9/11: Your feelings

Piotr Rasputin, I honor you for your response and am aware that I did make it political when I didn't want to even do so by mentioning the school incidient. Thanks.

I, too, will probably try and just stay away from the news for Monday. It's a day off from work for me. I know I will not be viewing any continuous CNN or Fox News "You Are There"-type coverage online.

Sorry ... once was enough for me, too.

healingman

 

I grew up in New Jersey -- my dad died in 2000 but for several years worked in the post office where the first anthrax attacks were mailed from -- but didn't get to NYC much. One thing I do remember, though, is wandering willy-nilly around Manhattan, coming around a corner and BAM, there's the World Trade Center. It was strange to see it like that, and strange to think that it's gone now.
It's also strange to think that, on Sept. 10, cable stations had no news crawl on the bottom of the screen. That happened because there was so much to report on 9/11 that they couldn't get it all out over the air.

I remember waking up around 11 a.m. on 9/11 and the rock station was playing news. It took me a minute to realize what was happening, then I just sat there for an hour slack-jawed. That night, I was up until about 3 a.m. just watching the news.
A couple days later, I remember looking at the lists of missing and dead to see if it included anyone I knew. They didn't, but it was surreal to be scanning it for five minutes because of the sheer number of names.

And I remember going to an LSU football game a couple months later and eagerly awaiting the national anthem. Not sure about other places, but at LSU the entire stadium sings along. It's cool at a regular game, and the first time hearing it after 9/11 made my eyes well up. If not for some well-timed ribbing from my buddy, I would have lost it.
It's odd to think that that was a common and accepted emotion at the time. Now, it's looked on as corny, flag-waving bullshit by a large segment of the population. What the hell has happened to us?

Now that the recollections are out of the way, time for a quick rant....
One thing that pisses me off more than anything are these assholes who refer to "9/11 celebrations". What, exactly, are we celebrating? Death? Bewilderment? Shock? Horror? The slaughter of 3,000 innocent people? Did they wake up on Sept. 15 or something and say, "Hey, where'd those towers go?"
You can hold memorial services. You can take time to remember the horror of the day and what it has meant to the country and you personally. You can use the anniversary to reflect on what's happened in the five years since and where we're heading.
But you don't "celebrate" getting your ass kicked.

 

9/11/01 -- Strange, strange day. Even in California, thousands of miles away, I felt weird. I went in to help get the paper out -- we did have a four-page sports section that day (news later took two pages away for more space devoted to it, but we did run stories on the Los Angeles Kings scouts killed in one of the WTC planes and that all local sports teams would not be playing games the next few days). I also helped out on the news side, reading proofs, writing cutlines for photo pages, whatever else I could do.

As much as 9/11 sucks because of what happened, it's strange to say this but it was another reminder of why being in our business is so great at times. People drop everything else and focus on putting out the best possible product when tragedy strikes. 9/11, San Francisco earthquake of 1989, space shuttle disaster, etc.

Now, as for the 5th anniversary of 9/11 on Monday? I won't be watching the 24-hour reliving 9/11/01 stuff on TV -- I have a Vikings-Redskins game to watch, but otherwise, I'll find plenty of other things to do.

 

I was hoping there was a thread on SportsJournalists.com because it is always good to talk about these kinds of things.
I was in Idaho and was a senior in college at the time. I was in a computer class at the time and some guy said he heard the World Trade Center was hit by a plane and I told him it was fucked up to joke about that. The weird thing was, I went to all of the news sites and nobody had anything. I think abcnews.com had a one-liner saying: "Reports out of New York say there is an explosion at the World Trade Center," but I didn't think anything of it, especially considering it was 7 a.m. I started to drive home and every FM station I switched to had talk radio on it. I still hadn't quite figured it out until I noticed people pulling over on the side of the road and just sitting there white faced in total shock. While I was driving back to my house the first tower collapsed. I will never forget the announcer making a muffled ooh sound and just losing it on air.
Since I was living in Idaho it was strange, people cared, but not really. No one I knew had even been to New York. But the hardest part for me was the fact I had been there less than 2 months earlier and had gone to the top of the towers with my family on vacation. I was scared shitless because I am afraid of heights and didn't like being 110 stories up. When all of that was happening that day all I could think of was the tour guide/elevator operator or the people that worked in the tourists restaurant at the top. Average citizens just getting paid like $10 per hour to entertain tourists and they were 110 floors up and didn't have a chance. Also, my fear of heights and remembering how we were on the top floor for an hour and it wasn't until the last 15 minutes that I grew the balls to actually walk over to the windows and look out and be amazed at the site of a massive metropolis spreading out as far as the eye could see that I realized how awesome the Twin Towers were. They were huge and ugly, yet so powerful and beautiful because they defied so much logic in how tall they were. Their scary heights, though, were what bothered me the most about people jumping out of the buildings. During the 9-11 movie with Nicolas Cage that I watched, I actually had to plug my ears and close my eyes during the part where people were jumping, I just couldn't handle it.
Anyway, sorry to ramble so long. But let me be the next to say that it didn't matter where you were on that day, it affected you. I think no matter if you were in New York or D.C. or Iowa or Idaho or wherever it was a terrible experience and later today (when I get up) should be one of remembrance and reflection.

 

My ex, who is in the Navy, was dispatched to Afghanistan on 9/12/01. In a way, it was like Pearl Harbor for them: no notice, no warning, no time to prepare. You had 12 hours to make your phone calls and personal arrangements and that was it. Off to war.

And every one of them has come back changed. The young people of our country will be forever scarred by their military experiences in the Middle East. Right or wrong, political or not, this is our generation's Vietnam and it will haunt those who serve(d) and those who love them.

We all have our "where were you" stories from that day, about the shock and the impact. My most poignant moment came in a phone conversation. I was working for a university athletic department and one of our teams was scheduled to play one of the service academies the coming weekend. I called their SID, who told me the entire institution was on lockdown and being told to prepare for anything. Though there was no doubt those "future military leaders" would not be put in harm's way as the enlisted grunts were to be, the distinction between students at the academy and civilian students at every other university became very clear.

My only trip to NYC was post-9/11. I did not go to Ground Zero, mainly because of time but partially because I felt I had no right to visit as a tourist. I don't have an interest in seeing the movies or watching anniversary coverage because I think it's too soon.

Of course, every time I think it's too soon, I realize that most kids in middle school today don't have a clear recollection of 9/11.

 

A month before 9/11, I took a quick vacation with an ex-girlfriend-turned-best-friend. Told her I'd never get married because I loved being single.

By October 2001, we were planning our wedding.

 

At the time I was on the desk in our sports department and that meant getting home from work at 1 a.m. then watching TV, snacking and playing guitar for a while and then hitting the sack around 4 a.m. And that's exactly what I did. I'd usually wake up to my radio for the news in the morning, and at 9 central, I started to hear the reports of the first plane hitting the tower. I rolled over and grabbed the remote and flipped on the TV. Minutes later, the second plane hit.

Reports kept coming in. The Pentagon ... Flight 93. There were United planes involved, so I called a friend who is a United flight attendant to make sure she and her brother (also a United flight attendant) were OK. She was on the phone at the time but called back and said they were both OK.

Then I sat and watched all day long. Got a call from the office to come in early. Did so. Saw the clips of folks dancing in the streets in the Mid-East and got really pissed off.

Born and raised in the midwest and living here nearly all my life, but for four months first out of college worked for the AP in midtown Manhattan. Then went back there numerous times on the NBA beat over an 8 year span and loved every visit. Just couldn't imagine how paralyzed the city was.

It seemed I spent a week with a lump in my throat. And we expected attacks to keep coming. Wednesday was my off day and I spent the first 10 hours of the day glued to the TV. Finally got showered and out of the house for bowling.

I remember getting some solace and laughs from The Onion special edition a week later with the screaming headline: HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!! Particularly loved the story with a Hell dateline describing the hijackers' surprise that they weren't being smothered by virgins and were instead having their flesh burned off. And I wished I knew for sure that that was what was happening to them. And to this day, I think that is too good for them.

For a couple of weeks, the country seemed to band together. Democrats and Republicans were Americans first, Democrats or Republicans second.

Sadly, that didn't last too long. Now, five years later, we've still got a hole in the ground in New York and holes in our hearts that may never be completely filled again. Yes, we've gone on with our lives, as we should. But every time I go to fly to cover the next road game, I'm reminded of what those bastards did that day and what a whole bunch of their bastard brethren still would like to do to us.

And I say to myself, "Religion of peace? No fucking way." I wouldn't mind seeing most of the Middle East bombed off the face of the earth. And as much as I know that's wrong, I can't help it. If it's us or them, then make it us. And if you're an innocent, peaceful Muslim, then don't sit by quietly and tolerate and enable the bastards that hijacked your religion.

To me, that's the true lasting effect of 9/11. I'll never look at folks of the Muslim faith the same way again. Now all I see is that Islam wants to kill all Christians and kill all Jews. Religion of peace my ass!

 

Unfortunately, Tony, that reaction is partly why this country and this culture remains divided after five years.

Nobody asked ordinary Christians to "not sit by quietly and tolerate and enable the bastards that hijacked your religion" when Eric Rudolph bombed those abortion clinics/Centennial Olympic Park, or when Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murrah Federal Building. Why would you ask ordinary Muslims the same thing? This is bigger than that.

Terrorism is terrorism, no matter who causes it or who is hurt by it. Terrorism did not start on 9/11. It, of course, also did not end on 9/11. A lot of us conveniently overlook that sometimes, IMO.

 

Well, first off, Buck, Eric Rudolph's antics are pretty much renounced by any religion that considers itself part of "Christianity." Protest at the abortion clinics all you wants (I haven't but would consider joining in) but killing anyone over it just lowers yourself to the level of those you protest.

As for McVeigh, he and his weren't a "Christian" group but simply an anti-government group, no?

 

I'd like to apologize again for using the term "flyover country" to describe those who don't remember 9/11. I shouldn't have said that. I should have said I get mad knowing there are people out there who don't grasp the enormity of what happened, and what continues to happen.

They live everywhere and using the term "flyover country" here was New York-based arrogance at its worst and I apologize, particularly to my friends on this thread who hail from the middle of America.

 

Thank you for sharing. I, and I am sure many others, really appreciate it. For those of us in BYH's - whether he wants to call it that or not - flyover country, it is important to hear people's stories that were actually there or affected by their loved ones or people they knew that were there.

 

I was teaching special ed at the time and in the process of administering Indiana's yearly achievement test. I had no clue what was going on until somebody came into my classroom and pulled me out to tell me that a plane had hit the Pentagon and that my brother-in-law, who works for a defense contractor, was supposed to have been there at the time and couldn't be reached on his cell.

About three hours later, after testing was over for the day, I was teaching my social studies class when the principal came over the intercom to tell me that my 8-months-pregnant sister had called and that her husband was OK. My entire class started clapping. I still have no clue how they knew what was going on with me personally since I hadn't told them.

I had friends in the Guard who were activated soon afterward because they did chemical weapons containment and they were needed to deal with the anthrax scare and some of the cleanup in NYC.

The events in New York and D.C. that day affected everyone on some level, even those of us in the Heartland.