9/11 Memories in 100 Words

i was in the air on the way to FL, emergency put down in Atlanta in just enough time to see the tower fall before they cut the TV feed…and over 10000 of us huddled together in small groups…as luggage started spilling out we built piles of it so it would keep coming…and when someone finally got through on the phones they would share any news…6.5 hours later i got a car and drove an hour to columbus, the nearest hotel where tanks roamed the street…surreal…

Rewind
by: Heather Gilbert

I will not watch the news today,
To tell me what I cannot say.
I saw those planes, one at a time,
The buildings crumbled, lives inside.

Why was my TV on that day?
My mind recorded, so I play those
Pictures over once again.
I can’t explain it to my kids.

All these years and fighting still,
The sadness will go on, until I
Try to see the good still left.
The towers fell. God still has breath.

I was sitting in a women’s Bible Study in Greenville, SC when I heard. I took the attack personally. You see, I used to work a couple of blocks from there. I had lunch at one of their restaurants regularly. My boss treated me to dinner at Top of the World once and it was an experience I’ll never forget. Some of my friends worked there and I still don’t know if they survived. I shopped at Alexanders on the main floor. I took this attack personally. This my World Trade Center, my memories, my friends. I grieve a personal loss – but also realize this had to happen to further God’s plan. Life doesn’t always have to FEEL right to be right.

The Twin Towers fell.
Some times, words are not enough -
Silence must suffice….

The thing I remember most is gathering with my church family that night for prayer. I hunkered down in the familiar wooden pew. I was trying to pray, but distracted with checking again and again that the people I loved were still sitting close by, safe. I kept looking up at the ceiling and wondering what it would be like to have its ancient wood burning and melting down upon me like I’d seen the metal beams of the towers do on TV.

It was my 3rd wedding anniversary. My husband called me from work and told me to turn on the TV. I saw the second tower fall. Even though the media has removed so many of those images, they can never erase the pictures in my mind of the firefighters running, crying, dying in the streets.
Each year we celebrate our anniversary–a day that changed our lives forever–and reflect on 9/11–a day that changed the world forever.

At the time we lived a few miles from Dulles airport. Though we weren’t in a flight path, I remember how eerily quiet it was when they grounded all the planes. I also vividly recall the heartbreak of watching the news day after day, hoping against hope that they would find someone still alive in the wreakage.

My husband was in the Air Force then, stationed out of state. My daughters’ school locked down. I tried to make sense of what I saw on the TV, over and over again. Today, 10 years later, I still can’t. Friends of ours were stranded at DIA when their flight was diverted and spent 2 weeks with us. One of my deepest heartaches: Waiting for news of survivors–and realizing how few of those there would be.

As I watched the unbelievable unfold on TV, all I wanted to do was talk to each of my sons – one preparing for his wedding, one in college, and the other two serving in the military. Logic told me they were safe, but I needed to hear their voices.

They all made it home for their youngest brother’s wedding. It was the last time we were together as a family. Six deployments between two sons have kept the reality of September 11th a central part of our lives for ten years.

I was 8 months pregnant with my first child in China. I remember walking down the stairs and looking at the TV that showed the first plane hitting. I thought that my husband was watching “some movie”. When he told me it was CNN and real footage, I sat down trying to get my head wrapped around all the questions. Then the second plane hit. It was surreal in a bad way…it just seemed like a nightmare that never ended with more news of the other planes going down. Such chaos, such sadness.

That year I was an administrator for a large school district in Central California, and one of my responsibilities was PR. I was charged with talking to the press about our response to the tragedy and composing communications home to parents, in my own way. Our message was clear: school was the safest place for the children, regardless of how remote our location from the tragedy; and the most patriotic thing we could do was NOT to give the enemy the satisfaction of lying down. We would keep our doors open, and teach the children to stand strong.

September 11, 2001 was personal for our family. My husband’s younger brother, Shawn, was a NYC paramedic at the time; as was his girlfriend Doreen – we were frantic. As it turned out, it had been Shawn’s day off, he had been out of the city. Doreen (now Shawn’s wife) had helped triage the injured with so many other medical personnel. Unfortunately, Shawn’s dream to become a member of the FDNY happened all too quickly. He was called up sooner than he expected, because so many went down sooner than God intended…We Will Never Forget.

I live in New Zealand, and will never forget the images we woke up to that morning. Although we didn’t personally know anyone involved, we felt it as if it was personal. Those images of people trapped in the burning towers will stay with me forever. We grieved then, and we grieve now. Kia kaha.

A morning in Japanese Class, ignorant because we could only talk about topics in Japanese and no one had the right vocabulary.

Returned to the co-op to find three girls in hysterics (family endangered) and our cook crying while she served lunch. No TV, radio only. I’ve never watched video footage. I don’t know if I can.

I was in high school English class. Our school had a TV in each classroom for morning announcements. We had just had worship (it was Christian high school) when our TV were turned on and we saw the planes crashing into the World Trade Center and then all of the smoke. The broadcast journalists were just as shocked as the viewers.

Parents started swooping into the school to pick up their teenagers.

Class continued, watching the TV and with the option of going to the chapel to pray for the situation.

It’s been 10 years, and sometimes the feeling of unbelief is still as strong as it was on that day. I don’t want to think about it or experience the emotions that will come with remembrance ceremonies today, but I will. I will do it to honor those who died, to support those who remain, to thank those who protect our freedoms, and to celebrate life.

I fell to the ground when I heard the news. Three small children and a baby around me, I wasn’t sure if or how my husband would get home.

The roads were still, with only the sound of the occasional siren headed to southern Manhattan. I glance out the window at the GW Bridge, half-expecting it to blow.

I took the children for a walk. We encountered people, neighbors, each of whom were alive. It was a blessing those in other parts of the country didn’t have: we heard all the survival stories. And we never watched the re-runs of the film footage, figuring that the terrorists had only flown each plane into a building once, and we didn’t need to experience it more than that.

I blogged about this yesterday and tried to edit my 320 word post down to a scant 100 words to be reposted here, but I quickly gave up.

Click on my name above to read my post — and learn why I published it yesterday and not today.

It’s the oddest things I remember. I was liturgy director for our church and parochial school, and it was Mass day. It was all over before I found out, because I was setting up for Mass. I remember this cute second grader sitting at the end of the pew, swinging his legs because he couldn’t reach the floor. Just after that I walked into the office building for staff meeting and found everyone in a panic, watching on the tiny TV in the meeting room.

I was in a Bible study when the first plan hit. We all got on our knees and began to pray, hard prayers, warrior prayers. Like Joshua and David prayers.

An hour later we hugged and went home. Turning on the TV, I view the attack for the first time. My first actual view of what had happened was a close up of smoke billowing from one of the buildings, and a man jumping. My knees buckled and I was once again on them praying.

This morning we are out of town. Going to the lobby for coffee, I saw a woman in uniform. She remines me that today is the anniversary. We look at each other for a minute and I begin to tear up. ” Bless you”, I say. “Thank you, and stay safe.”

The war continues…

We were living in France with no British TV or radio. I first learned about the catastrophe at Twin Towers when I popped in on our French neighbours to borrow something for our house renovations. We stood transfixed in their living-room watching the second plane hit. The shock waves reverberated around the world. Today at Ground Zero, the words of William Shakespeare introduced the litany of names of those who died: ‘Let us not measure our sorrow by their worth. For then our sorrow would have no end.’
Truly, as writers, we have a sacred trust.

I just arrived to BSF class in Michigan, all seemed normal until they announced we were being dismissed early due to a terrible accident that happened in NY. Confused and anxious, everyone wanted to turn on radios and get home so we could see what they were talking about. So many questions they couldn’t answer. I was horrified when I finally got home and saw the footage and destruction. Uneasy, I called my husband and children just to hear their voices even though we didn’t live in NY. I remember the swelling sense of oneness in our country. I’ll never forget.

I was stuck in traffic headed to work in Anchorage. Normally I drive to music, but I switched to the radio to hear what could be causing the slowdown. As I heard the story unfold, I understood why the two large military bases had slammed down their security, thus causing the highway to back up. I went on in to the college; I taught an irrelevant class to uninterested students and dismissed them as soon as I reasonably could. Then I went home and watched the towers fall down over and over and over again.

There are no adequate words to describe the pain and anguish of the people who perished on that day and of their loved one left behind.

I was about to head out on a Route 66 road trip to experience real Americana when the towers fell. It was particularily personal to me because I knew people who died on one of the United flights, as well as several who worked at WTC. I went on the trip with profound sadness but with a strong sense of purpose – to connect with other Americans and stand united with a collective voice that we would not be defeated by this one act of cowardice.

Six months after 9-11, I was conducting MOTS interviews for a magazine article. The topic? “Why do we need a 6-month anniversary of 9-11.” There were many causes noted, but one universal “reason” given: “So we don’t forget.”

“After 6 months?” I thought, “Really?”

The title of that piece became “Apathy.” Tens years later, there is much personal reflection and national hoopla, but fairly little real understanding of the price hundreds of thousands of Americans are still paying to balance the books on 9-11.

Today there will be countless appropriate moments of silence. When those moments have passed, it is my hope that the American people will look past the monuments and memorials, take in the world as it is today and speak up louder than ever before.

It was my first day back at work after my grandmother’s funeral. As an aviation magazine editor, while proofing finals for press, someone shouted that a plane had hit the WTC. Soon after, my name sounded loudly over the intercom, ordering me to a phone. The Boston accent of my NTSB friend came through my receiver, “Change ya damn voicemail! It says you ah returning September 11 and I thought you were dead!”

Not dead, but as we contacted friends at airports, aviation businesses, and the FAA that day; we all knew our jobs had changed dramatically and permanently.

I remember picking my son up from school and then walking ten minutes to the Hoboken waterfront where we saw a huge dark column of smoke where the Towers had been. My husband was in NYC and I hadn’t heard from him since early morning. My son and I walked home–it was quiet and eerie, no planes, and the sky so bright blue. I ran into a friend who told me she saw my husband on a boat coming from Manhattan. Finally after my other son returned from high school we were all together at home. In Hoboken, we have a memorial service every year on the waterfront because we lost 67 people. This 10th anniversary does help one to pause and take stock, but we have never stopped mourning here for what happened on 9/11.

Was running late for work, heard first plane had hit towers on radio. Shared info with my coworkers. We plugged in a TV just in time to see the 2nd plane hit and then the first tower fell. Everyone was silent. Some cried. We all went home to our loved ones.

It was very surreal for me. I don’t have super clear memories of the actual day, but rather of the that same day a year later, when a memorial was held at the college I attended. That was when it really hit me.

Facilitating a meeting in Syracuse of colleagues from across NYS, I cancelled just after we arrived at the hotel. People tried to connect with loved ones. We watched TV, our arms around one another, tears flowing unashamedly.

My husband, a firefighter, was away at a golf tournament in Ohio and our twin daughters, high school seniors, had just started school at a dance conservatory in North Carolina.

With family physically distant and the possibility my husband would be called to NYC for rescue and recovery, I was paralyzed by grief and fear. I still cry for the fallen firefighters.

I looked at my son, sitting in the corner of my king sized bed, in the corner of my bedroom, in the innermost part of my house and all I could think of was how much I wanted to push him deeper into that corner and keep him there. Safe, in our house, away from the world, away from things like exploding airplanes and destroyed buildings and people who might hate him through no fault of his own. As the weeks unfolded, I grieved with the world, but in those first moments, my visceral response was simply as a mom.

I turned on my TV mid-morning while readying to leave for my college classes. Some news story was on, so I turned the channel. There it was again. Annoyed, I changed the channel again, and again, and again. I don’t know when or where I stopped pressing the button on the remote. Only what happened afterward as I aged a hundred years in the span of an hour. At the age of twenty-one, I came to understood the look in my grandfather’s eyes whenever anyone asked him about Pearl Harbor. The one I’ll always carry for 9-11.

On that morning, I had just finished an early class during my 3rd year at college. I was hurrying across BYU campus, anxious to meet my wife with our two little boys when I spotted her.

She told me what had happened. Gripping each others’ hands tightly, we decided she would skip her class and we found a nearby TV.

I spent that day holding my family, imagining other families whose arms would know a keen emptiness now, and weeping for them. I plead for my Father to send His love to those so tragically affected.

And I loved my country more, because I knew that we would do this:

“not by grief’s burden bent
but in freedom’s yoke alive”

My partner called me early on 9/11, asking me to take his hospital shift. “Sure,” I said, “Why?”

Weeping, he said, “Turn on the news.”

I don’t know how many times I watched the Towers come down that day: standing transfixed at home, waiting with a woman in labor, catching the slippery, perfect new being as he slid into a world that was inconceivably different than it had been two hours earlier. A world with new definitions of fear, horror and courage. Of villains, heroes and endings.
But somehow, miraculously, there were beginnings on 9/11 as well.

Ten years ago, I was a news junkie. As the befuddled parent of an autistic toddler, it gave me a sense of control to know exactly what was going in the world. September 11 was unusual for me, because I did not have my television switched on. I first heard the news, when a friend called me, sobbing, to tell me that the Pentagon had been attacked, and the World Trade Center had been destroyed. Like everyone else, I tuned in, unable to turn away from the surreal scenes of destruction. How could I have not seen this coming?

I was 5 years old. In India. With a Tamil language television. It must have been Sept 12, because of the timing difference, and because the pictures were already printed on the newspapers. I couldn’t understand most of the words, but I could see the horrific images of people running and smoke billowing. I heard the word “Pennsylvania,” and when I consulted with the little US map on the fridge, I saw that it was the state that my dad was in. I was so scared, until we could finally call him.

I was driving off a Navy base, 2 hours from the Pentagon, for a car appointment when I heard about the second plane on the radio. As I watched the news at the auto shop, I prayed, “Don’t evacuate.” Thousands of people worked on the base, on a peninsula with one road out. But we thought we were next – they evacuated. I didn’t want to be a sitting duck in all that traffic, so I met a friend and we stayed in a restaurant all afternoon. Two days later we heard from a coworker who survived at the Pentagon.

Tears surprise me as I watch.

The feelings buried return with the images.

I want to forget. I cannot.

The date will not release me.

9-11!

I hurt.

He heals.

My husband and I were in L.A. staying with my brother. He woke us up and turned the TV just before the second plane hit. I thought to myself “It is here, on American soil.” Later I knew that things would never be the same again.

I cried that day and today, I cried again for the loss of lives; the loss the American people would feel forever. Our country will never be the same, but somehow I know eventually we will make it better; but first we must come together and become one voice.

Every American’s personal YouTube video has persistently replayed itself in our minds. In my video I’m sitting at the kitchen table with my mother. My particular world has shifted tectonically in the two weeks since my dad passed away. Today we’re going to the courthouse to file his will. Mom looks more frail than she did just a month ago. She clicks on the tabletop TV as we sit down to coffee. Smoke is swirling from the side of a huge building. Stunned, we watch as the reporters speculate on the accident before us. Then, from the side of the screen, another plane, and America is transformed.

I went back to school late in life to get the college degree I never got. On that day, I was then in graduate school working on my Ph.D. in clinical psychology. I was getting up and about to get ready for class when I heard the news. At first, I was angry at the commentator for suggesting it was a terrorist attack. Surely it must be an accident. My mind just could not grasp that someone would do that intentionally. My 28-year old daughter was upstairs getting ready to fly from Tulsa to Miami on a business trip. I jumped in the shower, and when I got out she told me about the second plane. I begged her not to go to the airport, but she told me she had to be at this meeting. Thankfully planes were grounded and she returned home safely. But so many others lost their loved ones on that day. I cried all day yesterday as I watched the memorial services. Ten years later, and it is all still so raw!

We lived in Colorado, high in the mountains and isolated. Three sons called from work to let us know. We rigged up an old TV on the generator to watch, seeing our own problems become very small. Within four months, three of our grown children joined the military and served in order to contribute their part. My part? To let them go, knowing others had suffered dearly (and mine did come back).

In a new house, surrounded by unpacked boxes, my first grader got ready for school. I scurried to make her lunch. My four year old balked. Both kids asked if they could have ice cream for breakfast. We were late.
The phone rang. My husband said, “A plane flew into the World Trade Center.” I thought, “Why is he bothering me with this now. “ A two-seater, I thought. An accident.
He said, “It was a passenger jet. One hit the Pentagon, too.” I don’t remember saying goodbye.
The kids had ice cream for breakfast.

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