Where Were You On 9/11?

[Bob Womack]

I'll repost my experience from another forum:

Being a recording engineer, I was at work on a national two hour morning 9:00am TV talk show and had just finished the typical morning rush to get the open and show elements mixed, last minute, high stress. I ran them to the videotape room and then turned on the TV at 8:50 to unwind for ten minutes before my 9:00am client. The North Tower had just been hit. I called the News Director who was getting ready to go to the air studio and said, "Look at your monitors!" He said, "I don't have time for this!!!" I yelled, "No, look at your monitors!" He looked. "Oh my gosh!" Click.

I called my scheduler, cancelled the 9:00am client, and ran to the control room of the air studio where I took over managing the satellite feeds and phone feeds from our news producers in Manhattan. The most amazing thing happened: ABC News was on a rooftop facing the tower setting up cameras for a program later in the day when the events unfolded. Around 8:55 a Vice President of ABC made the decision that this was too big to capitalize on, ordered a spare satellite feed unscrambled, and put the word out on the newswires. We panned a satellite dish over and grabbed their camera feed just before air time. Right after our show opened the second tower was hit before our eyes. Our bureau in Washington was in sight of the Pentagon hit so we had video of that within minutes. When the North Tower went down we lost contact with our reporters in Manhattan and didn't know their status (dead/alive) for two days.

My parents were on vacation in the UK and were marooned there for a week. As a result, they witnessed the playing of the U.S. National Anthem in front of Buckingham Palace. A song about an American win over the British, played by the British Army in public as a gesture of solidarity. Digest that.

Memorable.

I'll add this extraordinary clip:



Bob

[rule18]

Working in NYC, but thankfully outside the "zone". That whole day was so very surreal (and obviously so horrible for anyone there and those who lost people). I still have a visitor pass from Tower One, having been at a job site weeks prior.

My (not yet) wife had an office blocks away. She got out early that day and never went back (quite literally).

[TBman]

22 years later and I still can't keep my eyes dry watching this.

I can remember talking to my mother on the phone that day bawling my eyes out saying "Mom, there were little kids on those planes."

I will never forget and never forgive.

[rule18]

Mis-posted.

[ozzman]

Originally Posted by rule18

I'm right there with you B. Without getting overly political (and thus admonished) there will never come a day that I will forgive those pieces of garbage that planned and/or perpetrate those horrific crimes. IMO, the killing of OBL should have been only the beginning. But that's just me, and not everyone sees things that way and today, I understand that (I didn't always).

Im with you both!They never did get the payback they got comin.

[rule18]

Originally Posted by TBman

22 years later and I still can't keep my eyes dry watching this.

I can remember talking to my mother on the phone that day bawling my eyes out saying "Mom, there were little kids on those planes."

I will never forget and never forgive.

I'm right there with you B. Without getting overly political (and thus admonished) there will never come a day that I will forgive those pieces of garbage that planned and/or perpetrate those horrific crimes. IMO, the killing of OBL should have been only the beginning. But that's just me, and not everyone sees things that way and today, I understand that (I didn't always).
__________________

[fitness1]

I had worked from 6-9 am and went home for a bit - did some book work and went to take a deposit to the bank from my studio.

When I walked into the lobby a guitar player friend who worked there was walking along with an old pair of "rabbit ears" in his hands....he looked at me and said "the tower is down" I thought he meant TV tower, of course, until he got them hooked up on and turned the old projection TV on in the conference room....the second he did it, the second tower came down.

As everyone - I was in shock and wondered what was going to happen next. I called my parents and we talked for quite a while then I went back home and watched the coverage all day.

For the next couple weeks I felt guilty for doing anything "normal"

[Merak]

I was home from work that morning due to an injury. My ex called and said to turn on the tv. The rest is history as they say. I worked for Northwest Airlines at the time. I installed locks on the DC-9 cockpit doors, had to have my handprints recorded by the feds or lose my job. Coworkers were fired if they had a felony conviction in the last ten years. Many were in the Reserves or National Guard and called to duty. Hundreds of thousands dead from the wars that followed. The revenge was worse than the crime. I almost forgot how horrible humans are when scared. Sad time in history.

[BrunoBlack]

Preparing for a class, when my wife called my office. I started the lecture with the news I had and dismissed the class. One of my students, Christoffer Carstanjen, a student in another class was on one of the planes (Flight 175) and was killed.

[Mobilemike]

I was in High School at the time - 10th grade Spanish class with Senora Jackson when we heard about the towers being hit. We had the tv turned on and I just remember being totally stunned - it didn't even compute for awhile that this was real.

-Mike

[Jamolay]

I had a friend in one of those towers. She had gone from Colorado to NY for a 2 day business training. Never came back. Her family was devastated, as were so many others.

The world is full of “what the f*” moments. This one is high on the list.

[Gitfiddlemann]

I live relatively close to Boston. I was at work. It was a beautiful weather day, with sparkling dry air and deep blue skies. My wife called me and asked if I had been paying attention to the news. No one was, but shortly thereafter we were all gathered around the office television set looking live at the towers coming down and scenes from the Pentagon. A little while later we found out what happened in Shanksville, PA.
We all felt like zombies at work. Nobody could do anything constructive so we all went home early. I’ll always recall the frightened look on the faces of people as I drove by them. It was a surreal experience.
The next morning I had jury duty at the Federal courthouse in Worcester, MA. The security there was nothing like I had ever experienced.
The country hasn’t been the same since.

[FLRon]

I was at work and had just went on break in the cafeteria. Oddly enough, the company had just finished the installation of several TV’s and a satellite system to allow employees to catch a few minutes of news programming if we desired. I and several of my coworkers stood in utter disbelief at seeing the towers destroyed. Needless to say, production was severely disrupted that day.
Because of what had happened, the TV’s went dark for several days. Within a month the satellite system was dismantled and replaced by CCTV.

[fenderball]

at the time i was the head of a cluster of radio stations and was in my office...one of my managers came in and said "a plane just hit the world trade center...turn on the tv"...so i did, as people began gathering in my office...several minutes later the second plane came crashing into the south tower...i turned to my manager and said "that was no accident!".....i will never forget that moment...EVER.

[raysachs]

I was a couple hours down I-95, at work in the Philly exurban small town I was living in. Riding my bike to work earlier that morning, it was the same unimaginably and notably gorgeous day it started out being in Manhattan. I worked for a county, and was in a big inter-agency meeting with transportation planners from multiple levels of involved agencies on a highway project we were working on. Since I was one of a couple of people there from the home agency, I was moving in and out of the meeting, pulling material together when questions came up that we had information on. So I was the first to hear from a co-worker outside the meeting that a plane, presumably small, had hit one of the WTC towers. I had been in NYC in 1993 when the first attempt was made on the WTC, and was immediately worried, but basically put it aside at first to get on with my job. When I went back into the meeting and told folks what I’d heard, there was a normal amount of concern, but nothing too extreme. When the second tower was hit, and the implications were rather immediately clear, everyone’s cell phones in the meeting started blowing up with calls and texts. Lotta folks had family in the NYC area, and there was much calling back and forth. The meeting basically changed topics completely and broke up shortly. Shortly after, it was announced that being a governmental building, we were at some elevated risk, and we’d be shutting down at noon. We were NOT at any undue risk, but it actually seemed pretty reasonable in the moment - nobody yet knew how many more hijacked planes MIGHT still be out there.

And then all of the stuff with getting the kids home from school and my wife (a fourth grade teacher at the time) getting HER students all on busses or picked up. And then the hunkering down and dealing with the societal fallout, which we’re still doing to some degree today. And hugging our kids and each other that much more meaningfully, appreciative that we all got through that horrific day alive and safely. Our generation’s Pearl Harbor moment, no doubt.

-Ray