Remembering 9/11

[Jim Pittsburgh]

Just thinking about 9/11. Spent 3 or 4 days
a month in the towers for years.  Had friends in
the back bldg, took me two days to track down.
Had nice relationship with a few people in the hotel.

Worked at Allegheny Energy at the time.... Remember very
clearly that some people were laughing  about it all as I watched
People jumping from the bldgs. They had to pull me off one guy
I bitch slapped and sent me home.... Went to my
Church first.

My son was at Duquesne at the time. He called about 4:30
And wanted to come home. When I drove up 19 to the Liberty tubes,
the roads and parking lots were literally deserted.

[MacGeek]

I was working from home that morning and didn't have any media on.  On my way into the office around mid morning, I got a call from my assistant telling me to go back home.  I turned on the TV and was glued to the set the rest of the day.  Just awful.

[Sir Thrift-a-Lot]

My wife called me from her work asking if I was watching TV.   I put it on a few minutes before the second plane hit.   When it did, all I said to her is "we're at war now".

[Kingman]

Remember it always... Never forget...

[bearjew]

I was in math class in 6th grade.  It took until I got home for me to actually find out what happened, but I was still too young to understand the gravity of it.

[Bunni]

I was still living at my old place, Anders was sleeping upstairs and my kids were in school.  I was watching the news reporting about a plane hitting the tower, wondering how this accident occured.  As I watched the second plane hit the second building, I knew this was no accident.  I remember yelling for Anders to get up and come see this.  He came downstairs and we just sat there in disbelief watching it all unfold.

[schwarcw]

Never forget!

[RnR]

From the perspective of someone who was just becoming politically conscious at the time of the attack... I was in 7th grade, our teachers/administrators wouldn't even tell us what happened. They said we would have to wait to find out from our parents and to go back to focusing on school?  I also remember most of my class of 14-18 year-old boys and girls, and even adults too saying they wanted to kill all the muslims (actually they said arab's, ignorant) and all this other crap.  Most of the rest of the country had similar thoughts, a la lord of the flies.  I remember being THIRTEEN and feeling embarrassed to be american.  Please don't take this the wrong way.  I feel awful and SUPPORT the families of the victims, our military and their families who had to sacrifice so much after the initial attack, and also for the muslim people living under tyrany overseas as well as the ones in the U.S that are treated like they are bin laden themselves.  Also saw the economy crash, people become less trusting, a heightened government involvement in security, servailence.  I also saw the U.S Gov use the mental climate of the U.S people to pass B.S bills like the Patriott Act.  It's almost like were less secure in most ways..  I'm sorry if this sounds like I'm downplaying the real tragedy of the event, im not.  9-11 just sucked in every possible way, there was no good that came of it.  Not trying to be negative,  it was just such a reality check to realize all this at once at the age of 13/14.  Lets hope humanity as a whole learned something from such an awful event in history.  So sad.

[Sir Thrift-a-Lot]

Great post R&R, except that nobody has learned anything.

[tinpan]

I had an afternoon meeting scheduled with my Navy Customer at the Pentagon. Our management instructed us to stay in our home offices and stand by. Our company sold IT equipment to the government and we were instructed to get any equipment to our customers if they needed anything with out waiting for hard copy orders. As it turns out the Navy wing at the Pentagon was hit and I received a request on my Blackberry to see if we could deliver 110 Blackberrys to the Navy Annex in Crystal City, about a mile away from the Pentagon. My contact began to explain the urgent need and further began to explain they couldn't cut an order because there was nothing left in that part of their organization, no records, no desks, no communication, missing people. I was able to cut her off and simply ask her how many they needed and ask her where they wanted them delivered. I was given a time slot at 7 am in Crystal City on 9/12 to pull up to a check point outside the block where their building was located. I will never forget pulling up in my pick up truck  and seeing armed guards and concrete barriers surrounding these buildings. She rolled out with a couple carts and we unloaded the Blackberry's in the middle of the street.

It turns out that the Blackberrys were the only device the military was able to use because they lost their landlines and everything else in the Pentagon and cell phones didn't work for days dues to the overload in phone traffic. Since I had sold the first Blackberrys to Navy Medicine and NAVSEA they quickly figured out that these continued to let them communicate. It's still kind of hard to talk about.