Where were you 22 Yrs ago Today + Football

I was in college at U of M, sleeping. My roommate tried to wake me up but I ignored him because I had been up late. I finally got up after like the third time he tried to get my attention, just in time to see the second plane fly into the tower.

I remember everyone being afraid that terrorists could fly a plane into Michigan Stadium on game day. And some of my friends were worried they would attack the Dow Chemical plant in Midland.

I was working in Reston, VA at a telecommunications start up. 

I heard about the first plane hitting the WTC and thought, "Horrible, some plane hit the Empire State Building back in the 1930s or 1940s."

I stayed on the internet and heard a second plane hit the other tower and knew it was terrorism. 

The company's NOC was in the building I was in so I went there to watch the big screen monitors that had been tuned to all the major networks.

We got sent home shortly afterwards.

The plane that went to PA flew over the office I was in and over my home.

Horrific day.  My heart still goes out to everybody who lost loved ones that day.

Edit.  At somepoint between when I was reading the internet after the second tower was hit and when I went to the NOC, I did see a report that fighter jets had been scrambled from the airbase next to the Greater Pittsburgh Airport, Air National Guard I think.  I never heard that mentioned again and always wondered if that was the real fate of the plane that went down in PA.

West Quad. Getting ready for class, everyone waking up started gathering near the few TVs we had on the hall. I remember the silence as we digested what had happened. 

I was tying my tie, walking out the door with two young kids. My best friend worked for the government and we talked to each other about what was going on.  He was told to “sit tight”. My kids wound up staying home, by my choice. I polished off my rifles and shotguns and went to the ammo store in town. Since that god awful day, I wake up every 9-11 and crank Alan Jackson’s “ where were you when the world stop turning” and set and cry. 

I was active duty Air Force in a training command. I was scheduled to fly that afternoon, which I obviously didn't.

The thing I recall most vividly was realizing our world was never going to be the same... Everything was going to change. 

I was at work. Someone had texted my admin who went next door to the owner's office and turned on the tv. We were watching when the second plane hit. It all but took my breath away.

We were directly under the flight path for DTW that runs NE/SW. When I arrived I would typically see the lights of multiple planes as they turned into the pattern. 9/12 was surreal, not a single plane in the air other than a lone F16.

The following week I had to visit Louisville. Seeing armed troops from Ft. Campbell patrolling the terminal was just as surreal.

I slept through pretty much the whole thing on the West Coast. (I was between jobs, so I didn't have to get up early that day.)

I had just gotten out of the Navy. I was working in a warehouse. The radio station played overhead varied by the day, but 9/11/01 happened to fall on a "Drew n Mike, 101.1" day. We had breaks scheduled, and in the break room, the chatter drowned out the radio in our designated break room. When we came out, we assumed it was a radio bit.

Then their tones became something between disbelief and ominous. It was legit. ~150 people stood silent at their work stations listening to the radio broadcast as the 2nd plane hit.

On the 1 year anniversary of 9/11 I was working for the TSA at Metro, trying to console the private-sector security guards that had been there 1 year prior.

The most bone chilling silence you'll ever hear. Broken up by the sobs of people that had a far more personal experience than I.

You wanna talk about guilt? A stupid basketball injury stopped me from helping on the front lines. I was medically discharged in July of 2021. I think about it constantly. 

12 years old, 7th grade. I first heard someone in the hallway joking about us being under attack….then about 15 minutes later in Math class our teacher had to explain to us that the WTC was under attack. 

This took me by major surprise because about 2 years earlier we took a family vacation to NYC and I had the opportunity to go on the top floor and roof of the WTC. My 12 year old mind kept on seeing the faces of people that were working in the Cafe on the top floor, serving up all the tourist. Surreal and sobering for my young mind. 
 

What a day. 

 

May the full truth come out for all those traumatized for life by this event. 

I was a surgical intern working at a VA hospital in Florida.  

I was very tired but I can remember best all the people who tried to donate blood.  It was so genuine that I'll never forget it.

I was at work - operations support lead for the NGA Library at the time.  The NGL is a digital image library of national imaging assets collected by the IC, not books.  No TV in the office, so I found out about it by the site lead for EUCOM - calling from England.  I opened up CNN.com expecting that a Cessna hit it.  The moment we saw it was an airliner things ramped up around the office.  We checked in with our 11 sites (at the time) around the world and remoted-in to each of them anyway to check for ourselves that everything was up and healthy.  A few hours later we started seeing access and data export numbers sky rocket as analysts started sniffing around.

We could see the Pentagon smoke from our office.  Several of us knew a few people in the image cell in the Pentagon at the time.  We lost friends/business acquaintances that day.

In sixth grade science class. Our social studies teacher came in to inform us that there was an attack in NY. I didn’t know what to think of it at the time and I don’t think my brain could’ve possibly comprehended the scale of the attack, so I just assumed it was a small propeller plane that accidentally flew into a building. I really don’t remember thinking much of it through the rest of the afternoon, because I’m sure our teachers were trying their damndest to keep us all distracted.

I didn’t finally understand the gravity of what had happened until my dad came to pick me up from school. I somewhat light heartedly asked him if he heard about what happened in New York and he said “Yes, the World Trade Centers are gone.” It hit me like a sack of bricks at that point. Also because we had just been to the city about three weeks prior to see my grandparents.

Walked all around the WTC area because I was fascinated with skyscrapers when I was a kid. Had models of them all over my room, books about the biggest ones all over the world, etc. I still have a picture of the skyline that I took from Ellis Island that I’ve since framed and hung up in our living room along with my grandfather’s ID badge when he visited the towers at one point. Might’ve been for work, not too sure. Anyway, I felt this pit in my stomach for the rest of the day, knowing that one of my childhood fascinations was all of a sudden just…..gone. And more importantly, thousands of people went with it. Every now and again as well, I think about what would’ve happened if we were attacked just a few weeks prior when I was in the city? Or if we pushed out that vacation just a few weeks. Would I even still be here?

My whole family was glued to the news for the rest of the night. Don’t remember anyone saying much of anything. What could’ve possibly been said anyway? My grandfather also worked in the city for decades. He saw the towers come down from either the Williamsburg or Manhattan Bridge as he was commuting in. My mom said it was the only time in her life where he was truly speechless.

My husband and I were getting ready for work. When we got there, the building was closed. Ironically, it looked a lot like one of the Towers (The Aon building in Chicago). When we got home, we turned on the TV and saw the second tower go down. Our son was around a year old at the time and we had a Polish nanny who had lived through WWII. A couple weeks later, she quit and went back to Poland. She thought this was going to be the beginning of WWIII. I remember it like it was yesterday. After that, for a long time, whenever I'd see a plane flying overhead, it looked dark and ominous, like a weapon. Because my husband and I worked in the same tall building, we had to come up with a plan in case that happened to us. We said to each other, "Don't wait for me, just get out of the building because Henry (our son) needs one of us to live." It was chilling. 

Work in Toledo

Heard about it on the radio and didn't think anything of it. They keep talking about it and so our boss bought a TV to watch.

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I was working third shift and after getting home that morning was watching ESPN Sportscenter . The talking head announced they were going to show Michael Jordan highlights after the commercial break so I changed the channel. Next channel to ESPN was CNN. Seconds later the second plane hit the WTC. I stood there in disbelief as to what I just witnessed. Still gives me goosebumps thinking about it.

RIP to all who perished from the attack 🙏

I was in 3rd grade in Michigan, far away from the day’s events. Nonetheless… my teacher was reading Trumpet of the Swan to the class when another teacher entered the room and whispered something in her ear. I remember my teacher’s eyes went wide, and i’m sure the two exchanged some muffled words before my teacher resumed reading to the class. My school was located very near Selfridge Air National Guard base, and some of the students were from military families. Throughout the rest of the day, a number of my peers were called to the front office as their parents arrived to take them out of school early. I still remember being so confused by that. When school was finally let out and I made it to my carpool, my friend’s Mom was, unusually, less willing to put up with our rough housing in the car. She told us to behave and that there had been a plane crash. When I arrived home, I remember being so upset with my sister, who wouldn’t let me go across the street to play with my best friend. Years later, I would learn that one of my teachers’ husband was supposed to attend a meeting at the Pentagon that day, but didn’t. Another teacher’s husband was a pilot of one of the jets scrambled from Selfridge to potentially intercept another hijacked airliner. I can’t imagine how they must have felt. Though we would learn more details in the coming hours and days, the total gravity of the day’s events wouldn’t be fully appreciated by my young mind for quite some time.  Certain days are just burned into your memory…