13 years

Why remember? Because it still hurts. It really really hurts. Remembering it is not still being terrorized. Burring your head in the sand and running from your fears is being terrorized. Quit honestly I am deeply troubled by anyone that sais don't make a big deal out of 9/11. News flash. It was a big deal. It still is a big deal.

David I have been to Dachaus. I get it. I don't think others really understand the gravity of your post.

I remember looking up later that day and wondering "Were ...are...all...the...planes?" As a prop head living near O'Hare, I tend to notice those things. I won't forget that.

My sister-in-law's brother worked for Cantor Fitzgerald. He told his wife, "I love you", and the phone went dead as the building collapsed. His brother, who had just moved out of the building the week before, watched the collapse from his new office building as he also spoke to his wife.

My other brother lost many many friends and business acquaintances.

I was at home in Peachtree City, Ga. but where I was is comparatively inconsequential.

In reply to wbjones: They did about the best they could with redeveloping the property. They are having trouble filling the buildings they have, a second tower would leave a lot of empty space. it's hard to explain as far as why the memorial "needs" to be there but so many people here either lost someone or knows someone who lost someone there that it is a very emotional subject, and with all the differing opinions this was really the best way to make everyone comfortable. I haven't been to the museum yet, and aren't sure I will for a lot of reasons but the people that have gone have been really impressed.

Where I was: I was waken up at about 9am by my future wife. I went to my depot in Flushing in time to see the towers fall from the roof. A bunch of us went across the street to Shea Stadium to load supplies and equipment to help with the recovery. This was also a staging area for pretty much every ambulance from Long Island waiting to help evacuate the injured. It was depressing seeing them sit, then quietly file out when it became obvious there were no injured to rescue. About noon when the trains started running again I was put into extra service to help move the rush of people trying to get back home.

18:00 I started my regular shift from flushing to LaGuardia airport, which was locked down and guarded by some young men with machine guns. By this time the area was eerily silent and I was just driving through empty streets bringing the soldiers coffee and food from Flushing. I finished up at about 2:00am and went to relive another driver who was manning a roadblock in front of the 109 pct.

Weds morning I went home for a couple hours to pretend to sleep, then went back to work for 18:00 that night. It was much busier as I had people stranded in the hotels around the airport venturing out for dinner or to just get out for a bit. When I finished that night I was sent to Engine 324 in Corona to wait for their turn to be sent in. They weren't but they did have to cover for some missing companies in the area. Spent the day helping get equipment together and fixing an old ambulance that some of them were going to take in after their shift. I stayed there until I was called off about 19:00 thursday.

I went to my fiancé's in Albany friday where instead of my parents coming up to talk about wedding plans, the two of us met with the pastor in case we had to move the wedding up if my brother was going to be deployed. His guard unit was called up the morning of the 11th and we still hadn't heard from him.

While I will never forget the horrible sights and smells from that day and the months that follow and the initial fear I felt, certainly the most I've ever felt, I also learned a lot about myself and my fellow Americans. A lot of good happened inn the aftermath and the shiny happy people in charge missed a great chance to really build upon it.

The rest of the country got to see that while we are different from much of the rest of the country we aren't the heartless pricks and criminals you've been led to believe. In the days and weeks after the attacks many people from around the country felt compelled to come and help. They saw how we really were people like them, even if it was in akinda weird cousin way*.

I've met thousands of people since then who've said they never would have come here before 9/11 because they'd always heard it was a crime ridden cesspool but were now compelled to come see for themselves and help get the city going again. Many have comeback and encouraged their friends to do the same. It was appreciated, it helped us get going again and gave people something to think about besides terrorism.

In the following weeks I spent several of my days off driving a group of Air Force ME's from their hotel to the pier where they had set up a makeshift morgue. Many entrance ramps on our route had people stationed round the clock with people waving flags and banners and cheering as we went by with various fire, police and personel. At the ramp we got off for the pier one night there were a group of young women who felt removing their tops would be a good morale booster. one of the men on the bus commented how he was surprised how everyone in NY was more friendly than he imagined. That we were like a big family, though we'd be like the weird maybe gay cousin everyone has.

Wally wrote: In reply to wbjones: They did about the best they could with redeveloping the property. They are having trouble filling the buildings they have, a second tower would leave a lot of empty space. it's hard to explain as far as why the memorial "needs" to be there

understood … hadn't thought about the tanked economy and the empty offices … as to the memorial … if the twins had been rebuilt, then I'm sure an appropriate site could have been found … but with NOT rebuilding ..then the original site IS the best place for it

I was on a school trip with the University of Cincinnati in the middle of bumberk Indiana. The lodge we were staying in (imagine cheap motel with no TV's) had no internet, and one radio station. The nearest stoplight was a half hour away. It was 10am before any of us knew...just all of a sudden, everyones Cell phones started blowing up (no smartphones back then, so really, no one had text alert email news type apps to instantly update us).

Imagine 200 students in the middle of a field, and all of a sudden, all you hear is wind and the sound of corn swaying in the breeze. Shocked eyes and open voiceless mouths as everyone just ...stopped. Eventually, the shock wore off. I remember getting very, VERY angry. Before long, I understood the power of that moment, and knew that was going to be my "Kennedy" moment. Everything felt so far away...the attacks and the immediacy of the moment seemed far away. Home seemed far away. I felt like I couldve been on mars i was so far away. I really missed my family then.

I called home to ask my folks what was going on, though by now, we all had the picture pretty clearly (or at least as clearly as everyone else just a few hours in), and my mom told me that the United States was under attack, and she didnt know from whom. In the 60s, when my mom was just a grade school kid. Growing up near a major supplier of military jet engines - General Electric - just north of Cincinnati Ohio, the schools regularly did drills where they hoped crawling under your desk and putting a book over your head would protect you from a nuclear blast 7 miles away. She remembered the feeling of not knowing when an attack would come, and how powerless you felt against an unseen foe, and said this was just like that. I clearly remember asking "the world is going to be different when I get home, isn't it?", and she said that it would be, and she was right.

I was very busy yesterday and didnt get a chance to get online much. But I had a chance to drop a dozen donuts off at the police station, and another at the firehouse near my office - each with a note:

Thank you for your service. Never forget.

I was in the air, on the way to Atlanta. They were already starting to reroute people to get all of the planes on the ground when we switched over to Atlanta Approach, but we were too busy getting ready to land to notice anything odd. I've always wondered why they didn't put out some kind of general alert to pilots once they realized multiple hijackings were in progress. Once we landed, there was a TV on in the crew room at the terminal and I walked in just in time to see the second plane hit. For that month, I had bid a line that was noting but day trips where you flew to DC on the first round trip of the day, then Atlanta on the second trip. Boring, but I was home in time to meet the school bus every day. For some reason, on Sept 11, the line had the two trips reversed, or else I would have been in DC when the Pentagon plane hit. When we ferried the plane home from ATL a few days later, the only traffic we saw or heard was military. We had a couple of F/A-18s with a KC-10 tanker flying a few thousand feet above us for a while north of Atlanta.

I was at work, actually saw the one that went down in Pennsylvania.

Work is near Albany International airport, so a plane going by in no biggie. This one however paralleled the river, larg plane and lookec VERY low, even for an approach. It circled about 10 miles north and headed south. When I got to the lab I was walking to, they were all huddled around a radio, one of the towers were hit.

I found out months later from Readers' Digest that a guy I raced with was on board. He was flying to California to see his fiance.

Don't let this happen again America. Current leadership scares the crap outta me.

HiTempguy wrote:

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: Sigh. Must we do this? We made it to almost 5PM Eastern.

This year has actually been weird... every american site, facebook, etc has been super quiet. Does nobody care about it anymore?

I do think people care. I do. Very much. To the point of having odd reactions to want to watch the review shows when the come on.

But then i feel really wierd when I do.

Not to put any negative burdon on the people who lost, but when can the rest of us move on? Unlike Pearl Harbor, we don't have a war that ends to close out this terrible tragedy. Unlike plane crashes, we don't have an investigation where we find a mechanical why it happend- where we just accept the psycholical problems with it.

All we have is a "war on terror" which many of us see and accept as a non-winnable war. Why? Terrorism has been going on for millenium, and you will always find people who are willing to die to do bad things.

I'm not sure if that makes sense at all. I remember that I was testing that day when someone mentioned a plane crash, and I mis-took it as something else. And then watched on the monitors that are placed around the lab as the situation unfolded. We also had a picnic that day, and the traffic of people going home was pretty massive.

One thing that really gets me to this day- I recall getting really emotional when I saw that Queen Elizabeth asked here guard to play OUR National Anthem as a massive display of support. Sending us a message that I wish we played back to them a little better.

Tough times.

But I honestly don't feel that the world changed that day. It was dangerous before, and dangerous after. Unless we feel that he first attack on the WTC meant nothing, or the bombing in OKC meant nothing. That was a big set of 4 events on one day, sure- but it's the same terroism, coming from people willing to die to kill. Same E36 M3, different day.

914Driver wrote: Don't let this happen again America. Current leadership scares the crap outta me.

See, we think we can prevent this. You can't. Never have been, never will be able to.

How can you really prevent someone who wants to die to make a point?

The best we really can do is to change peoples minds so that fewer and fewer are willing to give up their lives to terrorise others. It seems to have worked between Ireland and England. Seems.

alfadriver wrote:

HiTempguy wrote:

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: Sigh. Must we do this? We made it to almost 5PM Eastern.

This year has actually been weird... every american site, facebook, etc has been super quiet. Does nobody care about it anymore?

I do think people care. I do. Very much. To the point of having odd reactions to want to watch the review shows when the come on. But then i feel really wierd when I do. Not to put any negative burdon on the people who lost, but when can the rest of us move on? Unlike Pearl Harbor, we don't have a war that ends to close out this terrible tragedy. Unlike plane crashes, we don't have an investigation where we find a mechanical why it happend- where we just accept the psycholical problems with it. All we have is a "war on terror" which many of us see and accept as a non-winnable war. Why? Terrorism has been going on for millenium, and you will always find people who are willing to die to do bad things. I'm not sure if that makes sense at all. I remember that I was testing that day when someone mentioned a plane crash, and I mis-took it as something else. And then watched on the monitors that are placed around the lab as the situation unfolded. We also had a picnic that day, and the traffic of people going home was pretty massive. One thing that really gets me to this day- I recall getting really emotional when I saw that Queen Elizabeth asked here guard to play OUR National Anthem as a massive display of support. Sending us a message that I wish we played back to them a little better. Tough times. But I honestly don't feel that the world changed that day. It was dangerous before, and dangerous after. Unless we feel that he first attack on the WTC meant nothing, or the bombing in OKC meant nothing. That was a big set of 4 events on one day, sure- but it's the same terroism, coming from people willing to die to kill. Same E36 M3, different day.

^this^

A much more elegant and sensitive way to express what I was feeling when I posted that. Thanks.

In reply to Giant Purple Snorklewacker:

Well, you know you are not the only one.

I was sitting in my 7th grade classroom.

I can't help feel things have gone to E36 M3 in this country since then at least as far as our freedoms. Terror has replaced drugs as the boogie man and our rights have been stripped away.

I'll play.

I was 19 and in college. It was a Tuesday, so it was my off day from college classes (I went M-W-F). The day before, I made plans with fellow GRM'er Pseudosport (Greg) to go junkyard crawling, like usual. I got up, and hit the computer to look something up before I called him, and my AOL homepage had a picture of one of the towers on fire. I grabbed the phone and turned on the TV, and gave Greg a call. I told him to go turn on the TV.

He had gotten up a little while earlier and seen the story on the news, and thought he was dreaming and went back to bed. He wasn't. I sat there, on the phone with him, and we watched the second plane hit on live TV. When the 1st one hit, I thought it was an air accident, but after the 2nd one, I remember thinking "this is our generation's Pearl Harbor, and this will be seared into my memory forever". As a History major, I stayed glued to the TV for a while, just soaking it in. After hearing about the Pentagon and the flight that went down in PA, I just couldn't take it anymore. Greg and I decided that the best thing to do was to just go about our day, with an ear to the radio.

We hit the junkyard, where every worker had the news going on the radio. Everyone there, customers and employees, were all talking about it. After that, we grabbed lunch. Again, the news was on, and everyone was talking. Then, we hit Newbury Comics to grab some new CD releases. In a place where there was always some hipster indie music playing, they had the news on. I picked up the new Slayer album that day. It was appropriately titled "God Hates Us All".

I remember going to visit my uncle that night with my dad. He lives in a town that's right across the water from Logan Airport in Boston. There was not a plane in the sky, and the silence was surreal. There had been a plane in the sky perpetually all of my life over his house, and for the first time, there were none. Seeing everything unfold on TV was one thing, but having real evidence in front of my face and ears of what was going on made it even more real.

One other thing that I remember from that time was just how united the country became after the events of that day. We should also take time to remember how the country came together and people put aside their differences to unite as one. That was incredible. Everyone had flags waving outside their houses, flag bumper stickers got stuck to bumpers on cars, and we even had one of those Calvin peeing stickers, except it was peeing on the word terrorists, on our truck. Everyone was cool to each other, and I wish that would have lasted longer. The country is a lot more divided now than before 9/11, and that makes me sad.

93EXCivic wrote: I can't help feel things have gone to E36 M3 in this country since then at least as far as our freedoms. Terror has replaced drugs as the boogie man and our rights have been stripped away.

this is one of the sentimates that drives me crazy.

We spend so much effort to remember miserable things, never forget, ect etc etc.

But totally forget that this isn't nearly the point in our country's history that rights have been taken away or changed.

You stop at drugs.

What about communusts? We fought wars over that twice. And in terms of rights, people were not allowed to be communist- or you could be thrown in jail. McCarthy was some kind of nut, right? Hunting for Reds- but the effect was exactly the same- your rights to assembly and free speech were tightened.

What about the Japanese? Yea, they bomed us- but does that give our society the right to put them in prison? Just because of who they were?

What about the Germans? Back in WWI, there were laws on the books for sedition- which are theoretically laws against overthowing the government. Sounds good, but the laws were used to squash speech. You could not say anything against the government or you risked going to prison. It happened a lot.

People were not all equal in 1776 when we decelared independance, nor was the Constition evenly put to ALL Americans in 1789 when finally ratified. The Civil War ended slavery, but that didn't end legalized separation of application of the laws.

How about we don't forget every single time out rights have been restricted?

9/11/01 wasn't the day that our rights were stripped. It was one of many.

And we will constantly be battling that. It's the general nature of our country.

We were at Cape Canaveral on vacation. We came out of the first IMAX movie and were waiting for the second one when I noticed no line. I asked about when the show would start, and was told 'we don't know if we are going to show it." I said excuse me? Was told a tower was down. So I'm thinking someone cannot make a phone call and I can't see Cape Canaveral?
Needless to say, they closed. All computers were shut down, so all us tourists got refunds in cash. I remember waiting in line for hours and getting a $5 and the rest $1 dollar bills. We found out what happened from the radio in the car. Two days later (9/13) we were at DisneyWorld with no lines for anything all day!

After the first IMAX movie, all I saw was the gift shop.

I was in high school. I only had the early news that it was a stunt plane until I got home, the second tower had already been hit.

914Driver wrote: Don't let this happen again America. Current leadership scares the crap outta me.

Don't worry, it can't happen again, and leadership and airport security have nothing to do with it. Airline passengers now know that a hijacking does not lead to an unscheduled stop in Cuba, but death for all on board and many on the ground, so they will not allow it to happen again.

The most catastrophic thing that a terrorist could do with a plane now would be to unexpectedly blow it up on approach (using implanted explosives).

I was on a hospital addition jobsite with a pair of structural engineers from another engineering firm. We were reviewing the weight of some electrical equipment that was to be added to the rooftop mechanical room. The site foreman walked up to us and said that a plane had just flown into the twin towers. We headed down to the coffee shop and watched the second plane hit the tower. As we continued to watch the structural guys started debating how and when the towers would fail. One got it pretty much bang on the other thought it would topple to the side, towards the point of impact.

Took a vacation day, kind of a fall ritual to catch up and get things done around the house and shop before the weather turns. Slept in from the normal 5 a.m. alarm, initial reports soon started coming in over the radio. My parents were in town for a doctor appt., they saw my truck at home and stopped in for coffee, together we watched. Besides the other events unfolding, local TV news reported our county 911 received calls from frantic airline passengers flying NW over our county reporting a hijacking. Soon, Flight 93 reversed direction and later crashed in Shanksville, Somerset County, about an hour from here.

What a somber day... and our wake up call. Looking back at the time I had to wonder why something like this hadn't happened earlier. The time that followed was eerie. Think I shed a tear when I saw the first airliner back in the sky. A couple years later on the 9/11 anniversary I took the folks to the Flight 93 Memorial. The country was still united then, not so much now. I still choose to remember.

I remember.

Lost a few classmates that day who were firefighters.

My cousin was on an inbound subway arriving at World Trade Center Station. Subway stopped short of the carnage. He walked out of the city through the Holland Tunnel with thousands of people.

My mother lived 30 miles west in NJ. Could smell it for months.

I was on a jobsite in GA feeling kind of helpless. Spent a lot of time praying and grieving. Put together a large team of people to head up to assist with rescue efforts- we were discouraged by the Red Cross. So, we spent a lot of time feeling helpless.

Still unimpressed with what we have made of ourselves as a country since.

SVreX wrote: Still unimpressed with what we have made of ourselves as a country since.

...and how badly we squandered the civilized world's goodwill.

I had just gotten to work and grabbed a cup of coffee when word went around about the first plane hit. Everybody assumed the first was an accident, and some even thought the second was. This was an office of maybe 100 people, engineers, architects, and environmental scientists. Everybody was scrambling to find news on our computers, and after a while, they had radio over the PA. I called and emailed my wife multiple times throughout the morning. Like the poster on the first page, my main source was the forums at neons.org - people were posting written updates and screen shots and even camera videos of their TVs.

I didn't get to see any of the planes hit in real time, (un)fortunately, though of course the replays of #2 appeared soon enough. I did watch the collapses in real time. Of course there had been lots of professional discussion about if, when, and how it would happen. I didn't know anybody in Manhattan at the time, but I knew people in Queens, Long Island, and DC. After the Pentagon and then Flight 93, when it seemed that the attacks were over, the head of the office sent someone out to buy the largest American flags available, like 15x20 or so. I helped him hang one over the side of our office building from the roof parapet, and we hung the other from the atrium.

Around noon or 1:00, management sent around a memo requesting that we stay and work rather than run away, but almost nobody did. I had 2 young kids and a wife to think of. We got the girls from school early and went to the neighborhood park to get away from the news for the afternoon. I remember how surreal it was to be there with 5-6 other families doing the same thing, and the sky empty except for pairs of F-16s cruising the Northeast Corridor. We all kept to ourselves in different areas, because nobody could deal with talking about it. My mother was vacationing in Europe at the time and she was stranded, I think in Germany, for almost a week before getting a flight home.

GameboyRMH wrote: Airline passengers now know that a hijacking does not lead to an unscheduled stop in Cuba, but death for all on board and many on the ground, so they will not allow it to happen again.

I had to fly from Minnesota (where ISIS recruiting cells have been identified) to California yesterday. I flew on Southwest to avoid airlines like Delta that use Minneapolis as one of their hubs given that at least one of the ISIS recruits worked at the airport and had a security clearance (nice).

I fly a lot, the vib on the plane was conspicuously different, the life expectancy of anyone that started E36 M3 would have been measured in milliseconds.

I am familiar with a large scale demolition company who saw the video footage, and immediately realized (as the buildings were burning) that the impact and resulting fire was exactly replicating the method they would have used to bring down the buildings. Weaken the structural supporting members 3/4 of the way up, and let the building bring itself down.

Their engineers and demo experts all recognized the buildings would fall, and even had a pretty good sense of how long it would take.

They started calling NY trying to alert them to not send any more rescue workers in. They couldn't reach anyone official. They soon had their ENTIRE staff of several hundred people trying to call every number they possibly could of ANYONE in the NY area to try to warn someone, while watching the buildings burn on television.

They were never able to reach anyone before they collapsed.

I was a bartender back then and a couple of my regular customers were heading back from the U.K when the towers came down. They were stranded in Newfoundland I believe--- where their plane had heeded the emergency landing order. A couple of local folks heard about their plight, and they put them up in their homes for the few days it took for them to find a way home to Colorado. Complete strangers--- just looking for a way to help.

It was amazing and uplifting how people came together and cast aside differences for a short amount of time. It's the only time I can remember where there was no Democrat, or Republican---- we were just Americans, and we were in it together. That's what I'd like to remember about that day----although the horrible images and deep sadness come along with it.

I was transporting old folks from day care to their homes via bus.

I didn't mention it. figured best to let the care givers handle it.

Watched the evening news.