[BSUPhiSig'92]

I was in the shower that morning when my mother yelled that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I remember thinking that it must have been a Cessna or Piper and that the pilot must have had a heart attack, because how could you miss something like that? I turned on the Today Show, and watched the replay and saw that it was a big airliner. Then the second plane hit, and I knew this was not an accident. The first thing I did was call my best friend in Chicago. His wife is a flight attendant for American, and she periodically flies out of Boston. Since by this time they had said where the flights had originated from, I was afraid it could be one of her flights. Fortunately, she was stranded in LA for the next four days.
I hurried to work, listening to NPR on my commute when flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. By the time I got to my office in the University Center, they had rolled every available tv in the building into the big central lounge, and there were hundreds of people watching. I was horrified when they showed people jumping out of the north tower.
Then the towers collapsed. I just kept thinking that 20,000 people worked in those buildings and that there was no way they could have gotten out.
One of my students had a brother who worked in the World Trade Center. It took nearly 20 hours before they got word that he was ok.
The feeling I had that day was of feeling absolutely helpless and sick. I don't think I'll ever forget that feeling.

The local gas stations had raised their prices to $5 a gallon by mid-afternoon. When I went home that evening, there were gas lines.

Our campus is directly on the flight line for Lambert (STL) and Scott Air Force Base. For weeks afterwards, if you were outside you looked up at the sound of a plane, any plane. The skies were virtually empty except for the occasional F16 from the Air National Guard. The silence could be just eerie and very unsettling.