Tell us your 9/11/01 story.

[Umpire in Chief]

We're coming up on the 10th anniversary on 9/11. And it effected every one of us in someway or another.

Share your 9/11 story with us.

[mstaylor]

All I can do is tell where I was. I was having breakfast at my favorite place when the Trade Center buildings were hit. I left there, went to work and they had pulled a TV in the office to watch the coverage when the Pentegon got hit. It was a surreal day to say the least. I had a buddy that lived near the Trade Center buildings.

[mjr_2013]

I was in 1st grade, and my school district didn't tell any elementary schoolers anything about it (for obvious reasons)... My class was in line for lunch and the classroom got a call for me to go to the office with all my stuff to get picked up... My mom was in the office with about 7 other parents who all expected school to be cancelled for the day (they actually didn't) and didn't want to deal with a mad rush to the school... My mom explained it all to me on the way home. She was pretty scared because we live about 2 minutes away from the sixth-busiest airport in the US without scheduled passenger service.

Some of this I remember and some of it she told me later.

[Jeff C.]

I was @ work. A person told me about it and I went into our conference room to check. I was thinking that somebody had flown a light plane by accident into the towers. And Mike is right, it was surreal to say the least.

[LMSANS]

I was unemployed at the time. I was walking on the boardwalk for exercise, listening to Imus. It was weird as Warner Wolf called in from his apartment and described the first plane. we got home by the second one and I was mesmerized all day. I couldn't take my eyes off the TV all day.

I had an interview the day before one block over.

[1dumbquestion]

I was just waking up (west coast) when my wife called from work and told me to turn on the news as a plane had hit one of the towers. I turned it on just in time to see the second plane hit. Life would never be the same. I have a 3'x5' American Flag flying on my house with a light that shines on it every night and I always will. God bless America. 1

[sdix00]

West coast, so I woke up to it.

Back then I slept with the TV on to dull my mind, so when the story broke I woke up to the image of one building billowing smoke. NO ONE knew what had happened and speculation was a small plane accidentally hit it. So, just another tragic plane crash at this point.

Then the second plane hit, and I literally could not process what happened for a couple minutes.

An hour later they spoke about another plane crash in PA. Then the Pentagon might have been hit. The White House, Congress, and other places were evacuated and the White House clammed up about where the VP was. The story built all day long. When Building Seven collapsed, it was hardly news at all. It was Surreal how the media seemed to be controlling the intensity of the emotion and reaction.

I used to listen to News Radio on my 2 hour commute and was glued to the radio and internet news every waking hour - "News on the 5's and when it breaks." - and what I remember most (after the attack, of course) was that EVERY 5 minute news segment was lead by a 9/11 story for 9 straight days afterword. I started paying attention to the lead story and counting the days after 4 days. I remember thinking, "will this ever end?" 9 days x 24 hours x 12 stories per hour = an estimated 2600 straight news segments about 9/11 before they led with another story. I was amazed at this level of focus. Not that it was not important, but I felt like I was being told what was important.

During this time I contemplated the stories that disappeared from the headlines. The biggest story prior to 9/11 was the Arthur Andersen accounting scandal regarding Enron. I later learned that investigators were uncovering some of the most egregious acts regarding Halliburton and Worldcom during the months of September and October 2001. I don't usually bite on conspiracy theories, but I was still fascinated that this happened at the same time.

The morning of 9/11 is so much more than just a tragic singular event in time for me. To me, it is the spark that changed our lifestyle for the last 10 years. The wars, the infighting, and the re-focusing of our national efforts to beating an enemy we do not understand, to attempting to bring democracy to a people whose national laws and national religions are fundamentally fused and have no concept of "by the people", to changing where our national resources (money) goes, to changing the most important criterion for selecting leaders.

During this time, I learned that retaliation was not a quick strike event, but a new lifestyle for my friends with parents and other loved ones overseas. The reaction to 9/11 had more force and consequences that the attack ever could have had.

I am humbled by the fact that I saw that single building billowing smoke and I could never hope to conceive what kind of world that event would lead to ten years later.

[Umpire in Chief]

I was living in Columbia MD at the time. I took a long weekend and stayed too late at my moms in Norfolk VA and didn't get back to MD until 3-4 AM so I called out from work.

My wife woke me up to saying, "We're being attacked! They've bombed New York City!"

I was glued to my TV the rest of the day. But we lost power some time that morning so we had no clue what had happened. When the power went out they were reporting that the Washington Monument had been hit. I went out to my truck to listen to the radio we didn't know if something closer to us had been hit.

When I got to my truck I learned it was the Pentagon that had been hit.

Next I got a call from my little brother who was on leave (and why I went home that weekend) saying he'd been called in from leave and was heading back immediately.

The ironic thing was that on 9/12 I was supposed to have a meeting with one of my biggest clients, MCI/Worldcom, in their office at Pentagon City - which is directly across 395 from the Pentagon.

I few days later I drove up 395 just to see the Pentagon for myself.

[yawetag]

I was living in Cincinnati. I was unemployed, and only moved there because my girlfriend (wife now) lived there. I had spent the previous few months living with a mutual friend; she moved out of her apartment to return to school, so I moved in with another mutual friend (and now best friend of both of us). In a nutshell, her roommate didn't like me, so I had moved in to a another friend's apartment that Monday morning. We were both unemployed at the time (and both found jobs very soon after)

I woke up Tuesday to a phone call from my mom, who asked if we knew what was going on. She told us, and my roommate turned on the radio (he didn't have cable) and we listened. I tried calling my girlfriend, who was at a mall and had NO IDEA -- until she returned to school and found out her classes for the day were cancelled. She came to the apartment and we decided to return to our friend's apartment (the second place I lived) to keep up with the news and watch a movie she had to watch for a class; we called the friend (who was at work) and got permission to go over.

About 30 minutes later, the door opens -- it's her roommate and two cops. They order me to stand up, place handcuffs on me, and state I'm arrested for trespassing. I advised I had permission to be there (even showing them the key I had for the apartment), giving them the number of our friend's work. Conveniently, she's out to lunch. After 15 minutes or so, she calls back and agrees with my story. The cops say, "I think it's best you leave and never come back here."

We try to take the videotape out of the VCR (that belongs to the roommate), and it won't come out. We end up giving her $50 in cash, taking the VCR, and busting butt to get out.

So, I almost spent 9/11 in jail.

[Umpete]

I was working from home that day, sitting at the computer. My wife was out delivering the children to school and called to tell me a plane had flown in to the WTC. I shrugged it off as a light plane, but she called back to tell me about the second one. Only then did I decide to turn the TV on. As others have mentioned, it was surreal. I can't think of any other way to describe it. The news of the attack on the Pentagon suddenly made that 150 mile distance from my house to DC seem a whole lot shorter. At one point that afternoon I stepped out on to my back deck and was looking towards the northeast. The sky was beautifully blue and clear, with not even the wisp of a cloud - except for a single jet contrail. I remember that it didn't go straight, but purposefully snaked across the sky.

[JaxRolo]

I was at work. It was a nightmare.

I was a reservist at the time. That night I got a call at 3:00am ordering me to pack up and report in to be shipped out.

[Thunderheads]

Monday, September 10th, I was traveling on business from Detroit to Boston. After our meeting, we were headed to Orange County, CA to visit another company on Tuesday. Our flight to OC was oddly enough a connection in Detroit from Boston! It was strange being on a layover in your home airport, ...I remember talking w/ my wife letting her know we're home and headed to OC in an hour.

We landed in OC at about 1030pm PST ......

My phone rang at 545 in the hotel which obviously woke me up! My wife told me a plane hit the WTC...I said, ...look, I'll call you back when my alarm goes off, it was probably an accident. Needless to say, ....she called again when plane 2 hit ....and ....I was up for the day!

Not paying attention to my itinerary .... my mom called my wife when she realized where the planes came from ...can you imagine? I've never heard her so relieved to hear my voice when I finally touched base with my folks saying I was already in California and came in the night before!

I was supposed to fly home on Wednesday, and leave again Thursday morning to go back out to California for vacation and my 2nd wedding anniversay on the 18th. Well, ...my wife packed me, and wound up flying out on a corporate plane that was picking up others in California, and we wound up only missing 1 day of our vacation.... crazy.

What I remember most is how alone I felt being across the country from home when something so devastating was happening ....A few days I'll never forget, ...and neither should anyone ...

[Dragon29]

California here - I was getting ready for work; my wife (now deceased) was helping my two sons (7 & 10 yrs old) get ready for school when she called me in to watch the TV. It was just after the first plane had hit. We sat, simultaneously horrified and mesmerized by the events unfolding before us. My wife asked me to stay home from work that day. Though I wasn't really certain why, I obliged and called into the office to tell them - they had just heard about it.

My two strongest memories of that day were of trying to explain what was happening to my children (I never lie to them) while trying to process it and figure it out for myself -&- when the second plane hit, knowing that my company's largest client was located on several floors near the top of that building. I found out the next day that over 250 of their 400 employees perished in that tragedy - included in those 250 souls was every single person I had ever had contact with at that company, including several that had flown to the West coast for training that I had spent several days with some months before. Over the course of the next few days, like most Americans, I just got angrier and angrier.

[scrounge]

I was at work, like many. Unlike many, my work was directly related, though. I was one of a handful of route network planners for a major airline. Yes, one of the two involved that day. Not that I had much inside info or anything.

I started that day seeing the first crash and thinking - like everyone else - that it was just a horrible accident. Not the first in the industry, not the last. I was driving to work when I heard the news of the second crash. Instantly I realized this was no accident. The first few hours, we were just glued to the TV, helpless. We were trying to find all our planes as the ops folks were going crazy trying to do the seemingly impossible, ground the worldwide fleet safely and not lose track of anyone. We're talking over 3,000 flights in the US alone. As an airline employee, I had access to the reservation system. We probably shouldn't have been looking, but we'd look up flights to see their status as the wild rumors came flying in. Did we have 6 aircraft down? Where was our BOS-LAX flight? Was the Capitol hit?

Then I found one of the downed planes. The status was a cryptic "SEE AIRPORT ATTENDANT" or something like that, as it was closed off from further inquiries. The rest of the next few hours were a whirlwind, I don't remember much. Around 4 pm or so, the seemingly crass and WAY too soon question came about - what does this mean for the business? Where do we go? What if 50% of traffic disappears and never comes back? What if it's more?

When you think about it, after you take out 10,000 pilots, 25,000 flight attendants, etc., an airline is a pretty small company at the corporate level. There were 4 planners for the domestic network (I was one), 4 for the international network, about 7 in strategic planning, and a couple others for the commuter partners. That was it. It was our task to come up with some wild-ass guesses and scenarios immediately for top management. Would we as a company survive this? The towers were still white-hot but we had to do it. At first I was furious at it - how could we think about something so crass as business at a time like this. Colleagues of mine were lying dead, children torn apart. I may have even known someone (thankfully I didn't). But soon it was comforting in a way to have something to do, something to fill the space of sadness and rage. The task of rebuilding the company, piece by piece, route by route, flight by flight, lay ahead.

I think I got home that night at 1 am or something, the first of many long days ahead. For 3 weeks, we worked 7 days a week to come up with scenarios and plans. We had no data - all the historical traffic models and data were garbage in this new world. We'd make decisions from the seat of our pants, on barely any data at all. There were 4 people on a DEN-PHX flight. Was it because there was little to connect to or was it because no one wanted to go to leisure destinations anymore from fear of flying? Would people shy away from international travel and potentially increase traffic to "safe" places like Hawaii? What aircraft would we ground? Would we shrink 20%? 10%? 50%? I don't know that we got it right, but we did the best we could.

My house was directly in the path of a couple of the runways at the nation's largest airport, about 5 miles out. Every 3 or 4 minutes a plane would go by normally, a comforting sound to a winghead like me. But when I got home and for the next few nights, nothing but black silence. Except for the occasional fast mover - fighter jets flying patrol. Fighter jets flying CAP over Chicago?!??!?? Other than that - silence. I remember standing on the deck, vainly looking up. WHERE ARE THE F#%#@%ING PLANES!!>??!??! It was alien.

I'll also never forget the first commercial plane I saw when the shutdown got lifted. It was Thur, I believe, 9/13. The international flights were the first to make it back. A bomb threat had been called into our headquarters, so the entire building was out in the parking lot. It was a hoax, thankfully, but we still had to go through the drill. It was a warm but overcast day. We knew the Frankfort flight was inbound soon, and as we were out there, we heard it before we saw it, then all of a sudden it appeared out of the low overcast, a beautiful gray 777. The entire parking lot erupted in cheers - and a lot of tears.

The cheers subsided, but the tears didn't.

[kylejt]

I work for defense contractor, with offices around the world. I'm on the West coast, but interact with the East coast on a daily basis. I was brushing my teeth, when the news of a small plane hitting a WTC tower first was broadcast on CNN. My wife and I continued to monitor things on our drive into the office. I went to our President's office, to see where I could help. Our first concern was to locate all of our employees. We had folks checking our travel department, and worked from there. Then I got the phone call from a friend's wife, looking for him. He was supposed to be flying home that day, from Dulles. I already knew he was on the plane that hit the Pentagon, but couldn't tell her (policy). That was a tough one. We lost three guys that day, including a good friend of mine.

It put a new focus on what I do, and who I do it for. It was really effed up that it took nearly tens years to put a bullet in the guy who did this. Lots of blame to go around for that. Too many egos, too much power and money on the line. We got sidetracked, scammed, three card Monty'd, etc. Now, it seems, we're taking care of old scores, and getting the right folks in the smoking holes. 'bout effing time.