Sep 11 2009
Where were you on September 11, 2001?
I was in the house I live in now, getting dressed and standing in front of The Today Show on my bedroom TV like I had done every morning for as long as I could remember.
I watched the plane hit Tower One.
I canceled my plans and moved to the family room where I watched TV for the rest of the day. And night. And the next day. And probably days after that.
I kept my kids, in 4th and 1st grades, away from the news but I told them what happened. Sort of.
Where were you?
By Annmarie on Sep 11, 2009
Driving home from taking Caity to first grade. Remarking on the glory of the day one minute, trying to remember when a plane had struck the towers the next. I was listening to NPR and I thought it was old footage, like it must have been the anniversary of something I should really remember, but how odd that I didn’t. It took me a few minutes to realize it was happening in real time. Walked into Starbucks for shock number 2, a woman looking dazed saying that her husband was there. It had not hit her yet what that really meant. Driving up the hill for shock number 3, the second plane. Until that moment it had not crossed my mind that it could have been anything other than an accident. A horror show after that.
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By Melanie on Sep 11, 2009
I was getting ready for work in my 325 square foot apartment. I normally listened to the radio in the morning & they told listeners to turn on their TVs. I did, just in time to see the second plane hit.
I went to work, and we all huddled in my boss’s office watching it unfold. I worked at an ad agency and it was eerie how quiet it was: no phones ringing, no keyboards clacking, no shouts over cubicle walls.
At some point after the towers fell, the clients started calling. All but one agreed to run the same ads as the previous day, but one felt they needed something different. Because car ads are so important.
We were finally excused around 2pm and I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering my neighborhood in a daze. I didn’t find out until the following weekend that one of my friends was in Tower One and I’d watched him die.
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By Kath Calarco on Sep 12, 2009
I was at work. My boss came out of her office and said, “My husband just called and said a plane hit the World Trade Center.”
I said to her, “You mean, like one trying to land at LaGuardia or something? Did it miss the runway?”
We turned on the radio, the minutes thereafter unfolding to sketchy disbelief and apprehension. Were we under attack? Would something come at us in our small Central New York town? Should we grab our kids from school?
The rest of the day belief slowly sank in. What stands out are those mornings thereafter. Skies clear of aircraft for weeks.
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