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Do you remember where you were & what you were doing on September 11, 2001 — the day the world came to a halt?
Here it is years later, and I can remember exactly what I was doing on that day.
…As I’m sure you can, too.
This Is My Recollection…
I was working from home that day and watching the morning news on TV.
Like usual, I kept flipping between Good Morning America, The Today Show, and the CBS Morning Show (…I’m a television marketer’s nightmare: I have no favorite channel).
All of a sudden, CBS was the first to break in with information and photos of the first plane as it crashed into the World Trade Center, setting the building on fire.
When I switched the channel and saw all of the other stations were covering the same thing, I realized it was incredibly serious… incredibly tragic… and incredibly real. Especially when the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania plane crashes followed soon thereafter.
I quickly called Jim at work, and he said everyone’s spouses had just begun calling the office to inform their loved ones of what had happened. Jim and his co-workers immediately turned on a TV and followed the events of the morning.
From that day on, practically every television channel on the dial began airing something about this tragic day — even MTV, CMT, and HGTV. “Normal” TV programming didn’t resume until about 2 weeks later.
But it was clear to me — as it was happening — that this was history in the making, so it seemed anti-patriotic to even think about switching to a channel that wasn’t covering some angle of the tragic September 11th events.
September 11th… Gone But Not Forgotten
I had been to the World Trade Center several times before September 11th — a couple of times — as a tourist doing the typical tourist things in New York City.
But my most vivid memories from inside the World Trade Center are from the times when I worked at Paul Smith’s College.
Each year, we hosted a huge private party at the World Trade Center (at “Windows on the World” — the restaurant with panoramic views of the City that was at the very top of the north tower).
Video Tour of Ground Zero In New York City
Here’s a 5-minute video from the site of the World Trade Center… taken a few years after the tragedy. The author describes what it looks like now, compared to what it looked like then, as well as what the crowds are like, the type of attention given to Ground Zero in New York City several years later, and some of the tributes that can be found at Ground Zero.
Here’s the Darryl Worley video “Have You Forgotten” (…the guy on the guitar is the songwriter, Wynn Varble)
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I had turned on the Today Show a little before 7:00 here in Utah. They were just starting to show the WTC with smoke coming out of the one tower. For a few minutes, they thought it was a small plane and was an accident. It was only a few minutes until the second plane hit the other tower. I took my kids to school, came home and woke up my oldest son, who was 18. By then, the Pentagon had been hit. I told him that our country was under attack. That woke him up in a big hurry! Then, they said that another plane which had been hijacked had crashed in Pennsylvania, which they suspected had been intended to crash into the White House or Capitol building. I was crying by then and started wondering if being 2,000+ miles away was enough for us to be safe. I wondered if the people who had orchestrated those attacks had attacks planned all over the country. I thought that schools might be targets. I went back to the school and picked up my kids and brought them home. There were a few other mothers who did the same thing.
There was another reaction I had to it which was probably fairly uncommon. I felt guilty. I realized that it was the first such event in my life (I was turning 47 in a few days) where I hadn’t had someone in my immediate family serving in the military,taking part in the defense of our country. When Pres. Kennedy was assassinated I was nine and one of my first thoughts was that my dad might have to go to war because of it. My father was a Marine when I was born and was on active duty until I was 30. My husband was in the Air Force during Desert Storm. He didn’t end up being deployed, but did work extra to cover for those who had been, which we were happy to do.
Being there when it happened must have felt like a nightmare that you couldn’t wake up from, and I would bet that there are people who were in the middle of it who will never stop having nightmares about it.
You’ve reminded me of some discussions I had, back then, with others who had grown up as children of career military parents. So many people said what you did, that the world had changed that day; that the security you had always felt was gone. Those of us who were military brats didn’t feel that. I think it was because we never felt that security. We lived under constant threat that anything that happened anywhere in the world could mean that our parents would have to go and be involved in something they might not come back from.