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#2019 | Tuesday, September 10th 2002
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I was stiing in history class. Another teacher had come in and told our teacher to turn the tv on. The first thing I saw was the second plane hitting live. I left school in tears a couple periods later. Thusly, my life has been different ever since that oh so crushing day.
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Chris | 18 | Ohio
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#2006 | Tuesday, September 10th 2002
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Even though it was a beautiful Autumn day in Ohio, I was sleeping in on Sept 11, 2001. My husband had gone to work, I had talked to my daughter in New York City just the night before....all was right with the world. Until the phone rang...then my panic began. My sister told me to turn on the TV. When I did, I was horrified. I tried to call our daughter but couldn't get through. I knew she was near the WTC that time of morning, catching the subway to work in upper Manhattan. I prayed she wasn't there. I tried to call my husband at his work-site, but couldn't get through. I jumped in the car and drove to town to talk to him. I needed to be with someone! I couldn't stay there in the farmhouse...all alone and with the horror the TV was showing me. And not knowing about our youngest daughter. Where was she? Was she alright? Was there going to be another attack?
My husband and all his co-workers were idle, listening to car radios. They all seemed so calm! I couldn't believe how calm they were. We continued trying to call our daughter and finally got her on the phone. She was ok! Oh how my heart leaped with gratitude. She was stuck in Manhattan and couldn't get home unless she walked. A lot of the employees discussed spending the night in the offices. But she decided she wanted to get home so she chose to leave after a while. She said the streets were filled with police, that sirens were going off constantly, and it smelled awful.It took her hours to get home and then she went up on the roof and filmed the chaotic scene in lower Manhattan. I kept calling her, needing to hear her voice and know she was alright. For days afterward, I kept myself glued to CNN, thinking I might miss something that I needed to warn her about. Eventually I realized that this was keeping my sense of danger and fear heightened and I had to turn the TV off.
I remember the day that Kennedy was shot. I was a freshman in high school, sitting in study hall. The teacher was at her desk in the front of the room and someone came in and whispered in her ear. She immediately began to cry and ran from the room. The messenger then announced to all of us that the President of the United States had been shot and he was dead. I remember that he was the first President I had actually paid any attention to. He was Catholic...so was I. People said things about him and the Pope which made me want to defend him all the more, even though I knew next to nothing about politics. Now he was dead. As the days unfolded, I watched the funeral on TV with my mother, who loved the Kennedys. It seemed as if life would never be the same in America.
That's the same feeling I had after Sept 11. Would anything ever feel the same again? Would we ever feel like we could laugh again? I wanted to think things would be ok, because I had lived through the assassination of Kennedy, the Vietnam War which tore our country apart for a time, and we had been able to heal after those. But this seemed different. We had been attacked in one of our major cities! There was a terrible loss of life...almost entirely made up of civilians who were just traveling or going to work. This wasn't a battlefront in Vietnam. Or even Pearl Harbor. This was New York City! And it was where my daughter lived! So my doubts and fears would ebb and flow. I was up and down in mood...always on a heightened sense of alert for any trouble coming. I called my daughter constantly...telling her I loved her and asking if she was ok.
Now it's a year later and it's the night of Sept 10. Will anything happen tomorrow on the anniversary? There is a High Alert for tomorrow. I've called my daughter again with a plea for safety. I've asked her to leave for work early...to not be on the subway during rush hour. It's my way of feeling like we're doing SOMETHING to protect her. Has it really been a year? The fear and anxiety seemed to be almost gone and suddenly, tonight, it's back. Now I wonder if it ever really went away.
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Carol | 54 | Ohio
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#1976 | Tuesday, September 10th 2002
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On the morning of Sept 11th I was working at my customer service job since 8:30 am. It was just a normal day with me talking to customer’s explaining details of their charge accounts with our jewelry company. A few minutes before 9 am the radio had a news break announcing the “accident” of a plane flying into the World Trade Center. I started wondering how big of a plane and how high the plane hit. Customers were still calling in to my department so most of us went back to work, knowing people would keep us up to date as news became available through the day. A few minutes later we of course heard the news of the second plane hitting the towers, and we started looking at each other convinced we were being attacked.
As the morning slowly progressed we heard news reports of the Pentagon, as well as Flight 93. Of course we also heard many other landmarks in Washington DC that were falsely reported as having been attacked such as the Dept of State, the Capital building and possibly even the White House.
By noon we had very few customers actually calling in for credit information so I got the chance to go home early. I stopped by a local restaurant and grabbed a bite of lunch because I knew they had tv’s available and obviously they would have CNN on. I just sat there as I watched replays of the Twin Towers collapsing. After lunch I drove home while listening to coverage on talk radio. At home I finally got to see the coverage in private and was very surprised that I was able to get into the Internet. I had heard warnings that due to phone traffic being so heavy that I probably wouldn’t be able to get into the net. I immediately started to collect information about the attacks from different web sites.
Over the last year I have been very thankful for the Internet, as it has given me the ability to learn about some of the Hero’s of 9-11, such as Todd Beamer. I am currently reading Let’s Roll by Lisa Beamer, the story of Todd’s life. I highly recommend this biography.
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Jeff | 32 | Ohio
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#1916 | Tuesday, September 10th 2002
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I was a stay at home mom during this time. The children had slept in that day. Although I was awoken by my best friend, who called just to see what I was doing later on that evening. I was still half asleep when I turned on the television and saw the first tower on fire. I quickly interrupted her in the middle of saying something. To tell her the WTC was on fire. She said she just heard that a plane had hit the tower. I was like that is crazy, how could someone not know they were there? I mean everyone could see those. We talked for just a min. or two about the matter. Then I told her I was going to sit down and watch the news, and would call her when I woke up a little more. Just then I hung up the phone and sat down on the couch and >BAM
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Dana | 25 | Ohio
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#1915 | Tuesday, September 10th 2002
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The morning of 9/11 started much like every other weekday for me and my Ohio family. I woke to the alarm-clock and saw my 8 year-old daughter off to school. As the bus drove away, I waved good-bye to my daughter… I smiled in ignorant bliss, having no idea that within a few short hours my life would be forever changed.
I closed the door and thought, I will grab another hour or two of sleep, as I work second shift. I climbed back in bed, and snuggled with my wife, Angela who had the day off from Wal-Mart. I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.
I don’t know how long I slept, but we abruptly awaken by the sound of someone pounding on our door. I stumbled to the door and found, my mother there. I saw the look on her face, and was just about ready to ask what was wrong, when she said, They’ve attacked the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in New York. Your father says, “It’s war.””
I turned on the television and sat in stark horror, Angela took the phone and went into the other room to call her parents in Kentucky. The TV showed the Twin Towers with black smoke billowing from them. As the live scenes were unfolding, the network news showed video of the second plane blasting into the second building. I couldn’t even speak, I could hardly breath. When the first tower fell, I slid off my chair onto my knees, my hands over my mouth. “Oh Lord, Oh Lord,” I repeated over and over.
I watched about another hour or so of the coverage, I saw scenes of the damage to the pentagon, the collapse of the second tower, and heard that Flight 93 had crashed in Pennsylvania.
I left the house to help my father who was removing an old second story apartment from his manufacturing business. With the radio still giving updates, I walked off of a scaffold and fell 8 feet to the ground below. I landed on my feet, still moving and my brother stopped my forward momentum, which would have sent me through a large store-front window. I decided that it was time to take myself and my newly broken, little toe home to take a shower.
I took my shower, taped my toe to the next digit. Hugged and kissed my wife about ten times and headed off to work. It seemed that almost everyone wanted to talk about the attacks, but I just wanted to be alone. Like I said, my life had been forever changed. That night and the next day I found it hard to send my daughter, Jenna off to school that day. Nothing would be the same again.
The other night we had a 9/11 Memorial at our church. I thought the hardest part of the service for me was going to be watching the computer slide-show of 9/11, but it wasn’t. The hardest part of that service is when our pastor asked us to pray also for our enemies, including those who planned and carried out these horrid attacks.
Part of me wants to believe that this is only a nightmare, but if it is, I can’t wake up from it. What the attacks have done to me, on a personal level, is make me aware of how I interact with my family and friends. I don’t hold back my feelings, I express how much I love them and how important they are to me. BILL K.
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Bill | 37 | Ohio
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