8 years ago today...

[Psi U MC Vito]

No matter how much I try, I will never forget that day. I was a sophmore in high school at the time. We heard rumors that a plane had hit the first tower in religion class of all classes. I thought it was just an accident. Then we started to hear more and more news about it. I have a relative who worked in the towers and one that transfered at the WTC to get to work. We spent all day trying to get in touch with them, which we eventually did. Such a horrible day.

[aggieAXO]

I was heading home from work to a meeting. I -35 was a standstill. Everyone was in a daze. I had just joined GC and was on here daily but it was offline for 2 weeks.

[srmom]

I was getting ready to play tennis & had just gotten my kids off to school.

When the first plane hit, I thought it was an accident, when the 2nd one hit, I knew it was bad. I called my partner to ask if we were going to play, and she said the team was still playing - I couldn't believe it.

Weird thing, we played this "old lady team" (funny because I'm one of them now LOL, but that's how I thought of them back then) and their reaction was like, "Hey, things happen, why let it get in the way of tennis." I thought they were absolutely NUTS!

Finally, all us "young moms" starting getting calls from the schools to pick up our kids, so we, as a team, forfeited all the lines.

I then went home with my kiddos and watched the coverage - SO SAD!

How my life has changed? I'm alot more cynical, I don't trust the government to take care of me or my safety. But I think that's just age...

[ComradesTrue]

I had taken a vacation day that day, so I was sitting on the couch listening to the radio (The Ticket in Dallas, for those in the know..). They mentioned the first plane in an offhand manner, so I turned on Good Morning America to see what was going on. Watched the 2nd plane hit live as I continued to listen to the guys on the radio.

I called my boss at work, knowing that they did not have access to a TV. I kept them appraised of everything. I remember when the pentagon was hit I called her and said "My God, we are going to war."

Since I was still single, and my family was 1000 miles away, I called a friend who was a nurse and who was also off that day. He came over and we watched everything together. We just sat there in silence. Finally, about noon, we were hungry so we opted to go out for lunch. (this sounds a little callous now, but I had a tiny apartment, no food, and I think we both just needed to get away from the TV a bit).

We went to a Chili's type of establishment. It was probably half full... and completely silent. Very eerie. By the time we headed back to my apartment many companies/stores/etc were closing. I remember all the hand-written signs saying "Closed early for national tradgedy." The Dallas Morning News did an "extra" that day and we bought one. I still have it.

[aephi alum]

I was driving to work when the first plane hit. I was listening to a cassette tape rather than the radio, so I didn't find out what had happened until I got to work and found everyone in the break room watching the news. I walked in just in time to see the second plane hit.

We tried to conduct business as usual, but many of us were upset because we had family/friends who lived/worked in NYC. (I live in Connecticut.) My parents had told me of their plans to "spend Tuesday in the city" so I was freaking out. I tried to reach them on their landline and got "all trunks busy". I tried their cell, but they never turn the damn thing on. I emailed them, and I was VERY relieved when I got their reply. It turned out their NYC plans for for the following Tuesday, the 18th, and they were safe and sound on Long Island.

The office closed early, and I headed home and tried to get my head around what had happened.

A friend of DH's family, who had just gotten married, lost her new father-in-law. He worked in one of the Twin Towers and was a safety officer for his floor.

Never forget.

[KSUViolet06]

I was a senior in HS and I was going from AP English to my Civics and Law class for 3rd period.

On my way to class, kidss were saying stuff like "OMG did you hear the world trade center just blew up?!" I remember thinking that they were making it up.

When I got to class, the teacher (who was really big on current events as a history teacher) turned on the TV. Just as he turned it on, the second plane hit. We were pretty much glued to the coverage for the next two period until lunch, when the principal came over the PA and told us that we needed to resume our regular schedule.

I also remember going to class after lunch, and having the teacher tell us that some students and teachers had been saying some things about another teacher, who is Arab, that had hurt her feelings and made her cry.

I remember him practically SLAMMING the door and looking so upset. He wasn't yelling, but he very sternly said that no matter what has happened today, that there is NO EXCUSE for us to treat teachers and classmates in a hateful manner. Most of us were pretty shocked by this (he was typically the "funny" teacher who was NEVER mad).

I have never forgotten that, and kept it in mind everytime I traveled and overheard people saying certain things about Arabs on planes.

[groovypq]

I was living and working in Northern VA at the time. I'm a PA native, so to all my friends and family, I was "in DC."

For some reason, I was running late to work that morning. My drive took about 40 minutes, and I always listened to Elliot in the Morning on DC101. For those of you not from the area, he's really irreverent and smart@ssed, but mostly funny. That was how I heard of the first plane, early on in my drive. As time went on, I knew this was something serious because Elliot was not cracking jokes. At all.

I got to work, and instead of going to my office, which was in the lowest level, I went upstairs to another office where I knew they had TVs. I think (can't quite remember) that that's where I heard about the plane hitting the Pentagon. My building was only a couple miles away, as the crow flies. Everyone rushed to the conference room to look out, but we were too low. Some of us went up to the top floor, and we could see the smoke from the Pentagon.

The main things that stick out in my mind are kind of small in comparison, but heartening in a way. Since, as I said, everyone I knew thought I was "in DC" they were all emailing and IMing me to check up on me and make sure I was OK. My ex worked in DC proper at the time, and his friends were all doing the same to make sure he was OK. He evacuated, and I forget how many hours it took him to get home. My office stayed open; by the time I drove home at 6 that night, the roads were almost deserted. So eerie.

My sister was in the second week of her freshman year at my alma mater. My dad was at work, my mom was at some meeting about 40 minutes from home. When I first heard about Flight 93, all I heard was that a plane went down in PA. This is a pretty big state, and my family members were in just a few small parts of it, but my brain automatically went to "oh my God, it was at school or at home." It wasn't, not even close, but just shows you what that day was like.

[txchrissy]

Me and my brother were getting ready for school, and we turned on the tv just in time to see the second plane hit. We saw the towers fall before we went to school.
And then a few hours later when I was in my literature class. I was in 7th grade. Our school is maybe... 20 Miles from an Airforce Base, and in the middle of class while doing book work, we heard a jet pass over our school. You know the noise of an airplane flying over a building? It starts as a low noise, then a monstorous roar, then just as the chills leave your body it fades into a low noise again. Well, that whole process felt like it took 5 minutes for that plane to pass over us, and all of us 12 years were shaking and staring at each other. It was crazy.

[KSigkid]

I hesitated to post on this thread because I know there are people on GC who lost family members in the attacks. I had only been on GC for a few months at that point, and I remember reading the posts of people who had lost touch with loved ones, or who had found out that family and friends had died.

Where was I...well, I was still a student at Boston U. at the time. I had an early class, so I didn't see any of the TV coverage until much later. When I got to my second class of the day (a journalism class), everyone else in the class had heard about what happened. The professor walked in and told us that he was cancelling class, and informed us that the media lounge downstairs (we were in the College of Communications at the time) had televisions playing with the news coverage. We all went down and started watching TV.

Now, you have to understand, a good number of students at Boston U are from the NYC area (especially the city and Long Island). So campus was a bit crazy. I remember seeing people walking down the street crying, some hysterically, as they tried to call loved ones in NYC.

A guy who was in the same chapter as KSigRC and I was working in NYC, so essentially the whole chapter was trying to get in touch with him to confirm he was ok. I ended up talking to him for almost two hours that night...it was just crazy to talk to someone who had been right in the middle of it all. He was still in a sort of shock at that point.

The campus itself was a weird scene; BU doesn't really have a campus, per se, it's just smack in the middle of the city. There were almost no cars on the streets, and people were walking around, trying to get reception on their cell phones. I saw a close friend trying to get in touch with her cousin, who worked in the city...I found out later that her cousin was one of the many who lost his life that day. It was kind of like something out of a movie - it was like Boston had completely shut down.

Luckily, the College of Communications had these old-style phone booths, so people were taking turns calling home, loved ones, etc. I called my parents, as I knew they would be freaking out once they heard that one of the planes went through Boston. I called, promised them I wouldn't ride the T for the day, and let the next person go.

Only one of my classes went forward, a History of the Presidency class taught by Professor Dallek. It was really a fascinating class - he's one of the foremost experts on the Presidency, and he talked about Presidential responses to tragedy.

How has it changed me? I really don't know. I remember it, and my heart and thoughts go out to all of those who lost loved ones. I knew one person who died (my orientation advisor was on Flight 175). I consider myself lucky that I didn't lose any close friends or loved ones in the attacks.

[AOII_LB93]

I was getting ready for my 2nd day of work as a high school teacher that day, when I turned on my cell phone and listened to a message from my mom. She said that a plane flew into the WTC. I was a little shocked and told the husband (then BF) to turn on the TV that a plane flew into the WTC. We saw the 2nd one hit. Both of us just stood in the middle of the room, not knowing what to think because not a month earlier he had been working on the 60-something-th floor for Morgan Stanley. Seeing the footage of the towers collapse made me sob as I had been there several times. Two of his co-workers were there doing their training. One of the guys potato-sacked a woman who froze in the stair well and carried her down 30 flights of stairs. They made it out, and rented a car to drive back to CA. They only stopped for gas and took turns driving.

How has it changed me? I realized that this country can be attacked, which wasn't something I really had ever thought about before. To me that is the moment my generation will always remember - Where were you when you found out kind of thing. I think we were one of the few generations who didn't have one of those until 9/11. My mom's generation had Kennedy's assassination, the moon landing etc...as well as others, but this just blew me away. I actually have pictures of the skyline in July of '01 from the Statue of Liberty. So sad.

A lot of my family in NY's friends lost members that day.

Never forget.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by AOII_LB93

I was getting ready for my 2nd day of work as a high school teacher that day, when I turned on my cell phone and listened to a message from my mom. She said that a plane flew into the WTC. I was a little shocked and told the husband (then BF) to turn on the TV that a plane flew into the WTC. We saw the 2nd one hit. Both of us just stood in the middle of the room, not knowing what to think because not a month earlier he had been working on the 60-something-th floor for Morgan Stanley. Seeing the footage of the towers collapse made me sob as I had been there several times. Two of his co-workers were there doing their training. One of the guys potato-sacked a woman who froze in the stair well and carried her down 30 flights of stairs. They made it out, and rented a car to drive back to CA. They only stopped for gas and took turns driving.

How has it changed me? I realized that this country can be attacked, which wasn't something I really had ever thought about before. To me that is the moment my generation will always remember - Where were you when you found out kind of thing. I think we were one of the few generations who didn't have one of those until 9/11. My mom's generation had Kennedy's assassination, the moon landing etc...as well as others, but this just blew me away. I actually have pictures of the skyline in July of '01 from the Statue of Liberty. So sad.

A lot of my family in NY's friends lost members that day.

Never forget.

Did you all have school that day? How did you all handle it?

I can remember the principal made an announcement, and as he came on, we all expected it to be a rah, rah, good luck to the athletic teams kind of thing, but then, it was to inform us of what had happened. For whatever reasons, ours was one of the schools that kind of decided to limited access to news that day. We were advised not to have the TVs on with students in the room and that, coupled with the internet being at a crawl, fostered crazy rumors of things being even worse than they really were.

When I talked to other people who could watch the news all day, I got the impression that actual news coverage as the events unfolded wasn't much more reliable than the rumors running through the school. In hindsight, I'm kind of grateful that I didn't watch the planes hitting the towers or, more likely that day, the towers falling in a perpetual loop all day. There was a TV documentary with a lot of 9/11 footage recently (nothing "truther-y, just news), and I had to turn it off. Too much fear, sorrow and pain came back. Remember the missing fliers that people put up looking for their loved ones?

When we observed the anniversary a couple of years later, kids were talking about where they were, and it was kind of strange when one of my students could remember every detail of that class period. It made me glad that I hadn't completely lost my stuff and openly wept at my desk or anything, not just for his memories, of course, but because the relative normalcy was comforting to him, I think.

[AOII_LB93]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

Did you all have school that day? How did you all handle it?

We did have school, but in the interest of keeping it calm-ish, a lot of us decided not to have our TVs on to watch the coverage, because we really didn't know what was going to be shown.

It was a rough day, I remember that much.

[lovespink88]

I was in 8th grade at the time. When I got ready for school, we always had the TV on in the morning as we got ready for school. Usually my brother and I had cartoons on, but there was always a point where my mom would turn on the news for a bit. As I was gathering my things and getting ready to leave, the news caught mine and my mom's attention; a plane had flown into the WTC. We were tuned in right when information started coming in, so we didn't know many details. I assumed it was a small plane, and not a commercial plane. I honestly remember thinking "sure technical difficulties happen, but how do you mess up that badly?"

On the short car ride to school, we happened to catch the report on the radio. It was an FM station, so they didn't have as much info as I'd imagine the AM news stations were reporting. At this point, I was still pretty in the dark about what was actually happening.

I got to class, and my class waited outside until one of the teachers came down to let us all in (on a side note, did any other school do it that weird way?!) We were all just chatting normally, no one knew much at that point.

When I walked into my homeroom, the TV was on, showing the coverage of the news. I cannot remember if the second plane had hit yet, but I remember not paying attention to it. I unpacked my bag, put away my coat and my classmates started getting ready for class. My teacher turned off the TV, and stopped by the other 8th grade homerooms to check in/chat with the other teachers before prayers and announcements. Soon it started getting late and we did not have prayers or announcements. Our teacher was still not in our homeroom. Suddenly she came, almost sprinting, through the door and announced, in somewhat of a panic "Two planes have hit the World Trade Center, and the Pentagon is on fire!" I just remember a lot of gasps, and everyone started chattering about what this could mean. Our teacher turned on the TV and we began watching the news.

Prayers finally started, a few minutes late. I don't recall if there was any notice about what was going on.

The rest of the details and order of events are pretty fuzzy. I remember that some teachers let us watch the news the entire time, while others tried to go on with class. I specifically remember, however, sitting in biology and seeing the first tower fall live. We were all shocked. It was the scariest thing to see live.

I know at one point we were basically put in "lock down". We had one morning and one afternoon bathroom break, lead by the teachers, and we all had to eat lunch and have recess in our classrooms.

I also remember hearing the crazy rumors and predictions of what people thought was going to happen next. Since we were in Chicago, everyone was terrified about something happening to the Sears Tower.

Another thing I remember is that I live about 7 miles from O'Hare. It was weird NOT hearing planes all day.

[knight_shadow]

I was in 12th grade when it happened. I remember class was interrupted by someone bring a memo to our teacher. She stopped class and said "Oh. A plane hit a building." We thought it was an isolated incident and it was business as usual. When the 2nd plane hit, they stopped classes and turned on the TVs in all of the classrooms. We watched for a few hours (we weren't required to go to our following classes). It was very surreal. The last time I remembered feeling like that was when Columbine was happening.

My mom had a flight to the east coast at that time and I couldn't get in touch with her to see if she was OK.

I was part of my campus's Leadership Academy, and we put together a series of events to raise money for victims. I think we grossed about $20K and we were able to donate half of that.

I am from the east coast, so every year, I take a moment for those that were affected back in 2001.

[Benzgirl]

I was at a new job that I had only been at for 2 1/2 months. About 15 minutes after the first plane hit, one of the women who worked for me (and a big gossip) said she had just received a call from her daughter about it. I told her to go back to work. Shortly therafter, nobody could access the internet. It was at a crawl. That is when everyone's phones started to ring.

All news sites were jammed. You could not get into CNN, so we all ran over to the company gym (6 TVs) to see what was going on.

Early that afternoon, the company offered early release to everyone. I had intended on working that afternoon, but my employees all left.

During this time, I was in corporate housing one block from work, in downtown Cleveland. One of my friends started to work there about 2 weeks earlier and was also in corporate housing. We got a call from a co-worker to meet us at a bar a few blocks from the bank.

There was no one in site, no cars on the street and the police bagged all of the parking meters. When we got to the bar, all that we saw was a "Closed" sign. Talk about the Twilight Zone.

Neither of us wanted to go back to our apartments, but there were no restaurants or bars open. We ended up at the bar in the Embassy Suites where all of the guests were glued to the TV. Cell phone reception was minimal. When someone could get through, you were telling the person on the other line to call someone for somebody you didn't know.

My mom kept telling me to drive home. Why? I would be glued to the TV there too. She thought that the terrorists would fly a plane into our building until I told her that they would need to swerve passed quite a few taller buildings before finally hitting our building. Trust me, they would say that our 9-story building just wasn't worth all of the work.



Tonight, I talked to my friend that I was with that night. She just moved to North Carolina, and we still talk about it every anniversary since.