9/11/01--Where were you when you heard the news?

Classes went on in Omaha, IIRC. The NCAA canceled games that week, but our school went ahead and played a women's soccer game the next day.

I was asleep when it happened. Got a call from my grandma saying someone flew a plane into the WTC ... figured some schmoe in a prop job got careless. The rest of the day was just surreal. Bush flew into Offutt for a while (one of our photogs, who had to hide in a tree to avoid the Secret Service, snuck into the security zone to get a shot of Air Force One), they shut down the tallest building in town and even the Home Shopping Network suspended programming and picked up the CBC news feed.

 

I guess not caring was the wrong wording, at least I hope so. This class was after the second plane had hit. The principal or some other school exec made an announcement over the PA about what had happened and said that teachers could turn on TVs or radios so everyone could see what was happening. My history teacher said he didn't want us to watch TV and that we wouldn't learn anything new because he was watching the previous period and all of the stations were repeating the same info over and over. I guess he had a decent point that after the planes hit there wasn't too much info out there about what happened and TV was repeating the same news for a while (in the morning), with small updates, but he was a history teacher. We were witnessing history, though kind of hard to tell at that time how big of an event it was, but you'd think he would have cared more than my physics or other teachers who were glued to the TV like all the students.

 

Had spent all of Sept. 10 in San Francisco with my wife enjoying rare day off together. Got call at 9 a.m. from my crying mom. We were still asleep. Flipped on TV and I don't know if it was turned off over the next 3 days.

 

Un-friggin-believable. Do you happen to recall what the editor wanted the lead story to be instead?

 

NYC and DC aren't local enough ... how about that library addition?

I'd lay good money there was a check-passing photo on the front page, too.

 

I was a freshmen in high school at the time and was in biology class. The principal came over the loudspeaker and told all the teachers to turn on the TV. We watched in awe for the rest of class as the first tower came down and speculation ran rampant. I remember 2nd period being awful because the teacher wouldn't let us watch the TV's and we had to do work but none of us could concentrate.

Around the beginning of 3rd period we were all sent to the auditorium which had no TVs and were forced to sit there for the rest of the day as teachers relayed what they knew to us.

The other thing I remember about that day, despite being early in the year, we were scheduled to run against our big rival in XC. Up until late in the day the race was still on, and I was really conflicted about wanting to run because I had been looking forward to it for a few weeks, but I realize now that it was for the best that the meet was cancelled.

 

I was walking back from Introduction to Music around 11 a.m., and to my left, I see two yahoos singing, "It's the end of the world as we know it ..." and all I could think was, "Retards."

Then I get to my suite and the roommates are glued to the television. But this time, the Playstation 2 isn't on. We wound up watching for the rest of the day. It was definitely a weird, weird feeling.

 

It was still back when I was working for the minor league baseball team here in town. As I was getting ready to go in and work on some of the year end stuff, the morning shows still didn't know exactly what was going on after the first plane hit the tower.

The radio morning show had cut over to the network news and that's when I heard about the second plane. We just pretty much sat in the conference room watching the television the rest of the morning after the first tower came down.

 

This MSNBC 'as it happened' thing is killing me. They broke in on footage of the burning towers with the first report from someone working for NBC at the Pentagon who said it felt like some kind of a blast. Then it was a bomb at the heliport.

I keep forgetting how jumbled everything was.

 

It's stating the obvious, but it was complete chaos. The Towers, the Pentagon, airports, rumors of bridges on the hit list; concerns that the Capitol and White House were next.

A dizzying, numb, pain-filled day.

 

It took me awhile to find out what was going on. Living in North San Diego County and had a job in the downtown area, which meant I got up about 5:30 a.m. so I could get ready in time to catch the daily commuter train.

Anyway, I get up and browse the Web for about 15 minutes on my computer. I figure it had to have been just a few minutes before the first plane hit that I logged off. Shaved, showered, got dressed. Fixed breakfast and ate while I was looking at the day's paper. Usually, I would have a few minutes before I needed to leave, so I would turn on the TV just to see what was going on. Well, on this morning I was running a bit late, so I got my stuff together and got in my truck to drive to the train stop. Had the CD player on in the truck, so I didn't listen to the radio.

Didn't hear anybody talking about it on the train ride, but about 10 minutes before my stop (the last one on the route, and on the last train of the morning) the conductor announces over the loudspeaker that for anyone whose places of work had closed that morning "because of the incident this morning" there would be an additional train running that morning. That had me curious -- I thought first maybe there was some kind of shooting or standoff in downtown San Diego that morning -- so I called my boss at the office and asked him if I should come in. He said very solemnly "If you feel you need to go back home and not work today, go ahead and do that." I was still clueless and I asked him "Don, what's going on today? I have no idea." He filled me in and things began to register.

I ended up going to the office (this job was for a small sports magazine we were doing), and the coverage was on TV. I believe both buildings had already toppled by the time I realized what was going on. Yes, it was very surreal. And I just thought it was strange that I usually didn't go very long without seeing some news on TV or the Web, and this was the one day I was out of touch for two hours.

 

Was playing with my 3-month-old daughter in the family room with the TV off. My dad called and said "turn on the TV."

Watched the whole thing unfold from there on. It was also my second wedding anniversary and I was planning to go shopping while my wife was at work. Everything in my small Va. city closed down almost immediately, including Wal-Mart. Only thing open was a small gift shop, so I managed to make the save there.

Chilling part was that my parents and my sister were in the twin towers a couple days before. Sis also worked in NJ at the time and watched the towers go down as she was driving home from work. Same thing for my cousin.