Where were you when the towers fell?

[Danu 19]

I don't find either side right...I lost a friend in the trade center and one of my friends lost her brother in Afghanistan. My dad is retired military now but not a day goes by that I hear about anything over there that I don't thank the gods that he was not deployed and that he is here and safe.

People express their grief in different ways and this thread doesn't lessen at all what people feel about the other deaths that occured. Civilians being killed anywhere is horrible and unnecessary. I don't think that talking anyone down over their rememberance of an event is very nice. Everyone remembers different details about everything. If you ask me about the World Wars, coming from a Military family, yes I feel horrible for what happened to all those people, absolutely horrible. With my family being both Canadian and German, when it comes to those events I think of them in 2 ways. I am horrified for what happened to the millions of displaced people, and also very angry at the army for forcing young ones to fight that didn't know what they were fighting for. But I also know that they fought for their countries and their pride. My opa was conscripted and was shot...by a civilian..in the leg. My great uncle was Canadian, killed in action. I can honestly say as someone from a Military family, I find myself more often thinking about the people we lose in battle from the choices of our leaders, whether they be good or bad choices, and the pride that I have in those men and women who serve our countries so selflessly.

Edited September 11, 2009 by Danu

[Kathryn41 3,205]

No offense, I get that many people lost things and it shook Americans confidence and all - but many born and bred Americans agree with me that perhaps it's time to stop asking these questions every year. Haven't 8 years of unjustified war helped quell those feelings yet?

I get it, I really do. It's tragic. But worse things have happened and worse things will continue to happen all over the world (sometimes on a daily basis... IE check the daily child starvation/aids deaths daily worldwide)

Perhaps it would have been more sensitive to have made this post tomorrow - the day after the anniversary of the event when more than 3000 people died in a single day - rather than today. No one is negating the tragedy that happens every day, nor denying the tragedy of deaths in an unnecessary war. It isn't an either/or situation. I believe we are capable of recognizing the heart rending sorrow caused by both - along with other tragedies of life and death. There is no need to negate the one to remember the others.

Edited September 11, 2009 by Kathryn41

[thetreble 19]

Brad, I think you are a stand up guy, but that comment was kinda rude.

If you lost your father, don't you think that every year on that day you'd be thinking about him? Indirectly for me and my husband, we know people who lost loved ones and are there to support them every year around this time.

Also, I don't want this thread to turn into a discussion about what happened post 9-11 with the war, blah blah blah. I heard enough politics in the OT forum today.

[Rhiannercakes 14]

I hadn't met my fiance yet at the time.

I remember I was in high school (Grade 12) and someone was yelling "The towers in New York are being attacked!"

And then the whole hallway went into a huge panic.

I remember rushing home to turn the television on to see if it really was true.

I was actually in grade 9, not 12.

Silly me

Making myself seem older than I really am.

[ashenflowers 5]

On the note of remembrance... Yesterday was the 70th anniversary of the day Canada declared war on Germany in WWII...

[Malrothien 6]

No offense, I get that many people lost things and it shook Americans confidence and all - but many born and bred Americans agree with me that perhaps it's time to stop asking these questions every year. Haven't 8 years of unjustified war helped quell those feelings yet?

I get it, I really do. It's tragic. But worse things have happened and worse things will continue to happen all over the world (sometimes on a daily basis... IE check the daily child starvation/aids deaths daily worldwide)

Well, this born and bred American doesn't agree with you. Talking about what happened 8 years ago has let me have at least some comfort. I STILL cried today.

[EasternDE 35]

I was a nanny at that time. I was on the way to the school to take up the kid, when I heard a few words from a radio annoucement through a opened car window. It was in the very center of Paris, cars are pretty much stuck in traffic all the time. I heard a very few words only, I could only guess something terrible just happened, I had no clue what. It was just the tone of the comment...

As I got home with the kid, I turned TV on... It was 4pm in Paris, so 10am on the east coast. I was stunned with the remote controller in my hand for quite a long time. The kid was in my back. I was a live in nanny, I took care of this little boy during 6 years, he was 9 at that time.

When he said "Look, people are jumping from the building! Is this real?", I went out of shock, and turned TV off.

I always felt terribly guilty he had to watch this being so young. I felt responsible for that messy world we're going to leave to our children.

I felt terribly sad for mankind. And I still do.

That day stigmatizes the beginning of a new sad era for the world.

[Autumnchik 6]

I still remember that horrible feeling of shock and utter disbelief when I heard.

I was living in the Atlanta area at the time. I had just left a doctor's appointment and was driving to a client's home (at the time, I was doing in-home mental health therapy). It seemed surreal and I don't think it truly hit me at first. After a few minutes, I tried to call my mom to discuss and the lines were jammed. I spent the day meeting with my clients and the sessions all revolved around processing the events of the day.

I didn't know my hubby back then.

[Mephys 2]

I didn't know my husband back then.

I was sitting in math class, and at the pause around 10 am eveyrbody in the computer room started talking about it and no one knew if it was real or not. I kept looking on the internet through the day and could hardly believe the towers had collapsed.

It's when I got home at night around 6pm that I turned the TV on and I remember watching the news and the videos of the planes crashing in the towers and the towers collapsing over and over again....it was surreal. I felt sad.

[thongd4me 69]

Well, as this is the 8th year we commemorate those lost in the attacks of 9/11, where were you when the towers fell? At the time, were you together with your American US spouse and how did the attacks make you feel, even if you weren't physically together at the time?

The memory is too vivid because I was swimming at the pool at the Vanderbilt YMCA in NYC when the first plane struck.

I got into the elevator to go up to the locker room and someone said a plane hit the WTC.

My first thought was of the Empire State Building strike by a very small plane many years ago,

but when I saw the tower smoking on the locker room TV there was no doubt what happened.

It was like when JFK got shot, everybody knows exactly where they were.

Yesterday my friend Tony was the representative of the YMCA at the reading of the names ceremony.

He's a volunteer who does so much, like those who gave the supreme sacrifice.

Nice to hear of that volunteer firefighter who was belatedly honored (because he wasn't a salaried firefighter).

[The_Dude 1,142]

I'm a bit late on this, had a long weekend, and zero computer usage. That whole time period was an emotional roller coaster for me. I had just changed my major in university and was basically starting my junior year over again. I was working for an entertainment marketing firm and had been out til about 4 a.m. the night before. I was going in to work early that day (around 9), but was awoken by a call from my mom to turn on the t.v. to see it. I watched in horror for about 30 minutes, and then went to work. I think I drove about 3 blocks when it suddenly dawned on me that one of my best friends who had graduated early was working in one of the towers. I had been in NYC two weeks earlier and had in fact sat in the bar in one of the towers that went down with my friend Chris. When I got to work, I tried calling him, but all the phone lines were down. I tried calling his parents to see if they had heard from him, but no luck. I spent the next 30 hours trying to call my friend just to find out if he was alive or dead. On the saturday following the attack, I finally got a call from him. He had received an offer from his travel agent to bump up his vacation from a thursday night (2 days after the attack) to sunday night (before the attack) and didn't let anyone know except his mother. I was so relieved when I heard him. When I saw his number pop up on my cell phone, I really expected it to be his mom or his brother to tell me that he died that day. I was so relieved and stressed at the same time that I reacted like a zombie when Chris told me that two of our classmates in freshman year orientation that I barely knew died in the attack. I still remember sitting in the bar, just two weeks before it went down drinking a vodka martini (no olive). It's still a vivid memory in my mind today, something that I try to hold on to because I know it will never happen again.

[Inky 1,110]

I was in Highschool, classes were just getting underway when a teacher ran screaming down the hallway other teachers went to go look what was going on in the hall way. The teacher that was running down the hall way was screaming "we are all going to war, we are all going to die" over and over again. the principal got on the PA system and announced that just a few moments ago the WTC had been hit by a plane and that they werent sure if it was an accident or if something more was going on. They said to stay calm and remain in your class room and that pretty much made everyone get up and go out in the halls and wander around. Teachers tried to get everyone back in the rooms. People were screaming and crying in class and in the halls.

They announced again 15min later on the PA system that it was seeming to be more than an accident and that people who need to go home bcus of family there or family that was tied to the incident should go home in an orderly fashion. I went out to find my sister bcus our cousin works in the building almost right next to the WTC. My sister didnt want to go home, so i ran all the way home. My mom told me to go in the tv room and watch the news to see if i could see anything with the buildings around the WTC while she kept trying to call our family in manhatten and cos cob but she could never get through the phones to them. I was in shock I kept asking if it was real or just something to scare us on tv or a hoax of some sort. Much later that night we finally able to get through to my family and we found that my 2 cousins were at work and saw everything from their building. They saw the first plane hit and they saw people jumping from the windows, my cousins tried to find each other in the panic and ran down the stairwell into the street and saw the clouds of smoke and people running and screaming and falling onto the pavement from when they jumped. They started to run away from the center as the second plane was coming and they kept running following all the people in the street to get away from the WTC.

My cousins went to therapy for quite a while to deal with seeing the people jumping and everything. They are doing a lot better, one of them thought she lost her best friend who is a curriour he was missing for a month after the incident but they finally found him, he was in a hospital dazed and confused and still in shock. He had been delivering a package to WTC and was in the lobby when everything started.

[SpiritAlight 1]

A friend and i had been staying at the U.N tower (residential) that week.

We left a day or two before.

I have always imagined what it might have been like to have still been right there.

sigh

I watched it on TV whllst visiting Montreal from 9:15 am EST on...it was quite the day.

I remember calling a few friends in the U.S. to ask them to turn their TVs on.

There was nothing that made sense.

And as it all unfolded for years to come, it made (makes) even less sense.

This is the epitome of an unsolved "murder" mystery.

ex Building 7.