feels like when America is the one to attack you. We have Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan alone have had so much of our bombardment that if they took time to memorialize each attack they would never be done.
It speaks volumes that we as a country can mourn each year for one attack and three thousand lives lost, but that we expect to bomb and attack the rest of the world on a regular basis as though we weren't putting back into the world tenfold the trauma we, 18 years later, can barely stand to remember.
6
A trainee in a Boston Intensive Care Unit, one with an active mass disaster deployment unit. We had just treated the multiple victims of the Station nightclub fire.
We heard the news and began mobilizing to receive what we were certain would be thousands of casualties up the East Coast.
Then we realized that there would be none: because everyone was dead.
5
That blue sky is something unforgettable. The numbness is unforgettable. What i have forgotten is how we moved from being totally unified in the United States with sincere feelings for our neighbors regardless of political party, gender, race, backgrounds to where we are today. Irak, Afghanistan? A black president? The ACA? Financial crisis? Was it all this? I honestly don’t know. I don’t know how we shifted. I wish we were capable to stop the current madness and remember how we felt that night with so much sorrow.
3
Multiply this experience by the thousands and you see what it feels like when America is the one to attack you. We have Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan alone have had so much of our bombardment that if they took time to memorialize each attack they would never be done.
It speaks volumes that we as a country can mourn each year for one attack and three thousand lives lost, but that we expect to bomb and attack the rest of the world on a regular basis as though we weren't putting back into the world tenfold the trauma we, 18 years later, can barely stand to remember.
6
I was watching a.m. news and saw it unfold in real time. I could not turn away and knew it was a seismic shift in the life of all Americans. BUT, it also catapulted me back to those days when our govt. imposed terror on numerous school children thru weekly duck & cover drills to save us from the Soviets bombing us back to the stone age and the widespread devastation of the US. It was the same feeling. I mourn the 9/11 lives lost then and over the years later. I am now as mournful that our terrorists are no longer imported.
2
I also want to simply say “thank you” for this article.
1
this was a very nice and detailed story only problem was that in the ending and middle you should've said more about what actually happened and not so much about your journalist career and also in the end you should've said more about how it ended not just i told my kids what happened... you should've said i told my kids what then i etc. etc.
I was working in Tokyo. On September 11 I took a visiting colleague out for dinner and went straight to bed at around 10 pm which turned out to be a just few minutes after a plane had hit the first tower. I slept through it. The phone rang at 4.30 am that I ignored (bank colleagues from Toronto often called not knowing the time difference) but after the fourth try my wife answered it. I heard her, "Do you know what time it is ... [long pause] ... what ... [long pause] ..." then she came up the stairs and said I should take the call as something "weird" is going on. I took the phone and the caller, the head of Operations for our bank said firmly, "two planes crashed into the World Trade today and both towers have collapsed, everything is in emergency lock down." As he spoke I firmed touched the table where I was sitting to confirm I wasn't dreaming and then mouthed to my wife, "turn on the TV." As the caller started to fill me in on what they wanted me to do, my wife came back with a shocked expression on her face and mouthed, "horrible." The American Embassy was between our home and close to our office. I drove to work about an hour after the call expecting to have to navigate a massive roadblock. There was nothing, the streets were eerily quiet. I spend most of the day coordinating what needed to be done while listening to Peter Jennings reporting. Later the day I took our dog Lightning out for walk around the Palace. Our world had just changed.
1
Thank you Mr. Blow, for an excellent and evocative first hand account that resonated with me and I am sure, many. My details were different of course, but my experience was much the same.
You mention seeing the poor souls who jumped.
This was indeed most harrowing, however, after the initial shock, as I saw the footage replayed and replayed again, I came to see a certain peace in them. Even to this very day, they seem at peace.
There are two other memories I'd like to share. The first is of the Mass Casualty Mobilization outside of Bellvue Hospital ER. All hands were waiting to triage and treat the victims.
https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/c_crop,d_placeholder_euli9k,h_1439,w_2560,x_0,y_0/dpr_1.5/c_limit,w_1044/fl_lossy,q_auto/v1492176566/articles/2015/09/10/i-was-working-in-a-nyc-hospital-on-9-11/150910-saunders-hospital-tease_dv4jpf
From a doctor present: "The massive wave of casualties we were braced for never arrived at our hospital. I came to learn that, with a few exceptions, people either made it from the World Trade Center with relatively minor injuries, or they simply didn’t make it out at all." https://www.thedailybeast.com/i-was-working-in-a-nyc-hospital-on-911
My other vivid memory Father Mychal Judge, OFM, he was a Catholic priest and being an FDNY Chaplain was among his many ministries. He was Ground Zero victim 0001: https://blog.franciscanmedia.org/franciscan-spirit/father-mychal-judge-franciscan-hero-on-9-11
Charles: On 9-11 I also felt the need to tell my children something. I told them that I apologize for bringing them into a world with this kind of evil in it.
5
I was at work as a lead test engineer for a large company in Dallas Texas.
I walked into my branch manager's office to brief him on my progress. We were on friendly terms. No formalities needed.
BH had connected a TV feed to his pc monitor and was proud of himself. Remember it was 2001. He was also a pilot and
told me that a plane hit the World Trade Center. I could see the video on his large monitor.
"How was it possible?" I asked. BH, as usual placed his left forearm under his right elbow and rubbed his chin.
"Well, I don't know." he responded.
BH was seated. I was standing and we watched.
Just then the second plane hit. I yelled, "We're under attack!"
"Well, I don't know."
I turned to his grease board, behind me. I drew two vertical sticks with a dot next to each. Then I drew a horizontal line across the bottom of the board and asked, "How was it possible, for these two dots to hit these two sticks across this horizon, without it being intentional?"
"Well, I don't know." He looked puzzled and continued to rub his chin.
Later that day, I learned there was a party at another branch manager's office. He was an Iraqi. In disbelief, I walked in for a moment. It was real. In the USA on a visa. He was smart, hardworking and friendly.
He didn't last too, much longer at that company. Other middle easterners were very upset about the attack. We know there are some white supremacist killers, who only differ cosmetically from the Al-Queda terrorists.
4
Watching the towers fall - all THREE buildings - my take on what happened was quite different from the official version.
Interestingly, when Google is asked the question
"How many buildings fell in 911?"
you get the following answer:
"As a result of the attacks to the towers, a total of 2,763 people died including 2,192 civilians, 343 firefighters, and 71 law enforcement officers as well as all the passengers and crew on the airplanes, including 147 civilians and the 10 hijackers."
Why NOT answer the question asked?
THAT answer is: "THREE buildings collapsed"
Much effort has gone into NOT reporting the full story of 9/11 -
Various groups - in particular Architects and Engineers for Truth - have called for an in-depth investigation of these events. There was never a real forensic investigation of the debris that resulted from the destruction of these buildings.The collapse of Building 7 - a structural steel framed building - is unlike ANY other such building and defies the laws of physics. The collapse of the twin towers themselves raise many questions as well.
Even those who led the commission have said that the investigation was “set up to fail” from the start and that they were repeatedly misled and lied to by federal officials in relation to the events of that day.
We deserve to know the truth. We have been told too many lies by our government.
1
@cynicalskeptic My father was a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and knew many of the professional engineers that conducted the analysis of the buildings' collapse. You can find their report as part of NIST (Nat'l Institute of Standards & Tech)'s comprehensive analysis of ALL of the buildings and damage as well as recommendations for building code and fire safety changes at their website (links won't appear here).
Here's the truth. The design of the towers, the heat of the jet fuel fires that melted steel, the blow of the hits (which were equivalent to earthquakes) resulted in the collapse of 1 & 2 WTC. 7 WTC collapsed from a combination of "debris-impact damage, fire-induced damage, and thermal loads."
The information is there - produced by hundreds of experts from private industry, public sector, and academia. I trust my dad, he knew most of the ASCE team, and he agreed with their analysis. So did thousands of professional engineers.
1
Chilling, just like the assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy and all of our massacres of school children and adults recently.
They are all still haunting memories and it has torn at the very fabric of our lives.
The United States has never been the same since.
1
I desperately want to hear the story of the "babysitter" mentioned in this article. What was her journey that day? Why don't we ever hear their stories in the NYT? It is a mark of incredible privilege to have gotten through the entire morning of 9/11 without thought of the children in school. Can we at least agree that we need to stop calling the women who do this work "babysitters?"
2
I wasn't working that day 18 years ago. I was at home in Vancouver when my mother called me at 7:30am from her home in Montreal. She asked me if I was listening to the radio or watching the news and I said no. She told me that planes had crashed into the World Trade Centre towers and they'd collapsed. I said, and I remember this so clearly, "Ma, are you sure? Are you sure you're not just watching an advertisement for some new disaster movie?" That's how ridiculous it sounded, things like jumbo jets didn't fly into buildings, it just didn't happen. It was the incredulity of the situation.
Well, I went and and turned on the TV and I ended up watching news for about 15 hours straight. At one point, I managed to get through to my uncle in Brooklyn on the phone, but we didn't talk too long, I just wanted to hear his voice and know he was alright.
Nice article. Thanks Charles.
In the spring of 2001, my company relocated to Jersey City from our 7 World Trade Center offices.
I remember driving along the NJ Turnpike extension, headed to work on 9/11, marveling at the clear, blue sky -- so refreshing after the summer's heat and humidity, with its white-grey haze.
I remember suddenly seeing a puff of smoke, that became a thick stripe, running across that clear blue sky.
I remember calling my mother and telling her "I think there's a big fire downtown somewhere," then rounding a corner and realizing "oh my God, the World Trade Center is on fire."
Pulling into the garage, as the radio announcer announced in a panicked voice "Another plane just crashed into the World Trade Center. We're under attack!"
Left my car and headed for work, only to (literally) run into my boss as he headed out the door -- "go home, the company is closing for the day."
Driving home and having to pull off the road in tears as the Towers collapsed.
Holding my baby nephew watching the coverage, since I didn't want to be alone.
Heading back north later that day to pick up stranded co-workers who couldn't get home to NYC.
Spending one night a week downtown for a school program, in streets filled with military vehicles.
Looking out my office windows for months, watching the smoke rise from what I knew were empty holes in the ground.
Calls to my mom from people who knew I'd worked at WTC: "Is she OK?"
Still unable to watch a lot of the coverage from that day.
2
My eight-year-old son asked me if "tourists" were going to bomb our neighborhood in Brooklyn. I promised him we were safe. As much as I intended to keep that promise, I quaked inside at the recognition of the world he would inherit.
3
When I see a clear blue cloudless sky I think of 9/11.
After, when I walked to work below 14th Street, I had to cross a military check point.
And the smell.... for weeks.
Thank you, Charles
6
Trump 'could learn from you', (but never will) the ability to communicate real empathy, real emotion and the sense of the profundity of that moment
5
Powerful recollection of personal events.
5
God bless you, fellow New Yorker who will never forget that day. I flinch whenever I hear references to "9/11." No. To me, it was September 11th. To me, it was not "Ground Zero." It was the World Trade Center. The names and dates that I relate to are the names and dates of real times and places filled with life. I want no shortcut, no acronym for events that tore our souls apart.
4
Thanks for sharing Charles, and keeping the memory of all the victims in our heart and mind.
3
Charles I share your recollections on this most sacred of days. From my work in Secaucus NJ, I watched tower 2 fall into a heap of smoking ash. it was the most frightening day of my life. We were allowed to go home as nobody knew if more would happen. I gunned my Honda Civic up the turnpike and Route 17 as if fleeing an angry mob.
You had kids to care for, and directly connected work at the NYT. When we returned to work a few days later, the smoky sky was still visible down Route 208. There was just nowhere to hide, from the ash, our memories, and the mark this unspeakable event would leave on our country.
3
On 9/11 I immediately thought that the "unthinkable" having happened, that the next iteration of terrorism would become the "unimaginable." I am reminded of how Einstein answered the question of how World War III would be fought. To paraphrase his response was: "I am not sure. But, World War IV will likely be fought with sticks and stones."
3
One of my first thoughts, which stayed with me, was that the way we govern ourselves would be changed for ever. I feared, despite the show of national unity in the immediate aftermath, that it would be for the worse. And my fear was exceeded. The 9/11 attack could have inspired national solidarity; but we got the opposite.
21:00 EDT, 9/11
Thank you for the vivid description of that horrible day. My story: I was in seminary in a little town outside of Pittsburgh. We were in class when we heard about the first plane. When the second plane hit we cancelled classes and went to the chapel to pray.
A little while later we heard there were planes heading for Pittsburgh. My first thought was that the terrorists were already striking tertiary targets. This, of course, was United 93. A couple of days later, my husband and I were watching the service at the National Cathedral when suddenly the picture blacked out. Was it another attack? No, just the cable company but the idea of America being a “safe place” had been forever erased
3
My memories of 9/11 are different from the posters here.
I was in the U.K., on a tour of the castle in Cardiff, Wales, to be precise. As the train I was on pulled into Bath, England, someone said something about a plane hitting the Twin Towers. My sister and I ran to our inn and got there just after the second tower fell. I remember asking the inn keeper “What do you mean the towers fell?” And “What do you mean people were jumping to their deaths?”
As with everyone else, I couldn’t comprehend what was going on. I had two colleagues on the plane that hit the Pentagon, and I remember wondering if they died. What was I thinking, of course they died.
We were stuck in London for an extra five days. Didn’t read the news or watch TV.
Husband picked me up from airport and drove me to the Pentagon (I live in Northern Virginia). Still unreal.
I stayed away from the news for about three weeks, then started asking my husband about his experience that day, about the news, and how people reacted.
2
One of my first thoughts, which stayed with me, was that the way we govern ourselves would be changed for ever. I feared, despite the show of national unity in the immediate aftermath, that it would be for the worse. And my fear was exceeded. The 9/11 attack could have inspired national solidarity; but we got the opposite.
09:45 EDT, 9/12
3
I got goosebumps and chills reading this. Not a Cessna, and the train ride in as people passed by the scene so shocking to imagine traversing from normal life into the new hellish life of the present, unraveling as all traveled through time. The women who reported the students taking flying lessons to the aerial attacks of 9/11/11 always a reminder of listening to those who observe things and those who believe they know all. Mind the gap as you're told in England before boarding a train or subway car. Imagine the horror of Syria, Yemen, Iraq---other places where attacks and bombing occur often.
1
"My first thought was that one of the many small Cessna-like planes that buzz around the cities had crashed into the building." Precisely my thought upon entering my office in Secaucus , NJ, turning on my computer to my NYT home page, and seeing the headline, "plane hits World Trade Center."
" Clearly a small plane," I thought as my mind turned to my next work project.
In a matter of minutes, someone started running around the circular offices of this medical education company yelling terrorism. My sister in law called hysterical that two of my 3 nephews were on planes from Boston heading towards NJ and Washington.
I have never felt more terrified in my life. my brother called to say both nephews were OK, now on busses headed back to Boston.
With others gathered in our president's office, we watched Tower 2 fall. The silence among us was as eerie as the sight of that collapse in a plume of black.
We all changed that day, transformed by horror. Charles, I cannot imagine having to work on this story in an acrid city of ash, working to explain the unexplainable to a shell-shocked audience trying to fathom what happened.
4
Thank you for sharing your story. I also remember that day vividly. It’s hard to believe it was so many years ago. It’s also hard to believe at the point in time our country is more afraid of domestic terrorism than foreign. I hope someday soon...we will be able to go into a crowd, movie theatre, mall etc. and not be afraid of a madman with an automatic weapon killing innocent people.
2
I took a vow of silence that day and later sat in a cathedral reading St. Francis of Assisi's "O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to ... to be understood as to understand, ... “We should seek not so much to pray but to become prayer.”
For a brief shining moment in the aftermath, America received an outpouring of love, compassion, and kindness--both at home and around the world. Tragically the drumbeat for war cancelled out what could have been this country's shining moment and decision to pursue peace. Many millions have since paid the price for our revenge and ignorance.
6
September 11 is my birthday. Early that morning I was filled with self pity because my only child was far away in Israel. Then he called and my spirits rose for about an hour. When the Towers fell I was at the school where I taught in the Bronx. It took forever to drive home as the GWB was alternately shut and open. Words are inadequate but the world changed forever.
1
"My first thought was that one of the many small Cessna-like planes that buzz around the cities had crashed into the building." Precisely my thought upon entering my office in Secaucus , NJ, turning on my computer to my NYT home page, and seeing the headline, "plane hits World Trade Center."
" Clearly a small plane," I thought as my mind turned to my next work project.
In a matter of minutes, someone started running around the circular offices of this medical education company yelling terrorism. My sister in law called hysterical that two of my 3 nephews were on planes from Boston heading towards NJ and Washington.
I have never felt more terrified in my life. my brother called to say both nephews were OK, now on busses headed back to Boston.
With others gathered in our president's office, we watched Tower 2 fall. The silence among us was as eerie as the sight of that collapse in a plume of black.
We all changed that day, transformed by horror. Charles, I cannot imagine having to work on this story in an acrid city of ash, working to explain the unexplainable to a shell-shocked audience trying to fathom what happened.
2
9/11 was a terrible day. It lives on in each of us, in our worst nightmares. Something like it, or worse, will happen again. We must acknowledge that. We need strong and capable leadership to help get us through. We have a dictatorial president who gives up state and military secrets as if they were nothing more than everyday gossip; he places his own needs above those of his country. We have a political party that enables him. We live in a perilous world. We must consider that -- and remember -- when we cast our votes next year.
3
My youngest daughter lives in NYC. We live in Montana. She called us immediately after the second plane went in. The call went to voicemail as we were just getting up. “Mom, Dad,” she cried. “Turn on the TV; something’s happening at the World Trade Center!” We we’re unable to get through to her until after 6 pm. She was safe. What a terrible and tragic day. 9/11. We still weep.
1
I was in LA, working on a TV show. My sister was dying of cancer in New York. My mother had gone out there to be with her. They had just seen the US open. My mother stayed a few extra days because my sister wasn't feeling well. She boarded a plane at 8:50 am bound for LA on 9-11. After wheels up, the pilot said there was fire at the WTC, then moment later she watched another plane hit the other tower. Mother was incommunicado from that point on. We thought she was dead, targeted on a west bound United plane like so may. But hours later she called from Detroit, where she was stuck for days. She explained that phones had started going off in the plane and that her seat mate -- a big burley guy -- got up and stood in front of the cockpit the entire flight. I thought I was going to lose my sister and my mother. Mother is still alive to this day. Sadly, my sister died a month later. Her last donation was to the first responders.
11
My office was at 33rd & Madison in those days. We walked over to 5th Avenue then 7th Avenue to look at the towers and saw them fall. I was heartbroken.
A little while later I learned that I could not get home bec. the trains weren't running so I went to a friend's place in Sutton Place and stayed there watching TV until around 6:30 when the trains started up again. I spoke to my wife around 2pm and she seemed relieved. When I finally got home that night like so many people I was glued to the TV set. And it started to become apparent that the tragedy would become a life changer and it certainly has. It has affected my view of people of the Islamic faith and I struggle with that to this day. I vowed never to work in that part of the world again, and have kept that promise. There is a Moslem woman who works at a bank near where I live and she is friendly so that helps slowly alleviate my dim view of the religion. Other than her and a few former Middle Eastern Clients, I really don't know anyone of that faith.
1
I graduated from St. Francis Prep HS in Queens in 1979. The loss of life from our "Christian Community" was overwhelming. So many cops and firemen mostly. My father was a retired NYFD officer. The union asked him and his colleagues to pull out their old dress uniforms and attend funerals in the weeks that followed, because the active duty firefighters were depleted by death and exhausted from mourning.
Charles says the world was irrevocably altered. Was it? I had entertained some naïve hope at the time that the tragedy would change us and bring us closer together. And here we are, with Donald Trump, who personally saw thousands of Muslims in NJ cheer as the buildings fell (ah hem...), as president. The 3000 people, several friends of mine among them, died for nothing.
2
I thought it was a small plane too. I'm from the Bronx and my dad worked in lower Manhattan. I grew up going to the World Trade Center for lunch as a kid, my high school graduation dinner was in Windows on the World. What a splurge!!! As a college student I temped in WTC and ate lunch in the square outside. In the summer performers were there. It was fabulous. I was in my kitchen in Kansas when the first plane struck, the kids were eating breakfast getting ready for school. I turned on the TV and it was awful, I couldn't gather my thoughts. I turned off the TV, and listened to the radio when the 2nd tower was hit. I had to get the kids to school and met my friend and her kids to walk. On the walk she said it was a terrorist attack. I knew she was right and the world changed in that second. My kids found out about the attack at school. I just could not share it and wanted to protect them. They wondered why I didn't tell them. It was just too close to home for me. It still is. I'm crying. Compassion folks. The hate, why?
4
@Bx55
They used to have great free jazz concerts in that plaza. It always amazes me how the meaning of urban spaces changes over time. But the meaning of that space now will be forever frozen at a point in time, like Gettysburg or the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
I am so sorry.I watched on the tv and screamed when the first tower fell.
1
I was working mid-town Manhattan as an associate at a large law firm - around the clock on a brief. Mid-town on 9/11 seemed like a different city.
The senior partner all day kept coming into my office with questions and edits. Finally I just stared at him and said . . . “Don’t you know what’s going on?”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
And he walked out.
The insanity of that day was surreal. I guess everyone had there own way of dealing with it.
3
It was supposed to be a happy day for me. I was to deposit my dissertation at the university library and take the receipt to the Provost's office to get an official letter certifying that I had finally been awarded my doctorate.
Just before the train entered the tunnel to Manhattan, it stopped. We sat there a long while and rumors began to circulate. The train started to creep backwards as we all stared at the huge black plume of smoke billowing from lower Manhattan.
When I got home my wife opened the door crying. "They hijacked planes and crashed them into the Trade Center." I said, "Planes full of people? No, that can't be. You must be mistaken."
As soon as train service to Manhattan was restored I went in to work. I just wanted to be with my People, the white ones, the black ones, the brown ones; New Yorkers and Americans. You could smell the fire and taste the dust in your mouth. Though our office was officially closed all my co-workers showed up.
In a few days, police cars and fire engines from Boston, Phoenix and other cities were whizzing past. I passed a group of out-of-town policemen, from St. Louis I recall, and thanked them for coming to help.
3
I held my baby close and cried as I watched the TV footage of the airplane flying into the tower and each tower collapsing. I cried for the immense and overwhelming loss of so many lives, and for their loved ones left behind. So many lives irrevocably altered, including my daughter's.
She, like others of her generation, has grown up with the undercurrent of terrorism and violence. Our country has been at war for almost her entire life as a response to 9/11, and she's now an adult. She and her classmates huddle in classroom corners during lockdown drills, praying that it will never be real. No wonder so many young people suffer from anxiety, and so many parents are helicopters. America has been attacked from without and within. We can never forget the images of the towers seared in our brains.
3
This piece gives a good sense of the confusion that must have been felt in newsrooms everywhere. How do you even begin to tell the story? i figured right away it was deliberate. It was such a beautiful day. No one could accidentally fly into those buildings. I was at work making pastries at a country club. Later in the day the chef and I went out to lower the flag to half staff and we saw a fighter jet, high up, glinting in the sun. My ex-wife lost a friend, Herb Homer of Milford ma. I often still think of how the passengers felt when they realized what was about to happen. Almost too awful to contemplate.
1
September 11, 2001 is a raw, visceral, stirring memory for all who lived through it.
We saw both the best and the most evil in humankind that day.
1
I was off work for vacation and sleeping in when I received a call and told to turn on the television. Both buildings were burning. People were trapped above the fires. Fire fighters and rescue people were rushing into the buildings. Hospitals were preparing for many injured people.
In a few minutes, the first building collapsed. In a swift but vertical descent. The cloud of rumble rolled through the streets. A while later, the second collapsed and more clouds of rumble rolled through. Cement and steel and office equipment and all but the structural steel and the billions of sheets of paper crushed and air borne. Appalling. The most appalling sight I’d ever seen.
Soon the Pentagon was reported struck and another highjacked plane disappeared in Pennsylvania. Then the skies were cleared of all civilian aircraft for the first time in my lifetime.
A year later, I traveled to New York and saw the huge empty hole where those huge buildings stood. It was like an open and cleared out sarcophagus.
I have a lot of respect for people like Blow who stayed and did their jobs in that City, that day.
1
I could see the towers from my kitchen window. I saw it all - the plane flying low down the length of Manhattan.. I was on the phone and remarked to my friend that planes were not allowed to fly like that. I turned to pour my coffee my coffee and my building shook and I hear a roaring sound, looked up and saw a hole in the north tower. It hadn't yet begun to smoke. I got out my binoculars and saw flames inside the big hole.
I called my parents to let them know I was ok at home, spoke to someone else, and then saw the second plane come in and knew it was completely on purpose..
My partner was on Liberty St for a meeting at Deutsche Bank . He arrived after the first hit and stood transfixed ..watching people jump and wondering how he could help. Then the second plane hit right above him.. he said that visually it was so beautiful, the brilliant flames against the blue blue sky, and all the glittering ..which he realized was broken glass and was about to land on him. He ran to a nearby garbage truck and rolled underneath, and then all hell broke loose. That truck saved his life. He got up and ran. By the time he made it home we were all shocked. He kept wondering why he was there to witness it, the bodies falling, panicking people trampling each other.. There wasn't time to be scared, we were just sad, raw and in shock.
Everything changed that day. And not for the better.
6
Thank you for sharing this moving story, and let me express my gratitude to you and your NYT colleagues for your coverage that day. For the rest of us, it's the "paper of record" but for you, the NYT is your hometown periodical and in a sense the events were personal for all of you.
4
I was working for a small cargo airline in operations, I vividly remember getting a call from my wife at the time who was/ is a flight attendant for one of the carriers involved that day. She called and said CNN is saying a plane hit the trade center, I asked like most people “a small one” she said she didn’t know. I walked into our flight dispatch department and asked the dispatcher Alex what’s the weather in JFK, when he said clear and visibility unlimited, I was dumbfounded. As a pilot myself you simply can’t imagine hitting a building you can see out the window! Then my wife called back and said witnesses on the street were saying it was a large plane. Then those of us in the business knew this was on purpose.
As the next hour unfolded information was difficult to get because the internet was melting down. When we received the message from the secretary of transportation that the US air space system was shut down, we went to work contacting the planes we had in the air to get them to suitable airports for landing. We had one in between Newark and San Juan well off the coast of North Carolina, when we got them on the radio their first question was what the hell is gioing on! They were stunned when we related the little we knew.
Hours later as I was leaving and driving by the perimeter of MIA airport I pulled over to look at the scene of airplanes parked everywhere on the airport and absolute silence. Not a single sound of airplane noise at a major American airport.
1
I was in CA when that horrible day began but grew up in NJ. My father was in the city that day, having a meeting with executives in the toy business, though we had no idea where. It turned out, he was in the Empire State Building. He was the one who tried to rally people inside to leave the building, thinking it could be a target. He could not get out of the city until 10 that night. I have never seen him more shaken by any experience, even after growing up during the hunger winter in Holland during the war.
3
I was driving down 7th Ave in the City of Miami, listening to Howard Stern on the radio. Howard interrupted the dialogue to announce that a plane had flown into the World Towers. There were a few jokes about it being a Cessna and then Howard stated, "No, this is serious!" and he proceeded to inform his audience about the attack on the World Trade Center.
At the time, I was working in a large county hospital mid -town Miami. We were a level one trauma Center. I was a hospital social worker. When I pulled into the covered parking lot. It was such an eerie feeling to see people standing silently by their cars listening to the radio. They did not want to be disconnected from the continuous updates from NYC .
After arriving at work, we were told to assist the teams with discharging patients that were stable enough to go home or to a step -down facility . The hospital had to get 300 beds ready that morning in the event that patients may be transferred to our hospital from NYC or other areas where there may be attacks. (At that time the attack on the World Towers was still very fluid.)
We did arrange for 300 beds. We had patients waiting in the family rooms for transportation to different discharge locations.
Then, no one was transferred from NYC. We heard that almost 3,000 people were involved and yet we did not have one transfer. The terrifying thought was hard to believe.. That there may be were only a few survivors!!
4
On September 11, 2001 I was on day two of my basic Army officer training course. I knew at some point I would deploy, but now there was going to be an actual war. Things got very real, very quickly. My poor parents; how terrified they must have been! Basic training was so far removed from anything I'd ever experienced, it was like being in kindergarten all over again; a second childhood. Some of the wide-eyed friends I made that fall went on to get killed in Afghanistan, way back in '07-08; so long ago it's like they never existed and it was all just a dream.
9
@Aaron Thank you for your service.
1
We all feel this way. Scared to death, and ready to fight. Not knowing if we were being invaded, or what. I found my .22, loaded it, and set it on the table, within easy reach. That's how shocked and terrified I was. (I have since sold the gun. A real danger in my hands.)
4
I was not able to share the grief, confusion, and terror of 9/11 with my fellow citizens. I wasn’t glued to my TV or radio.
I was in a medically induced coma on a ventilator in Honolulu’s major trauma center fighting to live after an atrocious assault. As I was beginning to wake up a week later the staff kept newspapers away from me and all TVs were turned off in the patients’ rooms. My military husband was told not to discuss any of this with me...but found out later he had felt terribly alone going through this grief.
Finally around Christmas, I was able to start understanding this horrific tragedy...but most folks had returned to fairly normal life.
I was forced to go through this grief and anger all on my own. I searched for videos of that day. I remember watching the video taken by a film crew following a fire station and its new rookies. They were first on the scene. I sat holding my husband’s hand and asking what the thudding sounds we were hearing in the lobby. He said “Those are the bodies of the people who jumped from the burning structure hitting the roof of the lobby.” I wept. I watched other videos and I cried for the idiocy of it all.
To this day I can’t share the grief...it’s like watching films of WWII. Yes, horribly sad but I was outside looking in. Not like the rest of you.
FBI Director Andy McCabe described the event in a heart-wrenching way--just doing his job.
Except those ashes? These were the cremains of real people.
That hit hard!
3
We lived in Albuquerque and my son had just started kindergarten. His dad worked by the airport and he used to love to go and watch the planes take off and land. It was weeks before he wanted to go and watch the planes again. He always wanted to be a pilot but after that he decided not to do that.
3
I’ll never forget 9/11, especially the two hours immediately after I learned of it. My husband was working a couple of blocks from the Capitol Building. We didn’t have a cell phone yet (I know, sounds incredible), so I had only my landline phone to try and get in touch with him. His mother, then eighty-eight, and other family members were waiting on me to tell them where he was, how he was. Of course, the lines were jammed.
The good news is I got through to one of his coworkers, and they were all okay. So many people weren’t. We heard every day about people who’d either died or sustained other injuries because of the attacks.
Beyond that, I talked with so many people who suffered from depression and feelings of hopelessness after the attacks. I remember a conversation with a woman from Vietnam who was beside herself. She said, “I came to this country because I thought it was safe.” She grew up in a small village during the Vietnam War where there were frequent bombings. The 9/11 attacks brought all that back for her.
But a few days later, I started to notice something. People were coming out to live their lives as usual, and many of them had American flags displayed in some way. It’s as if they were saying, “This is who we are. You can’t make us live in fear.” I have never been prouder to be an American than I was at that time.
Today I remain proud, but I also worry. Divisions within a country can be just as destructive as attacks from the outside.
7
@Innocent Bystander
"She grew up in a small village during the Vietnam War where there were frequent bombings. The 9/11 attacks brought all that back for her."
Yeah. "This is who we are." People who bombed a small east Asian country for years, traumatizing its people. We had one 9/11, but we've caused countless others in faraway parts of the world.
This gave me chills.
As with JFK's murder, nobody will forget what they were doing when the news hit. We had a construction crew preparing their equipment outside. I told them what had happened and saw the horror on their faces. A couple were veterans and all had friends in the military. They were afraid it meant war, and toiled like silent robots except for breaks to check the news.
6
Watching the towers fall from my office on 42nd Street was bad enough...we were in such disbelief that we thought it was an optical illusion. But the thing that haunts me the most, especially every time I fly, is imagining the terror that those airplane passengers must have experienced. That those 19 men could perpetrate such an act against other humans is something that I simply can't wrap my mind around. I still have nightmares about it 18 years later.
15
I saw 9/11 on my TV the day it happened. I wanted to punish those involved. I recognize and validate the feelings of people who were directly affected and I would never try and tell any of these people how to grieve or how to feel about it years later.
However, in my own case years later, I ended up coming back to the beliefs and values that we hold dear in America. We have freedom of religious identity and we aren’t supposed to discriminate or marginalize any specific group, culture or identity.
But as an example, I do want to point out that mass shooters are nearly always White males. Yet, we aren’t targeting any messages of revenge or hate towards this. And if you look at the record, if you look at history, White European and American males have orders of magnitude more violence and blood on their hands than people who identify as Islamic.
Again, I’m not telling anyone who lost someone who to feel. But for the rest of us? We need to be consistent, avoid hypocrisy and a double standard. If we don’t talk about the fact that nearly all mass shooters are White or that they are men, then let’s not engage in hate and anger at any specific religion as a result of 9/11 or otherwise. Its un-American and hypocritical.
Furthermore, it is evidence of the extreme privilege White males have in our society, privilege that is often dismissed as not existing. Well here is a perfect example of the scope and power of that privilege.
10
and I just watched the video of the son of one of the victims of 9/11. "We know who did it," he said.
Yes, and we know who are doing nearly all of the mass shootings too.
Why aren't we talking about their identity?
Why, in the media are these White men referenced as "shooter" or anything other than their identity, often engaging in verbal acrobatics to mention it?
Why the double standard?
2
I remember clearly being at work at the State Department that awful day. I was in one of the annexes and also recall a rumor that the main State building had been bombed. We were let go later in the morning and I chose to walk the three miles home rather than try to take the Metro (subway). Every time I’m driving in the vicinity of the Pentagon and see an airplane taking off from National Airport, I think of what happened back then.
7
I was at my desk, in the office of the Paris tech company where I was working. A colleague emailed me a shot of an airplane hitting a tower. I replied that it must have been photoshopped...
Of course it wasn't, and we gathered in the office of another colleague who was streaming the news on his computer. Work pretty much ground to halt that day.
There is a small replica of the Statue of Liberty on an island in the Seine. At the end of the day, another American colleague and I went to try and somehow pay our respects there. There were several dozen other expats there, none of us quite sure what to do, wanting to do something.
I spent the rest of the evening with friends, huddled together on the couch, crying as we watched images of the towers falling again and again.
The next day I walked past the American Consulate, just off the Place de la Concorde, where its gardens back onto a broad pedestrian area. It was a sea of flowers and notes, with more and more of them arriving every minute, placed there by Parisians, some somber, some crying.
The world stood with us then.
Look where we are now...
33
@KB
I've always felt it was unfortunate that America didn't have the great leadership she so desperately needed to rise to the challenge.
4
Not only is the experience shared across all walks of life, but also the pain.
9
What a great story teller you are, Mr. Blow. This column brought me back to that day and while not overly emotional in choice of words, evoked so much emotion.
Thank you for reminding us of that day so well and making us contemplate how important what we did from that day forward was and what we do from this day forward continues to be.
16
I was standing in the rubble at Ground Zero on 9/11. I got there about an hour after the second tower collapsed to cover the story for a NYC TV station. I remember standing at the end of a short street in lower Manhattan, trying to figure out exactly where I was. The towers had always been the North Star you used to figure out your location, but now it was a pile of debris. The facade of the building behind me was made of glass, which had been blown out. I was standing next to a building that looked okay, staring down the street lined with burned out vehicles. Firefighters were pouring water onto the front of it and I walked up to take a look. The front of the building was gone. A firefighter suggested I leave the area. Two hours later the 40+ story building collapsed. It was 7 Word Trade. I ended up in Battery Park City, which the towers had collapsed onto. Body parts were strewn on the ground. Bodies were being pulled from the rubble all around me. Firefighters were in a state of shock. One told me his entire company was gone. The ground was covered by a thick layer of what looked like volcanic dust. Billions of pieces of paper were strewn everywhere. I spent several days at Ground Zero. It was more than a person, even a journalist, could get their mind around. I still dread anniversaries like today. The nightmare never goes away.
29
My moment came that afternoon. My wife and I felt powerless, a universal feeling. We decided one thing we could do was to give blood. We went to the hospital, a while later a nurse came out to tell everyone on line to give blood to go home, that it was not needed. That meant few survivors.
16
I had just gotten out of the shower, I was getting ready for a flight to Ohio where I was scheduled to take care of my sister who had was being released from the hospital after having had triple bi-pass surgery. I was watching the morning shows and I remember well the shock of seeing the first plane hit a tower and the horror I felt when I saw the second plane and realized it was not an accident. Flights were grounded and I had to drive to Ohio.
9
@JRM
My brother was on a business trip to St Louis. They had to buy a car to drive back to NYC
1
I watched the whole thing, real time, in a cancer clinic at a hospital in Miami. The patients seemed numbed by the images. My husband was terminally ill. and as we moved from room to room getting his blood work and care I felt a horrible kinship to the victims and their families. He died on November 5, 2001, and I mourn his death with that of the victims, and America's invincibility.
18
On 9/11 I was serving in the US Navy and watched the events unfold from the Norfolk medical clinic in which I then served.
My memories coalesced around three images from that very bad period which summed up our resolve:
1. The cartoon of the eagle sharpening its claws published 9/13 by Steve Breen of the San Diego Union-Tribune
2. A photograph of a B-52 on the tarmac displaying its entire weapons loadout with this caption: THE TALIBAN HAS WON THE TOSS AND HAS ELECTED TO RECEIVE
3. The photograph of the FGS Lutjens rendering honors on 9/13 to the USS Winston Churchill, passing alongside with its crew in dress uniforms and the ship flying both the German and American flags at half-mast with a banner "We Stand By You" displayed
This remained one of my proudest memories of service to the nation. The mood was somber but unified as we were poised to receive our orders. "Send me in, Coach" was the near-universal thought.
Sadly, that resolve and that unity was vitiated when as a nation we went to war with a country which did not attack us (Iraq), ignored one which did (Saudi Arabia) and poisoned our own country with the over-reaching USA PATRIOT act.
But for that one week, we were indeed one nation.
48
@Douglas McNeill Your description brought tears. Thanks.
2
@Douglas McNeill
Your personal anecdote about 9-11-01 mentions a photo of a B-52 with the caption, "The Taliban has won the toss and has elected to receive." I recognize the reference to football, but why was the Taliban cited instead of Al Qaeda, the terrorist group that was actually responsible for the attacks?
@Douglas McNeill
The cartoon I most remember (I don't recall where it originally ran) depicted the Twin Towers on top of a cloud, and one angel saying to another, "I heard that four jetliners just landed safely at Heaven International Airport (with a brief stopover in Hell to drop off the terrorists)."
Thank you. You captured exactly what I and I am sure most people anywhere felt on that infamously monstruous day. I also instinctively knew the world had suddenly changed and would never be the same. What little innocence was left in this world up to that moment died along with the thousands of innocent victims, replaced by fear, cynicism and mistrust, all now widely exploited for ideological and political gain. And so here we are. My heart and soul remain irreparably injured in more ways than I can articulate.
19
My husband was working on an extended contract in southern Ethiopia on 9/11. I was watching a.m. news and saw the entire event unfolding. At the first report, I began video-taping. I called my husband immediately but he was winding up his day, and said he’d seen the news. I spent that day checking with children, friends, children’s friends, relatives in NY and DC, even receiving calls from random friends and former colleagues around the world just wanting to connect. When my husband got back to the USA in mid-December, he noted the security changes and higher militaristic presence and the loss of innocence, but it wasn’t until 4 years later, when we were living in Kenya, that he got it. One evening, we slipped a videotape mis-marked “Seinfeld” into the tv to watch and started watching instead the tape I’d made. All he had ever seen on Ethiopian TV on that tragic day was the one shot, over and over, of the second plane. There had been little follow-up. In 2004, he experienced for the first time what we had all seen that day, and I relived it, holding his hand, weeping.
13
September 11th was my late mother’s birthday. My husband and I had spent the weekend before the 11th up in New York celebrating with her. The weather that weekend was also glorious. We spent a lot of time downtown and the Towers were always standing out against the blue skies. My mother wrote us a note dated September 10th, going over the wonderful time from start to finish. The note was received after the 11th and I have never forgotten how it seemed so innocent. Of course, no awareness how everything was going to change the very next day.
8
In the first moment when I saw the smoke out of the two towers, I thought of a terrorist attack, and didn't wonder much the collapse of towers, in shock. But the emotional impact was terrible wrapped in fear, as if the world is coming to an end.
Later on, consulting media, security pots, terrorism thinktanks, and political analysis about the incident, I was shocked once more. How all the brains came out to believe that those people living in the jungle, Afghanistan or else where, have had the comprehensive data, technology, information and ability of plot planning needed for that huge attack in that perfection? Never they were alone on the American soil, only inside the planes.
I sadly remembered Bush when he was in a broad smile on the ground zero ground. A third shock came when he was asked how the superpower couldn't prevent?, he answered there was no way!
So far, my belief is settled that accusations, up till now, are misleading in large. A reason why fighting terrorism failed for years and years to come.
4
Not sure what you mean about the ignorance of the hijackers, here.
Thank you, Charles, for capturing the very essence of working on that day.
“We walked the two blocks to the school complex under dazzling blue skies, so clear that they looked unreal. “
Those blue skies are burned into my mind too.
27
I was teaching Kindergarten when the towers fell. Over the next couple of days, my 5-year old students were really freaking out, misbehaving, acting out and crying for no apparent reason. I finally figured out that they were watching TV footage at home of the towers being struck, burning, and collapsing, but did not realize those were replays of the same attack. Many of them thought they were watching new attacks and they were terrified. I sent a note home that day to parents asking them to carefully monitor how much news their kids watched, preferably none at all. It worked for the most part, and I appreciated the immediate collective and cooperative response on the part of the parents. I have not felt that sense of "we are all in this together" in our fractured country since that terrible time.
15
@AKL
Thank you for this. Little 5 year-olds didn't need to be subjected to this horror. I was sorry to read that Mr. Blow found it necessary to awaken his 7 and 4 year-old children. The morning would have been soon enough.
2
@anon
I don't think you realize how comforting it would have been to come home, see your children, and talk to them a bit. They undoubtedly knew that something had happened. After all, he hadn't come home as he usually did, the sitter stayed really late, etc. To have their father with them & saying that he loved them is what you do.
21
@AKL
If only all the 5-year-olds in Afghanistan and Iraq had the incredible privilege of being able to avoid seeing regular bombings.
1
My father was the attorney for the Port Authority police with over 2,000 in the union. He'd taken me to the towers while they were being built, we ate at Windows on the World often, and he had meetings there all of the time. My midtown office had a branch a block away.
With the phone lines jammed, I didn't know where he was for quite a while. I kept watching the TV thinking it was a mistake.
Four days later, still in disbelief, I emerged from Penn Station to see for myself. I caught a cab to 16th Street and walked the rest of the way down to the site. Hundreds of flyers of missing faces were plastered on walls, cars, office buildings. Everything was covered with dust. The air smelled horrible. I just kept walking because it still didn't seem real. I had to see it for myself.
What I finally saw was hundreds of fireman with shirts from all over the USA as well as Europe, digging, working, and trying to uncover people in that rubble. I stood there for over an hour, praying someone was found.
I argued with my father that maybe somehow people were down in the stores below the towers. He kept saying there was no one down there. I held onto hope for another week during the digging, praying that there was someone who'd managed to stay alive in a shop below ground. He was right, no one emerged.
My father tried to attend every one of the 37 funerals for the Port Authority police who lost their lives that day. My own town lost 12 parents. It will never be the same.
18
I’m having trouble reconciling Charles’ chronology of events. His narrative implies that the second tower was hit as he was walking across Times Square after a subway ride (from Brooklyn?). Yet the towers were struck 18 minutes apart, a much shorter span of time than such a train trip would have taken.
2
Beautifully written Charles..I was a 747-400 pilot with Northwest Airlines on a layover in Nagoya, Japan. It was around midnight when I received a call from a fellow pilot to turn on the TV. I watched in horror as events unfolded. The crew( pilots and flight attendants) immediately met and the emotions were intense. We were in Nagoya for 5 days and we then took a 747( the first or second airplane that launched from JFK after it reopened) from Nagoya to Manila( where the bad guys supposedly got some of their flight training and where security was still very questionable) . The captain of one of the airplanes that hit the twin towers was a fellow former US Navy fighter pilot. As I write this, there is a lump in my throat and a tears in my eyes...
18
I was certain that no captain and crew would allow their plane to be used as a weapon, that day, so it was certain that hijackers were doing the flying.
1
I was working in suburban Michigan at the time of the attacks, in an office tower along a busy commercial airway corridor. Beyond the tragedy itself, what was most eerie in the aftermath was the complete absence of any aircraft whatsoever in the beautiful sunny skies following the grounding/rerouting of all private and commercial aircraft within/to the United States.
12
@Julio I was in Overland Park, KS that day and thought the same as you. Went for walks that whole week and it was eerily quiet.
3
I had just moved to Portland OR for a new job that would start on Sept. 12 after living within sight of the twin towers in NJ for several years. On sept. 11 I was sleeping in a sleeping bag in my unfurnished new apartment when I was awoken by a hysterical, barely coherent phone call from sister in NH: “they are gone!” I couldn’t get through on the phone or by e-mail to any of my New York friends. It was the most grimly surreal day , trying to do my new town, new job errands with the catastrophe playing out on the car radio. The hairdresser who had no idea what I was talking about when I brought it up (no tv or radio in the salon, no smart phones then). Going to buy a tv, and silently watching the replays of the towers falling on multiple screens with the salesman. Listening to the excellent, detailed coverage on NPR (I listened to it constantly for weeks). I felt great shock and grief, but also a deep foreboding about how the Bush administration was going to handle this atrocity. I wish I could say I was wrong, but my worst fears on that score were realized. I firmly believe that the road to Donald Trump started on that day.
27
This made me lose my breath all over again. It's awful to think about, but crucial to remember, since it changed our world forever. Thank you for remembering some of the humanity of that day. We only survive by helping one another in this world, and we should treat each other accordingly.
18
I was new to the US. I arrived to Florida to start graduate school and was teaching early in the morning. It was a beautiful morning. After teaching my 8:30 class, I went to the TA’s office. It was 9:20. I found a colleague lecture, crying, hearing the news on her radio. I went in. Are you ok? A plane fell in NYC. I listened, hard because I was still getting use to a new language. I remembered I looked at her, with a certainty that was not me: the plain did not fall. This is a terrorist attack. She looked at me dumbfounded. But, how? It will be ok. I told her, and left to see the news. I saw the pictures on Internet and felt like it was happening so far away. Although I was certain, it did not sink in until the end of the day, after everything happened. Coming from the Caribbean and knowing Latin American history, I knew this could be possible and terrible. My US friends did not. It changed the world completely.
11
It was 18 years ago that America lost its civility. We were attacked by a group who hated us and, given what's happened in the intervening years, they effectively won.
There is no more agreement among different ways of thought. There is out-and-out violence among groups that differ in skin color, or religious beliefs, or gender association. There is the reckless shouting and screaming that accompanies demogogues around the world. Hatred and bigotry have supplanted goodness and kindness.
While there is a genuine feeling that "we stood together" associated with the aftermath of this horrible event, the net result is that we are more divided than ever. I blame our leaders - all of them - for failing to account for what "war" without a coherent accounting of result (never mind cause and effect) could mean to a populace.
And yet, I will take the time to mourn those who were lost in the tragedy, and hope that new leaders may arise to help heal the divisiveness that resulted, and will work to bring out the better nature in everyone.
20
The 9/11 attacks are seared into my memory in the same way that that JFK's assassination is. I expect that's true for most people my age.
I got up that morning like any other and turned on the television. There it was on every channel. They were still airing footage of the jumpers over and over before finally the networks made the right decision to stop. Those images still haunt me.
I work for the company that built the hijacked jetliners. Later I discovered that the first plane I worked on when I was a new hire was the one that became United Flight 93. That haunts me too. But I'm proud of the passengers. They fought back thereby preventing a worse death toll that day. May they rest in peace.
15
The shockingly blue, beautiful clarity of that sky was created by the hellacious storm that passed through NY the night before.
My wife and I were in a Milan-bound plane, delayed on the tarmac
for about 3 hours until the storm passed and we could leave. Quite a few hours later, as we entered our small hotel in Cinque Terre, the first tower came crashing down, tons of gray ash clouding that blue sky. The overwhelming shock and grief we felt were replaced by the overwhelming outpouring of moral support generously provided by strangers thousands of miles away. For a brief time, we were all Americans.
18
@Guido Malsh
That “outpouring of moral support generously provided by strangers thousands of miles away” you wrote of reminded me of that morning in Palau, Micronesia when our waiter brought our breakfast coffee with the words “so sorry to hear about plane in New York .” My wife and I were on a scuba diving vacation and an hour later saw what he meant when we went to meet the dive boat. A tv at the bar there was showing what had already happened 12 hours before - endlessly. Along with the shock of seeing those pictures came the sincere apologies from people from all over the world staying at the resort. It felt like humanity had been wounded by the attack, not just Americans.
8
On Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001, I was on my way to work. Disc players were in vogue then (so long ago). I was listening to Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 in a recording by Leonard Bernstein with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It was his final concert.
I have played that recording every September 11 since. With every playing, the memories are fresh. The second movement is especially poignant; it's what the Boston Symphony Orchestra played on November 22, 1963. Maestro Erich Leinsdorf interrupted his concert that afternoon to play the ten-minute long piece, a paean to sadness and to hope.
25
@Red Sox, ‘04, ‘07, ‘13, ‘18 Lovely comment, Sir Red Sox.
2
This was not just a NY or US experience I lived and worked in Australia and Australians have their same stories of where and how they found out. Many stayed up most of the night watching coverage from halfway around the world.
15
I work in a nursing home now in the activity department, having retired from nursing.
This week I asked the seniors about their memories of 9/11. It was one of my most heart wrenching working days. In the midst of perhaps misery in their senior years, their clear depiction of that frightful morning, the planes, the screams, the smoke and fire - as clear as a bell, this 18 years later. Their sorrow and mourning was real. And when our little tribute ended in singing “God Bless America” they meant every word.
23
@MIMA Very nice, Mima.
1
Thank you for sharing you story. In the afternoon of 9/11 in Europe the internet went down in many places and we were trying to find a working homepage, El Pais from Spain connected and we watched in disbelief and horror, my American colleague with ashen face.
Three years ago on my trip to NY I visited the Ground Zero. It happened to be 9/11. No photos, just speechless and numb.
11
I remember leaving for work that day, walking outside and seeing the most beautiful clear blue sky I have ever seen. The air was early September cool and not a breeze to be felt. Simply the nicest day weather wise that I have ever seen. Then the horror began.
To this day, Whenever I feel and see a day that approaches the majestic weather of that morning, the memories, shock and the deep sorrow for the victims, families and our country come back to my mind.
23
@RST
I was going to write this too....you captured it perfectly...
Where I live in Western PA, we had such a perfect day last week.
My mind instantly went to 9-11, and my feeling of anxiety was with me all day. Because of events of 18 years past.....
I remember my Dad taking us kids to see the towers being built when they were under construction. ( I lived in Queens after my parents got divorced....when my Dad, an engineer, visited us, he took us to see things like the Towers being constructed, and air planes taking off across Jamaica Bay...we saw one of the first 747's with him.....)...
A few years ago I went to NYC to visit....the new tower was being finished....it's not the same of course, but that site is a powerful place to visit....
5
The day the Towers fell was also a primary vote day. It was of course cancelled but that is how I found out about this tragedy.
I had arrived back from Europe the day before and did not have the TV on. I live on lower Fifth Avenue and was on my way to vote at NYU when I got out of my elevator and I saw all these people looking down the Avenue and crying. It was there that I saw the first tower fall. The view is unbroken.
The one thing I remember clearly is the sound of the crowd at that very moment. The moans, cries, and screams knowing there were people in those building. One could see bodies diving out of the windows. Nothing one can ever describe.
I ran upstairs and put the TV on when the phone started ringing. Friends from Europe were calling. It was difficult to explain what I had just witnessed. I also at that moment was crying. "How could this happen" we are in America? Things like this do not happen here. For the next few days we lived with the soot falling from the remains and the funerals at our nearby churches.
To this day I cannot stand to hear the sound of bagpipes playing. Everyday a funeral was led by a group of bagpipers
and the memory is a moment I will never forget.
27
@Sheila Shulman
the fact that it was a primary vote day save the lives of a lot of people. They went to vote before going to work and so because of the delay they were not in the buildings. There were also some schools starting that day and parents were taking their children to school and so were not in the buildings that day. There was a football game on TV the night before and a lot of people stayed up to watch the end and so were late and were not in the buildings. So many little things made a difference.
2
Thanks to all for sharing your stories- important for healing to connect with each other. On that infamous day I lived near Summit NJ and was home alone, 8 months pregnant with our first child, when my husband called from work and said „don‘t go visit your sister today after all. Turn on the Tv.“ She lived in Alphabet City. I did, and watched in horror until the transmission ended when the towers fell. I spent the remainder of the day alone, watching the smoke from my apartment terrace, listening to the fighter jets punctuating what was otherwise an absolutely eerily silent late summer day, hugging my 8-month pregnant belly and talking to my unborn first child. To this day I feel a deep comfort when I see butterflies because on that day they were the only thing in my vicinity that made me feel that it would be okay...that this too would pass. I mourn for those killed and injured. For we observers as well. But as other commentators have said, let us embrace the compassion many of us are moved to feel, not just on 9/11 but every day. Maybe then the terror of that day will be replaced with something more beautiful and butterfly-like.
23
I was an RN working the 3-11 shift,I spent the day sitting staring at the TV unable to reach either one of my children or my family in Ireland.I got to work desperately needing to speak to someone anyone, my co workers were stone faced and doing their best to take care of very distressed patients,so I joined them and did the same,I never did get to speak about that morning and I cried on the journey home.....
18
Charles, I have been reading many of the comments in response to your poignant piece. So many of your readers personally experienced in one way or another the tragedy of 9/11 whether in New York, at the Pentagon, or in Pennsylvania. I intend to save this essay along with its moving comments. In but a few words, maybe only a paragraph, so many have bared their souls and have touched mine. We live in a polarized society now, so hateful and mean-spirited. If only we can remember and resurrect the shared love and compassion we felt on those days, weeks, and months after September 11. We were one and so united. I had almost forgotten about that compassionate side of human nature, our better angels within us all.
56
@Kathy Lollock A mere 21 years old, I have no recollection of 9/11; it this reality that compels me to comb through the comments section to try to understand. Your takeaway of trying to get back to the togetherness which ensued the horrible accident is absolutely correct. We must shed the vileness from our society and once again find compassion with one another. The most incredible part of finding your comment is that although I am reading this piece from my university in Brussels, I am too a Santa Rosa native. It reminds me that none of us is too far removed from one another, and there is solace in that.
17
@Sydney Hello, Sydney. Thank you for your reply. I wish you all the best in Brussels. Peace, and may we never experience a 9/11 again.
1
@Sydney Hello, Sydney. Thank you for your reply. I wish you all the best in Brussels. Peace, and may we never experience a 9/11 again.
1
I watched this from my home in Penang, Malaysia where I was living and working. The first call I received that long, lonely, and painful evening was from my best friend Amir Melber who is a resident of Malaysia. To this day he and his family are my closest friends. Along with with many other Malaysians who were watching with horror as events unfolded that evening one by one over the next few days we spoke, cried together and tried to make sense of what was essentially senseless. Without exception they were 100% of the Islamic faith and I will always be grateful for their consolation during that tragic period.
24
Back in the 1970’s planes were hijacked in order to escape to countries without extradition treaties, to intimidate governments into releasing terrorists, and to extort money. The protocols for handling hijacking presumed that the objective was to extort not to destroy. Then four passenger aircraft were used to destroy lots of people, two giant buildings in New York, and to destroy a section of a massive building housing our military commands.
The worst attack on U.S. soil since the attack at Pearl Harbor. The targets were people at work not soldiers, sailors, and marines in military roles. People targeted because they could be and not any other reason.
The people cooperated, strangers and coworkers both helped each other as well as the fire fighters, EMT, and police. They did so to save lives, not to seek retribution.
I watched it in Los Angeles, as did people wherever the mass media could reach. We all saw the people in New York being brave, heroic, and kind.
14
Beautifully written. Nothing more to say. Just sadness and tears.
25
Didn’t expect to come home after a long day at work and evening meetings to read a column and burst into tears. Thank you for what you wrote.
Our first call that day was when our son —employed by an airline—called to say he was fine and wasn’t on any of the affected flights. We turned on the news and watched the horror unfold. My pilot brother got news to us that he was safely grounded in Alaska. My good friend who had lost her husband to drowning ten days earlier awaited news for hours that her son at NYU was safe. He’d tried to find a way to help and finally walked miles to relatives and a working phone circuit.
I’ve been near Ground Zero at St. Paul’s Chapel which was miraculously spared —but in twice yearly trips to NYC have been unable yet to bring myself to see the memorial. Each year I think I’ll do it. Maybe this year.
God bless you and God bless your babysitter and all those like you who labored extra and long.
28
I watched the first tower fall from the roof of our building in Brooklyn. I had always loved the Twin Towers. Loved gazing at them, loved the way they stood looming over the Fourth of July fireworks on the East River, loved going up to the top for the amazing view and the anxiety rush of being so high. About twenty minutes after they fell, a cloud passed over the neighborhood. It rained ashes and detritus from the towers. It smelled like death. We put duct tape on the windows, the magical protection that New Yorkers keep for emergencies. Our two year old daughter was missing. She was out somewhere with her babysitter. There was no cell service. After about an hour, they returned, having breathed that horrible stuff. Who knows what risks live on in my now 20 year old daughter? We tried to so something, anything, not to feel so powerless. Within a few days I was giving therapy to my patients again in mid-town Manhattan. They had PTSD and I had PTSD. Not long after, one of my patients rushed in. He worked in Rockefeller Center. He had just had to evacuate the building due to anthrax. I travelled regularly to the Bronx where I taught. As the subway passed through Grand Central, I wondered if it would be the next target for an attack. No one knew what could happen at any moment. We still don't know, as the ripples from that terrible day keep spreading.
26
I was picking out flowers for my wedding in the flower district. I worked for an online photo agency so when the proprietor of the company received the call from her friend at the WTC about the first planeI hightailed it to work a few blocks away.
I clearly remember the following hour and ten minutes Mr. Blow, as people trickled into the office. My cubicle had a perfect view of the Towers. When the second Tower fell we had photographers on site (luckily neither perished). I watched from my window while others shrieked in horror watching on the TVs behind me.
18 years and I’m still angry. Angry at the innocence that was ripped from me, my former city, my country. I have come to hate beautiful blue skied September days.
18 years. Those of us who were there, who were witnesses... we are part of a silent club, one I know I never wanted to be a member of. We carry it in our cells, reactivated by sound, smell. What we as New Yorkers, and as a nation, l. I am lucky I didn’t lose anyone that day (save for a part of myself). For those of you who did, words can’t suffice.
Today I mourn those lost on that beautiful morning. Today I honor those lost since in senseless acts that I never agreed with. Today I will try to remember who I was around 8.40am on that Tuesday morning before my world, our world, was irrevocably changed.
As each year passes some of the feelings fade.
But as the saying goes, I will *never* forget.
37
@Irving ton
The beauty of the day stands out in my memory,too. I was driving home in the late afternoon in the Virginia countryside from the school where I taught. The sun was brilliant, the sky cloudless, and it was all framed by the soft blues and greens of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
As I was driving, alI could think of was how could it be so heavenly here when I knew what hell was going on in New York. It seemed so wrong for me to be in such beauty and peace. So unfair. I cried as I drove.
The mental photograph I have of that day will always be jarring.
3
In from my town, Tom Little (1949-2010), spent a life-time in Afghanistan traversing its truly amazing, rough, even cruel geography for three decades. He had a wealth of ophthalmic knowledge and skills; he was devoted to repairing and healing the customary eye problems that beset so very many Pakistani. He drew his inspiration from the work of another man, Cornelius Van Alen Van Dyck (1818-1895), also from my town, who had lived a lifetime in the Levant between 1840 and 1895. Tom returned to the US on a regular basis, primarily raising funds to continue his work at Kabul and in the mountains. It happened that he spoke locally within a month or so of 9/11. He created calm and love for those harsh mountains and those distant communities.
I woke up before my house guest. She was visiting with her hound, a buddy of my hound. At one level we were quite close and good friends by virtue of our dogs; but at other levels I hardly knew her at all … or so I felt as I heard about the first plane hit. I listened to NPR. I know they had some terrible losses that day, though I believe that had not happened quite yet. Nonetheless, their reportage had an unnerving density. As I made coffee and tidied in the kitchen, I debated about waking my friend. I decided that I should so. I am to this day glad that I did.
I am old enough to remember Pearl Harbor, and this occasion felt much like that one. A successful stealth invasion. It is a lingering, long-lasting horrible feeling.
9
On 11 September, from now on, the lead in our news papers should be in honor and respect of those who were lost then, in the subsequent wars, and the world as we knew it that ended on that day. Not all this other stuff or buried someplace.
10
It was Tuesday. Central Massachusetts, and the most amazingly gorgeous late summer day. Tuesday was a 'meeting day' where I was working, and when we all came downstairs at the end of the meeting, the one staffer who had been 'holding the fort' told us the Trade Centre had been hit and had collapsed. He had a cynical sense of humor and I thought he was making a joke - but the look on his face when he said it was no joke sent all of us running down to the TV in the basement staff lounge just in time to watch the second tower fall.
One of us had planned to travel to California that day from Boston and so she sat in front of the screen ashen-faced and transfixed: a 'feeling' that she had listened to, wanting to stay home an extra day, was all that lay between life and death.
It was all so surreal - the juxtaposition of the beauty and stillness of the day, and the horror and helplessness of it. There was nothing that we could do except to wait and pray - but we all went to the nearest hospital to give blood, not knowing how many thousands might need it.
11
Eighteen years ago today-I switched on the radio,NPR, being in Albuquerque it was a after 7am local time. I thought I was hearing the synopsis of an improbable movie plot. I realized quickly this was not a review but a live drama in real time. The first tower had just been hit; I called up my astute 93 year old aunt, who lived in Queens but had a clear view of the Manhattan skyline. In her Viennese North Yorkshire accent, which defied description, she thundered, " I can see it (the tower) burning, turn on the tv! For a moment I remembered my 28th birthday, almost 19 years earlier-- eating pad thai at Windows on the World with the entree of of scope and vision, the sea of glittering lights overtaking a lingering dusk, I did not turn on the tv yet- but called all my friends in the city first and left messages on their answering machines. I sat on the floor stunned, tears rolling down my face--you can take the girl out of NY, but you cannot take NY out of the girl--the city that formed me was wounded, little did I know that the world would change forever. Thank you Charles for your beautifully written memory, and allowing me to write mine.
16
I don't think that day will ever be far aay from our memories for any one who lived through it. when I heard about the first tower being hit, I thought the DJ on the radio was making some kind of odd joke. 18 years later, I still don't turn on the radio when I'm first getting up and in the bathroom, all due to that day. I remember the beautiful, bright, clear day; perfect for late summer, dry and cloudless. And I remember city busses going down the side streets of Brooklyn, loaded with firefighters, traveling toward downtown. There are so any memories of that day; but I've always wondered what happened to the ghostly, dust-covered survivor who refused food, water or even a place to rest. He just wanted to get home.
17
These comments are great. But one problem. Scientific studies prove that personal feelings and memories are only slightly over 50% accurate from what they said one week after the attack than what they recalled 3 years later. Facts from media sources about the attacks are not personal feelings and recollections. So, I’m not giving these comments much weight, and I know it really doesn’t matter. All of us have imperfect memories. I just think it’s interesting.
2
This is true regarding memories. They are not like a video recording. We consolidate and recreate them but the brain also vividly remembers intense moments and big moments in life with higher accuracy.
9
@Shamrock
Well, thank you for being so understanding. Of course the fact that you misinterpret these memoirs as history is beside the point, I guess.
As one who lived with the smell and smoke for six weeks, I am glad you found it "interesting." /s
1
@Salix
I think you are right. The universities that wasted the time of its students, faculty and participants over 10 years was a huge waste of time. What a dumb study. But it still showed the recollections of people of their own experiences was only correct 50% of the time. They questioned people from several cities and states, just not NY. The study is the best proof ever of flashbulb memories. Which means half of these comments are likely not accurate.
I was young on 9/11, at the ripe age of 9. My father was military and working at the Pentagon. He was leaving a meeting at another site, outside, when he watched the plane hit the street light poles and dive into the building.
I was in elementary school and at an early lunch period, when my mom and sister came to the school. My four-year old sister held my hand and informed me that "bad guys attacked dad's work." Of course, being a 9 year old, that statement made no sense. I wasn't old enough to grasp terrorism, or the complexities of the world, but I was old enough to understand that her statement may mean war.
I remember shaking, I remember wanting to grab my sisters and parents and run; I remember going home and packing a backpack with clothes. We returned home to phone calls from family, as my dad (and others) began working in Pentagon search and recovery. My mom and I sat in front of the TV in disbelief, watching CNN. I remember the fear as I watched my mom worry, seeing her face--usually strong and determined--crumple with heartbreaking emotion at the loss of life. I remember, on 9/13, seeing a smoking Pentagon and a temporary memorial--erected at a tree--full of drawings from children who would never see their parents again. My dad was standing right next to me, but I wouldn't see much of him for weeks due to the recovery of bodies.
I still find quiet moments to reflect, to shed some tears. I admire you all below for your bravery that day.
17
On a plane on 9-11-01
We weren't in the air, the plane had not left the ground. We were 3rd in line for take off at SJC (San Jose) for the AM “milk run” to Burbank on a Southwest 737. It was back when the first rows were the brown leather 6 packs facing each other.
The chatter began when the first plane struck a tower. Was it an accident as had happened before to the Empire State Building? I attempted to call my Aunt Dorothy in Florida and did not connect. The Air Crew came on the intercom and said something had happened and all aircraft were grounded, cellular service was out. We were stranded in the plane on that tarmac for + 3 hours. Talk and chatter amongst ourselves on what was occurring in NYC. Finally, the airplane returned to the terminal and passengers disembarked the craft. We were told to evacuate the airport. To return to a world that had changed and will never be the same.
Sympathy and empathy to those who lost their lives that day, that tragedy. To their families and service people in the non stop wars thereafter.
Since that day, whenever I am flying there is a cursory glance to connect eyeball to eyeball with fellow passengers. A hope is that connecting human to human, person to person may prevail upon others before an action is taken that cannot be undone.
22
Thanks to you and the commenters who shared their experience of that day. I worked a three-hour train ride north of the towers, but like many friends, relatives, and colleagues we knew those buildings firsthand. The grief of watching them fall with their human occupants inside was profound.
What I remembered today: in the midst of the news reports a group of us was huddled together at work, trying to arrange for what our downstate colleagues might need. One friend had a son who he'd been trying to locate for hours. His assistant came into the room and whispered into his ear, and he burst into tears. Not because his son was gone--but because he was found safe.
Who could anticipate the need for hawks at the landfill where the debris was shipped? The hawks' job was to keep the seagulls from carrying away what remained of the lost.
25
Living in Evanston, but a former New Yorker, I didn’t think my life was touched directly. Having just finished walking my dog and getting ready to take my oldest son down to college to start the semester, my husband called to tell me to turn on the tv. From that moment on, I was riveted to the screen.
As The Times began publishing the names and pictures of the victims, two names sounded familiar. One of my friends, and former colleague, lost his only two nephews that day. One was married with two children and the other getting married in Nov. Along with them was the brother in law of the married nephew. Young men with great promise. My friend’s family has been forever changed.
Terrible tragedies have befallen the US before -from slavery to Dec. 7th to Vietnam, but we lost our innocence on 9/11 and all our lives will never be the same.
31
My mother, who passed away recently at the age of 91, also woke me with a phone call that morning as I was not due in to work until a bit later that day. It was a beautiful September day with a strikingly brilliant and deep blue sky. My mom, a Holocaust and Auschwitz survivor, was no stranger to terror. Even before the second plane struck the other Tower, she told me flat out: This was no accident on a crystal clear day like that one. She knew. She had been 'there' before.
59
I like that you give us the “news,” as both overview and detail, like your charts and maps, Mr. Blow. As a former New Yorker, I’d left on the evening of 9/9, after a stay with my elderly parents. The morning of, my mother phoned and said, “Turn on the television, we’ve been attacked!” Like everyone, I watched and watched, wanting to somehow be there, to be of use—in general and to my parents. For me, what was attacked was my birthplace and beautiful New York, home of diversity, where the extraordinary gift is to be both an individual and part of something much larger at the same time—a human forrest. In New York, one has multiple identities, and the identities of others are not a threat, they are of interest and comfort. Multiplicity and metaphor were attacked by people who are married to a single identity. The response on the Right was military, to curtail civil liberties, and to shower every little police station in the country with military hardware and attitude; to harden the idea of being an American. How many on the Right had disliked New York’s diversity? For my friends on my Left, anger at our government’s history of bad acts, and the singular frame of colonialism, made it inconceivable that actors from an Arab country could strike; they believed the CIA did it. Hatred of the stranger should not be the legacy of 9/11–the opposite!—the legacy should be the welcoming lantern, to look and see each other as unique and connected, both.
41
We also first thought it was a Cessna, as a Cessna had flown into the Statue of Liberty a few weeks earlier. We were on Riverside Drive up near Columbia listening to 1010 WINS on our car radios, after the two towers went down, wondering what would happen next. Would there be even further attacks or bombing of NYC? My husband was on the downtown ferry and saw the first plane hit. Wall Street was covered with paper, much of it streaked with blood. And then of course the sad, sad sight of people jumping to escape the flames, and the horrible sound when they hit the pavement.
13
Yes. But it happened that a couple of Frenchmen were filming a documentary at a fire station recorded that plane flying into the North Tower. I guess few people noticed the plane over Manhattan.
As a young soldier in the British Army, and as a London bobby, by September 11, 2001, I had seen more than my fair share of terrorism delivered mainly with a lilting Irish brogue. When I saw the images of aircraft hitting the edifices of world trade, my initial reaction was, “We’re at war...” and my heart sank. When it became apparent that it was terrorism, apparently unsponsored by a foreign state, I felt a certain sense of relief. The ICBM’s would not be flying soon. However, I also felt a certain anger towards America: it had taken the opportunity to attack the Middle East, using me as a complicit tool of war, with the fall of Soviet opposition, inviting generations of internecine counter reaction. I had previously encountered lethal American weapons in the hands of Irish terrorists, knowing that sympathisers in the US had enabled this armoury to be unleashed with little done to stem the supply. America, I reasoned, was getting a taste of its own tragically bitter medicine.
Almost two decades later, my perception regrettably remains, in the event of subsequent history, largely unchanged. I grieve for the innocents of all atrocities, no matter where they occur, and I despise the criminality of all on both sides of a needless ideological schism that has set our world on edge possibly forever.
We can land a minuscule probe on an asteroid somewhere deep in the firmament, yet, even as we ignite our brilliance, we dull our own light.
68
@Marcus Brant
I have great admiration and affection for the British, but I don’t believe they have much standing in blaming the United States for violence and instability in the Middle East.
After the First World War, the British and French partitioned the Ottoman Empire thus creating artificial nations like Iraq and Syria with no regard to actual tribal and cultural borders.
I won’t even go into the British Empire’s influence on the development of Afghanistan.
I can, however, sympathize with your anger at being used as a tool of war by the US. Maybe one day we’ll send tens of thousands of our young service men and women to die in defense of your nation...for a third time.
23
@Marcus Brant I and my English husband lived in Cambridge, MA on 9/11. He had been due to be at a meeting in WTC 7 that day, which was cancelled late the night before. He had lived in England during the height of the IRA's bombing campaign, and had lost 2 colleagues in the Birmingham bombs. When we moved to Boston/Cambridge, I educated him on the Irish Republican nature of the city - particularly South Boston. (I am from the Republic of Ireland). I explained where the donations extracted for 'republican prisoners' families' in many Boston Irish pubs went, and how money and arms flowed from Boston to the IRA.
A few days after 9/11, when Bush made his speech announcing the 'War on Terror', he shouted at the TV - 'you can start by bombing South Boston'.
2
@Michael Brian Burchette
Michael, I appreciate your history lesson, but my military career didn’t begin in the Khyber Pass in 1879. I did, however, witness and smell the Highway of Death, thousands of charred and dismembered corpses on an Iraqi road, heading away from our advance, and decimated by allied aircraft striking with impunity. I, and the soldiers around me, knew then that nothing good would emerge from this massacre. We were, without pleasure, right.
It took a toxic American idea with British complicity to mould this current reality on the eighteenth anniversary of our Pearl Harbour. George W. Bush told our manufactured enemies to bring it on, and they have since 9/11, handing us tragedy enough to balance out their own.
I feel cursed and blessed to have lived this modern era from my particular perspective.
3
A few years after 9/11, my husband and I were taking a motorcycle trip through Pennsylvania, when we saw a sign on a country road that said "Shanksville, Pa. -- 9/11 memorial."
The official memorial to the plane that crashed in Shanksville (that was meant either for the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. or the White House -- I guess we'll never know) had not yet been constructed.
What we saw at the memorial was a modular building covered on the inside with messages, cards, etc. sent in to the National Park Service by people all across the country who praised the heroism of the passengers on board Flight 93 who sacrificed their lives to commandeer the plane and crash it before it got to Washington. A tape on a loop inside the building ran the audio of the people communicating from the plane what they were about to do -- for their country.
Also, people had sent engraved monuments made by their local gravestone engravers, floral arrangements, stuffed animals, all arranged rather haphazardly -- but in beautiful, meaningful tribute. Americans from all across the country poured their hearts out to make sure the heroic passengers who commandeered that flight were honored. It made me proud to be an American to see all this, and it affected me deeply. It was a little while before we could get back on our motorcycle and just drive off.
59
@scrim1
The United 93 site is in the country where my father's family lived, and while visiting an aunt in 2002 I visited the site just over the crest of a hill (as you come from the north). The scarcity of the foliage, the gashes in the forest where the plane went down, the simple chain link fence where all the home-made tributes were fastened, and the local resident witnesses with their ring binders full of information were as deeply moving as the Pile itself in NYC. I have not seen the new monument and I do not wish to. The simple, plain, direct testimony of the land and its people were enough to memorialize the noble deaths that occurred there.
1
The cell phones were crucial. People in that last plane knew what to expect because they were connected to people who could tell them what had already happened.
In September, Idaho Highway 12, running next to the Clearwater River, is one of the most gorgeous drives in the country, with the leaves turning, the play of light on the river, and the natural geometry of the canyon, sculpted by millennial snow-melt from the Bitterroot Mountains.
That was where I heard that the Towers had fallen.
I pulled off the road near Canoe Camp, the place Lewis and Clark had launched the boats that took them to the Pacific.
I can't begin to describe how jarring I found the juxtaposition of an imaged urban apocalypse, and the astounding natural beauty in my actual visual field.
After a while spent lost in dark thoughts, I left that place and began to ponder an uncertain future, as I’m sure Lewis and Clark did, too. I felt certain that the future would be radically different from what I might have dimly imagined the previous evening.
As, indeed, it has been.
35
My father in law, then in NYC, called us in California. We woke in time to see the second aircraft hit.
I went to work. Our small company was in a facility right under a major departure path from San Jose airport. By 10am, the FAA ground stop had silenced all air traffic. Our offices were dead quiet.
I bought a small TV at Fry’s for the office. Not much in the way of internet streaming in those days.
When I drove home that afternoon, I saw two F-16s on strip alert, engines turning, at Moffett Field. I saw them there every day and night for several weeks. along with other unusual aircraft patrolling far above the Bay Area. NATO treaty Article 5 in operation.
I, too, knew our world had been irrevocably altered. At lunch that day, I sought and found a copy of the NYT - not for September 11, but for September 10 - as a remembrance of that lost world. I miss it.
51
@ridgeguy
NATO Article 5 only invoked once: https://www.history.com/news/nato-article-5-meaning-history-world-war-2
I was in the sub-basement of the NYU Law library—if I hadn’t gone in early to study, I’d have been reaching the West Fourth Street station just as the first plane struck, possibly stuck underground.
Instead, I emerged later for my class oblivious to what had happened, and wondering why there was no cell service. When someone told me a plane had hit the WTC, I too assumed it was something small, but went into the student lounge to see what was being reported on TV. I barely had time to process the news of what had happened when the second tower fell rright before our eyes. It was astonishing. My fellow students were stunned. I, years older with a former career that had taken me into those buildings frequently, stood there sobbing.
This morning, driving to work, the stories on the radio of people’s recollections of where they were on that fateful morning brought the tears back again. I think they always will.
43
Charles, this is a gripping essay. As I read about your own personal experience, my heart once again sank. At the time one of our daughters was living in Alexandria. She was awaken by a loud sound, and quickly rose from her and looked out the window. I will never forget her words, "Mom, there was no wind, but every tree was bent over on itself at the same time." Later we found out it was the impactful force of a plane crashing into the Pentagon. That same daughter asked me what was worse in my lifetime, the assassination of JFK or 9/11. With no hesitation, I told her it was 9/11, a day those of us who were alive will never forget. At the end of this poignant piece, you wrote about your thoughts while comforting your children, "...that the world had been irrevocably altered." Prescient and sadly prophetic when we experience the now not only in our nation but across our seas.
31
New job on that day at a doctors office. I remember everyone.....doctors, nurses, patients, janitor watching in silence and shock. We will never be the same.
19
I feel guilty and selfish if I describe how I felt when a disaster happened that did not affect me in a direct, personal way. Or if I say anything about how close I came to being a victim. My feelings are not important, because thousands were directly affected, thousands died, and thousands of family members lost someone.
But, it is important that everyone spend at least a few moments to remember tragedies. And, pay attention to the signs that they could happen again, and how we may be able to prevent that. So, I will get a bit personal.
Before 911, people asked if you remembered where you were when JFK was assassinated. I do. I was 9 years old, in 4th grade, living in Massachusetts. Home of the Kennedys. They sent us home from school. Then, I was at a friend's house watching TV when the news cut in and showed that Jack Ruby shot Oswald. During 1963 and several years thereafter, many civil rights leaders and activists were assassinated. In 1968, we lost Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. All of that was traumatic to me, still less than 15 years old.
But, 911 was the most terrifying. We did not have iPhones and streaming or social media. We relied on plain old TV or radio for news. And, it would take days to understand what it was really like when the towers fell, because everything on TV can seem like a movie.
Most kids starting college right now did not witness 911. We need to make sure they know about it.
29
I was sleeping in So. Cal. when my best friend called, telling me what happened. I turned on the TV and saw the second plane hit the Tower. Numb, I watched all day. I called my elderly father, and told him our lives had instantly changed forever. He was elderly, and I don't think he grasped the problem. I was in a depressed state for two weeks, and I am never depressed. Luckily, my office forced us to fly to a meeting, and despite the young soldiers at my local airport with their machine guns, I made it, and that is the only reason I was able to get out of my funk. Such a sad thing to happen to us. We must NEVER FORGET!!
15
Yes. I saw the fire and the second plane hit from my office in Brooklyn.
But it was not just that day. It was every day for weeks and weeks after that, when you could smell the burning buildings and breath in it and the people who perished.
I will never go to the memorial. I don’t need to.
44
@Ellen Guest - I was living in Manhattan then. I also will never go to the memorial.
11
Thank you for remembering and sharing this close-to-the-bone description of what you went through that day. I was across the river, watching the smoking rubble of the towers from the Eagle Rock Reservation in West Orange. The shock remains fresh for me as well. The memories of those who lost loved ones in the attacks is, no doubt, infinitely worse.
11
I was a week into an exciting new job in Philadelphia, in a morning meeting with the firm's two partners. Someone came into the room and almost sheepishly asked if we'd heard about the plane hitting one of the towers. I too immediately processed it as, "Cessna," and then felt my stomach drop into an abyss when we heard that it had happened again. When the towers fell I was completely wrung out emotionally but it still wrenched me beyond belief. At some point I just wandered out of the building and walked the streets, sobbing out loud. After about an hour I found myself in front of a hotel on the waterfront and went in to join a crowd of people watching the news on the lobby TV. But I couldn't take that for very long so I resumed my wandering. I called everyone in my immediate family to tell them I loved them. I think it wasn't until my mother died in 2012 that I felt anything like I did then.
12
I remember calling my father (on what was a newly acquired cell phone) and breaking the news about what had just happened (he was born here and watched the Towers be built). We thought it was an accident, and ultimately touched on a similar discussion as the author's thoughts - how can they repair that damage? A futile and pointless thought that would be. Incidentally, it was my father who called me back to say the second "explosion" I heard wasn't a follow-up from the North Tower. It was the South Tower being struck.
3
It was the sky that I will never forget. It was so blue and beautiful. Having that horror play out against such a gorgeous sky added to the obscenity of that day.
There are worse things that have happened in the world, before and since. We didn't realize how lucky we were until 9/11 when our illusion of safety was torn away forever.
40
Yes, it was a glorious day in terms of weather and when one of those days occurs again, my heart sinks for I remember the false promise of that first beautiful day. And all the medical help organized to receive victims at Lutheran Hospital here in Brooklyn (they are almost a straight shot to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel) standing with nothing to do - no survivors. It breaks the heart anew each year.
30
It was the second day of my new job!
I was 21 years old, living in downtown Sacramento, just 4 blocks from the State Capitol.
I rose early that morning to do my hair and enjoy my coffee at a leisurely pace. I don’t often turn on the tv in the morning, but “ I’ve got so much time today.” Plus I was alone and liked the company.
As the tv screen came into focus I could see a live shot of a tall NYC building on fire. The voiceover was chattering about a possible explosion and then the second plane hit. The World Trade Center?!
Absolute chaos in my mind. Total confusion. What was this? My fiancé at the time was in the Air Force stationed at Travis, but was in Guam for training. Would he be sent to war? Were we at war? With who?
I walked to work in a daze. We shook at our desks seeking more information. Many of us felt that Sacramento might be the next target.
I can’t believe this was nearly 20 years ago. It feels like yesterday.
19
@CharlesBlow -thanks for a beautiful column. So many tears that day, so many memories still...all heart-wrenching. Yet the beautiful stories of ordinary New Yorkers reaching out to help each other was so inspiring. I'm on the board of a Hindu temple, and we immediately tightened our own security, knowing that there would be a backlash against people of color, including those from India, Sikhs that wear turbans, and of course Muslims. It was very sad to see the impact and hate directed towards my friends of color.
27
It was the most perfect September morning imaginable. The sky here in southern NJ was a brilliant blue. There were hardly any clouds. There was a hint of a chill in the air, which made my daily 4-mile walk even more pleasant. When I got home from my walk, my husband was trying to reach me. "Turn on the TV. One of the Twin Towers was hit". I watched in horror as the second building was hit. When the first Tower collapsed, I could not process the information. The World Trade Center collapsed? By the time the second Tower collapsed, my brain was in utter shock. Terrified, I told my husband to come home. He worked about an hour away and normally took the NJ Turnpike home. We had no idea how many more targets would be hit that day or where they would be, and we were both terrified the Turnpike would be closed and he would be unable to get home.
Like so many Americans, we were glued to the TV that day and for much of the next day. It quickly became obvious that anyone who didn't make it out before the collapses was not going to be found alive; this engendered a feeling of profound sadness at the same time I was having trouble believing it. I remember watching a team from St. Vincent's sadly returning to the hospital, knowing their trauma and triage skills would not be needed; everyone, it seemed, was dead. I also remember the sound of alarms and whistles sounding endlessly at the site. To this day, a beautiful late summer morning will make me feel sad instead of happy.
24
@JenD
I remember seeing the footage of doctors, too, at St. Vincent's waiting in vain for patients that would never arrive. And the posters of those missing that would soon plaster subway stations. It was a glorious day weather-wise, all the more contradictory to the horror that unfolded.
13
My wife and I had just moved into our house less than 8 weeks prior and my wife was supposed to be running meetings at the Marriot next door to the towers. Before heading to the hotel, she stopped at her office at 120 Wall to pick up meeting materials. Thank god she did.
As she was on the phone and gazing out her office window, she saw debris from the first tower, quickly realized what the situation was and immediately called the ferry company which was operating out of Glen Cove in order to find out if the ferry was going to be operating.
My wife and a dozen of her co-workers were on that first ferry out of the seaport and headed towards our house. Another 1/2 dozen showed up later on, and we ended up being a way station for stranded co-workers.
Our ferry terminal became a drop off point in order to get first responders into the city and more people out of the city.
When we had that blackout during the 2003 summer and the ferry provided an escape, I began to appreciate the advantages of having a water escape out of Manhattan to Long Island during times of duress.
Our ferry service folded shortly after the blackout, but we are in the midst of starting service once again. Let us hope that the new service can survive.
17
I was living in San Francisco, and trying to get phone Columbia Presbyterian for information on a research project. The circuits kept being busy. Sensing that something was wrong, I turned on the radio. As soon as I heard the news, I walked over to the nearest blood bank to make a donation. The TVs there kept re-broadcasting the images from the WTC.
We Americans were and are so horrified by the attack. Yet our response has been to devastate countries that weren't involved, e.g. Iraq, causing many times the number of casualties that we suffered. As if only our suffering matters, and those people's suffering is inconsequential.
83
The plan that day was to get together with 2 good nurse friends for lunch. I went out to the garden to pick some gorgeous snapdragons and my phone rang. Turn on the TV, my 2 son’s best friend’s mother said. We watched in horror as the second plane hit.One of the friends I was meeting for lunch married to the person in charge of deploying the fighter jets.No life will never be the same.
11
Thank you for sharing this. My boy-girl twins were 2 years old and I was six weeks out from fleeing their father when 9/11 happened. My first thought was whether the nuclear missiles stored in the Manzano Mountains outside Albuquerque or the nuclear laboratory of Los Alamos 88 miles from our home were in danger and should I take the twins to daycare. Thanks for sharing in such as a personal way. And I just love your columns.
17
Thank you for your remembrances. My office was on the 59th floor of Tower 2. I was fortunate to be attending a meeting in midtown that morning. I had a line of sight view of the the Twin Towers and saw the second jet impact. Later, amidst the chaos in the streets with sirens going up and down every Avenue, my elder daughter pleaded to me to never go back. I scoffed at her, thinking back to the prior bombing of the Trade Center when I had been in the building and had to make my way down unlit stairs with hundreds of others. Little did I know how soon both towers would fall. Hours later I made my way downtown, trying to find a way out of Manhattan where I bumped into a coworker who had witnessed falling bodies. Together we managed to catch a ferry to New Jersey.
44
When I finally made it home to LI after hours and hours in the city, my 3 year-old nephew told me solemnly that a tower had fallen down in New York City, and he didn’t want me to go there anymore.
As hard as the whole thing was for us to process, imagine how it felt to little kids.
That little boy is a senior in college now. His aunt went back to NYC for many years (but I’m happy to say, not anymore).
11
The night before 9/11, my San Diego home was broken into (I saw the robber fleeing out the back with a lock box containing my financial papers and jewelry). I ran next door to use the phone and the police came right away with canines and compassion. After, I called a friend to come over and help me cleanup the mess and clear the disturbing atmosphere of violation. I did not want to live in fear and anger. My friend smudged every room with the clean smell of sage. I was relieved. And grateful. The next morning I called my father on the east coast to tell him about the break-in; he cut me short to tell me about the Towers. I felt as if God had helped me rehearse for the attitude I needed to address the devastating violation of our country.
Then I went to work -- on the oncology floor of an acute care hospital. I made rounds and saw that in every room but one, the TV was on with the footage of the Towers being played and re-played. I stopped to speak with the ovarian cancer patient in that singular room. When, after greeting this woman, I queried her about not watching, she replied with a gesture and words I will never forget. She slapped the palms of her hands on her abdomen, looked up at me and said, "I have my own Twin Towers to heal!"
Most of us didn't know where or how to focus...
29
I was on vacation in Maine with my brother, and as soon as word came of the 2nd hit, I thought "We are at war. I don't know with whom, but we are at war." What a sad realization. We checked into our next night's lodging early, it was not quite 10 am, and the room wasn't clean, but we didn't mind, all we wanted was the TV.
Our trip back to my brother's home in Connecticut was somber. When we stopped to have dinner, we remarked at how silent the skies were around Bradley International Airport.
I remember the weeks immediately following. Everyone was so kind. We were all in shock. People at the grocery stores would offer you a space in line in front of them. Traffic seemed more rational. Everyone was polite and walking on eggshells. There are some things from those days that I miss... the kindness, the patience, the sensitivity.
60
"Of all the ghastly images from that day, one struck me most: It was what looked like birds at the top of one of the towers."
"What must that decision have been like? Thinking about it to this day chills my skin."
One of those "birds" was an old high school friend of mine.
I think about his decision all the time and I can still see the photos that froze those decisions in time. There was the especially disturbing image of the couple holding hands while they fell.
96
I was so upset by the photos of the people who caught in an untenable choice fell to their death. I felt we had invaded a private moment and ashamed that people looked at them and talked about them as voyeurs. I cannot imagine their families’ pain. My husband died in a plane crash and video of his crashed plane was on TV news and were so painful. Hid children and grandchildren felt violated again and again. This wasn’t news. It was pain and fear and death. Have some decency. They lost their loved one. Don’t inflict pain over and over.
15
The people were certain that they could not be rescued given the circumstances. The elevators and stairways at the center of the building on their floors were destroyed and the fire and smoke was extremely great. They were trapped and suffering. I think that people watched them with sympathy not morbidly.
9
On Tuesday September 1st 2001 I started a two-week training assignment in Plano Texas, Monday being a travel day. From a TV used primarily for VHS tapes, makeshift rabbit ears were fashioned from a wire coat hanger. The grainy rolling images of the first tower ablaze, billowing thick black smoke, the scale did not seem consistent from damage caused by a small Cessna plane. After the second tower was hit there was no mistake that this was on purpose as fear and anguish filled everyone in the training facility. The hardest part was being so far from home having two young children at the time.
My most vivid memory of that awful day was footage from the lobby of one of the towers where the FDNY had set up a command center. The sickening loud thuds from the people that jumped and the fireman wincing as each person died.
Never Forget.
22
“Never forget” - that’s exactly what a small group of terrorists want from you.
“Never forget” - though you’re a billion times more likely to die of a dozen common diseases we won’t spend a cent curing, forget terrorists kill fewer people than traffic accidents each year.
“Never forget” you must give up your freedom because ‘their out there.’
“Never forget” what amounts to a handful of deaths - nothing in the grand scheme of things - a total of less than 4,000 (compare it to the numbers killed each year from the effects of alcohol and tobacco alone), and the terrorists win.
Unlike Mr. Blow, I lost an old college friend that day, a passenger on the plane out of Washington National.
I’ll always remember Lisa.
But I’m not going to empower any bunch into destroying my way of life because one time they pulled off a big dramatic event.
Let’s remember things we can stop: Hundreds if not thousands of deaths a year due to global climate change - that could lead to our extinction. Hundreds of thousands of deaths a year in pointless wars. Thousands killed each year by cancers caused by particles of carbon-14 released by burning “clean coal”, not to mention hundreds killed or disabled mining it. Thousands killed in the US every year by firearm accidents and suicides.
Bottom line: fear of terrorists is identical to the thought defect that sells lottery tickets - that a one-time incident is more likely to happen than the tragedies and miracles that occur daily.
Start thinking rationally.
I am and was living in Placitas, New Mexico that day.
We had scheduled a saltillo tile installation for my husband's office for Sept. 11th. All of his furniture and computer stuff and just stuff stuff was was all piled down the hall and in our living room. He was in Boston on business.
Our phone rang and it was our former neighbor from Marin County California -- she shouted, "Turn on your TV. Something horrible has happened in New York." And she hung up.
The tile contractor arrived. I suggested he go home. He said he'd rather work -- and to give him a shout if the TV had important news. I watched all day and into the night. I'd give him a holler when there was another announcement. There were several that day as he installed our tiles.
Meanwhile, in Boston, my husband and a colleague of his managed to get two tickets on the Greyhound. It took them 3 days to get home to New Mexico. He had managed to shave along the route.
I'm sitting in this room with its saltillo tile, sitting at my computer, remembering September 11th.
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Wow, Charles, I feel like I was there. I’ll just say that I have never been more proud of our Country, than on THAT Day. The heroics of the Firefighters and Police, trying to get People out, and sometimes knowingly sacrificing themselves to save others. Regular Citizens lending a hand, and risking much, to help others. And of course, the Crew and Passengers on United Airlines Flight 93. And the Pentagon. It was our Worst day, and it was our Best day.
Thank you.
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@Phyliss Dalmatian
You should also thank the brilliant subway trainmen & conductors who got everyone out of the World Trade Center stations before the collapse. There was no clear plan; they just did it! And all the water people whose boats converged in NY Harbor to carry people out of the city to safety across the Hudson. All it took was one call from the Coast Guard and an evacuation larger than Dunkirk was accomplished. Thee were many, many heroes that day.
2
I remember the day all too well. I remember thinking even though I was 43 at the time. If this leads to a War I want to go. I can help. I must do something. I live in Rural Minnesota, I then thought about getting on a Jet and going to New York to help with rescue. I ended up not going, but sometime I wish I would have went. Somebody did something on 9/11, does not cut it. It was the worst day in Modern Day History. We shall always remember.
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@John Pfaffinger yours is one of the best posts I've ever seen on the Times. I'm glad to have read it; thank you.
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@John Pfaffinger
This bad faith interpretation of what Rep. Ilan Omar said doesn’t cut it, either. It’s obvious what she meant (or should be).
“Far too long, we have lived with the discomfort of being a second-class citizen, and frankly, I’m tired of it, and every single Muslim in this country should be tired of it. CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.”
Omar is saying that every Muslim shouldn’t be blamed for what terrorists did.
From Media Matters:”in context, what she said was clear: No matter how “good” American Muslims are, they’ll continue to be treated as second-class citizens because of anti-Muslim attitudes and government policies that intensified in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. American Muslims are still treated with suspicion and subjected to undue scrutiny by the government and public alike. The argument Omar was making in her speech was very clearly about how unfair it is to be lumped in with terrorists and constantly stereotyped on the basis of faith. While saying this, she referred to the 9/11 hijackers as “some people.” When put in context, that choice of words was clearly meant to differentiate between terrorists and American Muslims. The controversy surrounding this line is based on misinterpreting what she said as downplaying the 9/11 attacks -- something that she never did.”
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I remember the architectural graphics explaining the pancake theory.
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Sending a hug to your babysitter. Wonderful person she was on that day.
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Some time back, my wife and I, both Canadians, arrived by bicycle at the Rouses Point border crossing between Quebec and New York State. As we were coasting towards the waiting border guard my wife confided to me that she had forgotten to bring any identification.
The customs officer asked our names, where we were from and where we were going. The conversation was friendly and we told him we planned on camping along Lake Champlain and then the Hudson River. He wished us well and we went on our way.
This encounter was of course before 9/11. In those days we felt like close friends with our US neighbours and I suppose that we still are; but crossing the border in either direction no longer seems that way. I realize why the new reality has to be but I miss the days before 9/11, now gone forever.
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@Canuck I grew up in Plattsburgh, and miss those easy, comfortable days of driving across the border without ID, with friendship, like a dream
1
I remember my son, who was in fourth grade looking at his one-year old sister as she slept that evening. “I envy her,” he said. “ She will not remember what life was like before today.”
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I was living in St. Louis and heard of the first attack while in the car on my way to work (teaching College English). I assumed it was a shocking small plane accident. A colleague, arriving on campus with me, said, "Do you think we're the only ones who know about this?" Later, after the second hit, another colleague told me that another plane was said to be aimed at Chicago, where we both had daughters. We were terrified. My husband was born in Iran but had been an American citizen for 27 years and had high security clearance at work; my heart shrank every time "Middle Easterners" were named as suspects. Before it was known that NO Iranians were involved, a previously-friendly colleague practically spat in my face: "You may be worried about your people, but MY SISTER lives in New York!"
35
I was in Florida on vacation with my family. We had plans to go to Disneyland. As I was preparing breakfast my son and my husband were watching the news. My son called out to me: “a small plane has crashed into one of the towers.” I moved over, taking my time about it, and meanwhile another son came out with his wife, and started watching. That’s when we saw the second plane come and crash into the other tower.
That day we witnessed the US economy literally shutting down, No planes in the sky, it felt as if the entire country was flailing. We did not leave that hotel room until late afternoon. We went to a mall. Nobody there, except a few employees in stores. Everybody looked dazed, there is no other word for it. We were offering condolences right and left, As we were riding back to our hotel, we saw a family—a dad, a mom, a young boy—waving a huge American flag on a street corner. My third son called from Lima: “This changes everything. Poor Muslims.” How right he was.
Sometime later, in Lima, a friend of mine told me how a friend of hers had found that day, amid the million bits of paper drifting through the air after the towers fell, one that bore his son’s handwriting. His son had been at work in one of the towers.
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I had recently interviewed to be a volunteer with the Peace Corps at their office right next to the World Trade Center. I remember thinking how small it looked compared to the towers looming over it.
While I watched 9/11 unfold on TV where I was living in Arizona, I wondered if my interviewer would be safe. And I thought of what a horrible juxtaposition it was.
14
Most of my professional life I’ve worked in IT. A good friend lived near New York City and did contracting work in telecommunications. We communicated occasionally by phone but mostly once or twice a week by email. I knew he occasionally had worked with the TV engineers stationed atop the Twin Towers.
Nearly a week went by without hearing from him. Each day the dread within me grew stronger. I had no idea how to send an email that would basically ask, “Did you die?”
Finally, with trepidation, I tapped out on the keyboard, “Are you still there?”
Later that day I saw he’d replied and quickly opened his email.
“I’m still here but wish I didn’t know so many who aren’t,” was his poignant reply.
Powerful sentence that has permanently tied to me the humanity of that catastrophe.
69
I vividly recall 9/11.
Early that morning my husband and I awoke in Reno to a call from the oncologist confirming biopsy results of his advanced esophageal cancer.
Numb and devastated we turned to the live television news and in horror watched the twin towers explode and burn. (We had been happy NYC tourists atop them several years before with our daughter.)
Shock and loss filled that day and the year to follow.
But everyone was grieving. Everyone had a story to tell. Everyone was in mourning. We comforted one another with love and prayers.
Hope and perseverance to survive in the face of cancer or terrorism is similar. Never give up. Cherish every moment.
But “get your papers in order.”
30
At that time, my wife and I lived in Alexandria, VA. We were on vacation in Colorado and saw the event on TV while we were having breakfast. Like many others, when the first plane hit, we thought it a mistaken pilot; when the second plane hit, we knew we were in a terrorist attack. We had a house sitter in Virginia, about 4 miles from the Pentagon, which had been hit. We went to a National Monument in Utah, which had been shut down, but we were able to use their phone to call our house sitter. Everything was OK, except for the planes which were flying everywhere. When we returned, we had to go through BWI because flight crews had not shown up. We had to take a taxi back to our house.
That said, how do those in Syria, for example, deal with all the daily punishment we hardly could endure for one week?
51
Living on the west coast, I had more time to process the tragedy of 9/11. After I had watched and listened and read accounts for most of the day, I decided to take my grief to the outdoors. I sat in the sunshine, on a beautiful blue sky day in my vegetable garden. I realized that there was total silence. No airplanes heading into SeaTac. No small planes buzzing to and fro. Even the birds were silent. I grieved with those grieving. A former colleague was a victim of the towers. I will always remember the stillness Nature provided so I could stop for awhile and process the enormity of the day. It is still with me. Today I sat outside for a brief while. The sky was blue. It was not silent. I was.
51
Thank-you, Mr. Blow, for sharing this personal story. My husband was at a job site by the Pentagon on 911, and my efforts to to verify his safely was a gut-wrenching terror I will never forget. Unable to reach him by phone, I was a wreck until he came home. He took me out for dinner that night to try to get my mind off the horrific news, and a foursome group of seniors stood at their table near us and sang God Bless America. I tried to join in but could only cry for everyone affected by the tragedy, for America, and for the World. Violence degrades humans, but as a species, we don't learn the lesson.
79
I grew up in New York, and two people on my street lost their lives on 9/11.
But we cannot allow that tragedy to change America. We cannot abandon our support of a free world. If we do, we lose the battle, we lose the war.
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@Don
Yes. Thank you.
Came out of the subway station at Canal Street just after the first plane hit. Someone said it was a small plane which hit the building. That seemed impossible. Shortly afterward, there was the second explosion. I was incredibly loud and huge. The sky was filled with pieces of paper, sparkling against the gorgeous blue September sky. Hundreds of people staring at the buildings in horror. I am amazed at how quickly normal traffic disappeared, and all you could hear were shrieking sirens of the first responders' car and trucks. Later, walking uptown on Lafayette, I heard thunderous roar. I never heard a building collapse before, but I knew instantly what it was. I never turned round. I knew all were dead. I will never forget the sounds of that awful day.
190
My father grew up on the lower east side during the depression and he taught for 34 years in Harlem. He moved to NJ in 1950 to buy a house and raise a family like so many. And although he moved himself out of the City, nothing could move the City out of him. He commuted for 34 years across the GWB looking at the skyline every morning - and he visited the City frequently for all that his old home had to offer.
After 9/11 he never once crossed the GWB again; he never looked at that skyline with the hole in it - a hole big enough to match the one in his heart.
78
My eldest daughter was 2 and a half, and the baby was 1. I was a stay-at-home mom. My husband called and said to turn on the TV. I had no idea that the eldest was paying any attention until she said "No more airplane show, Mommy. I don't like it."
131
I remember all my colleagues calling around to each other to make sure none of us were on those planes since we all traveled for our work in the labor movement. But more than that I am aware of how we now have DHS and ICE and how 911 derailed any hope we have of a sane approach to immigration reform in our country and how it allowed the Bush administration to railroad us into a war in Iraq when the perpetrators where from Saudi Arabia.
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@Cathy Howell Thank you Cathy for saying Saudi Arabia. We have never told the awful truth about that day and why we went to war. We are so changed as mentioned.
12
I really enjoyed reading this and being reminded of all the small "mundane" things that went through our minds as spectators -- like "how will they fix that hole?" In my case, when I saw the mushroom cloud of the first collapsing tower from my highrise office in East Midtown I thought "that's going to take down a big hunk of the Wall St area by.". Was later amazed to learn that, with a few exceptions, it went pretty much straight down and did not obliterate Wall St.
16
I was a new mother home with a 6 month old baby; our bathroom was being re-tiled. My husband called and said, "Turn on the tv."
The Mexican workman and I stood watching in disbelief.
28
@Comp 18 years later, now Trump has made the Mexican's our "enemies".
2
I remember that day with every moment of it after being aware of the news. I was studying at the UAB's library for my calss with my Japanese friend Yasukio and I got a call from a friend in my hometown (a foreign country) friend and he asked me what is going on there? I had no idea untill that phone call. My class was cancelled whole UAB was closed and I rushed to pick up my son from his school. All family gathered at home agonized, distress, cramped and deeply sad over the news. We did not know how we could explain to our young children about all these horrible things. I remember their feraful faces with disbelief glued to the TV. It was a terrible night! I don't think so any American or anybody who lived in America on that day can ever forget 9/11 day!
26
We were all New Yorkers that day... and I believe many others would agree that we all become New Yorkers again every year when Sept. 11 comes around.
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@Martha Goff
I visited the World Trade Center in 2000 and remember the memorial plaque describing the truck bomb explosion in the garage in 1993. It made me think that Americans always find a way to recover and to rise back up.
I still believe that.
4
Actually, the whole Western World was New York that day. It only changed, when other countries where pressured to take part at a senseless war 'if you are not with us you are against us'. I was living in Switzerland at that time.
6
I had just started a new part time job working for a woman who ran a small business out of her home. While driving to work around 9 am, I heard the first news reports on NPR. When I got to her house we continued to listen to NPR and then turned on the TV. After a while she suggested we get back to work as she was leaving later that day for a convention in Pittsburgh and there were tasks needing to get done before she left. I said it was unlikely she’d be flying and the convention would be cancelled or postponed. She thought that was ridiculous so I spent several hours prepping materials for her until all flights were cancelled. She was furious that her plans were ruined. That’s what I remember about 9/11/01. I should have quit that day!
79
@Julie - I was in bed, in Seattle, on a beautiful rare-blue sky morning. I too, was listening to Karl Castle (I think) on NPR and heard the first news report about the first tower. I was then fully awake. Then, he reported the second tower was hit. I was up and out of bed like a bolt of lightening, and with the TV on, watched the Towers fall. Shocking. Going to work on the bus, everyone was so quiet, and looking into each other's eyes searching for answers but connecting none the less. We couldn't do much work that day, except reach out to those we cared about.
12
@Julie
You were so right!
1
@Julie
Yep, you should have quit and told her why. If all she could think about was her own inconvenience because several thousand people were murdered, I can only imagine what she'd be like to deal with in less extreme circumstances when things didn't go her way.
I was a teacher at a PS with a full, unobstructed view of the World Trade Towers. As I was walking down the hallway, a teacher said, “ You will never believe what just happened; a terrorist just crashed into the a World Trade Center.” How did she know!? Later, with no students, since I was a specialist and school had recently started, I had no assigned students yet, I saw the collapse of the towers. The voices on the radio were no longer alive. This was horrific and unimaginable.
My daughter was also 4, the same age as Charles Blow’s children. I remember the parents from nursery school the following days, stunned as we watched our children play at the playground, the smell of toxic air blowing across the East River into Williamsburg and Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The endless war had not begun.
46
Thank you for sharing your personal experiences of that day. It doesn't seem like it was 18 years ago.
105
I don't remember events very well. It's strange to me how traumatic events like this and the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, that I've experienced from far away, are as indelibly etched in my memory as ones that I've experienced personally. I remember everything about my day on 9/11, the same as I remember watching a woman get hit and killed by an out of control race car 20 feet away five years earlier. The brain is a strange thing.
29
@Marc Bee
Numerous studies show your chances of recalling your thoughts one week after 9/11 and 3 years accurately to be just over 50%. This applies even to those who are sure they remember the day accurately. It’s calked flashbulb memories. It’s been proven with other traumatic events around the world.
3
All the specifics of your day were different from mine with two exceptions. We both thought a small plane must have hit the building. My theory was something out of Teterboro Airport, based on no information. The second was getting near a television screen and seeing the second tower hit. I realized my daughter worked a block away from the towers. She could not be reached.
From that time, you did your job and I did mine. I worked in a Brooklyn Hospital and waited for the injured. There were a few with eye irritation, no others. Most of those who did not walk away, I later realized, were dead. My daughter walked away.
186
Thank you Charles.
I am in tears, and I am not a New Yorker, or even an American.
The whole world was watching with horror, and your account makes it so immediate.
I am grateful for all the reporters and back up people who tried so hard to tell the rest of us what was happening. There was fear all over the world.
I think most people will remember where they were when they saw those images on TV.
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