9/11: Your feelings

An ad: I grew up in flyover country (Arizona and Montana) and am never offended when it's called that ....HOWEVER ...the only thing that offends me when I go home is when people say "aren't you over it?" Over what? The FF on my block who is only now being allowed to go back to duty because a JUMPER fell on his back from 90 stories up? The kids in the neighborhood who were two then but now watch everything related to 9/11 and ask when their dads are going to die. (Joe Torre told me his daughter does this whenever he goes on the road). It is an everyday conversation in NY, no more or no less than it is an everyday conversation in Baghdad.
And it feels like it happened 50 years ago, or sometimes five minutes ago. But it's never not there.

 

I don't remember a ton of details from 2001 because I slept through the attacks.

I was in college at 'Bama and slept in because I didn't have a class that day until 1 p.m. I usually don't watch TV during the day and I didn't have an Internet connection then, so I was still clueless until I went to campus and saw special sections in the newspaper racks and the TVs in the student union building.

We had classes as usual. I had to go to my night job as usual. I had to pay my bills as usual. I do remember that people were allowed to leave work one at a time to get gas because prices shot up. I refused because I could just tell that it was the irrational actions of a frightened public and that there was nothing suddenly wrong with the gas supply.

Five years later, those day-to-day things are still the same. Of course life has changed in some aspects, mostly "security." I rarely fly, but I reserve my right to bitch about the overbearing security. I also practice my right to bitch about how the government uses the attacks for politcal gain. I can't read a story on politics without some 9/11 reference. I'm not a conspiracy theorist when it comes to 9/11, but I sure as hell believe that every party is now using it for votes and money and ramrodding any legislation they can get through. Oh, and I still believe that there's nothing wrong with the gas supply. Just the people who supply it.

My only vivid memory of the Towers is from a high school band trip in 1997. We went to the towers, went to the top floor and looked at NYC for a while. I was most impressed that from the ground, it was impossible to see the tops of the buildings. Unless you've been there, you can't really fully experience how massive those structures were.

Monday will be just another day. It's my mom's birthday, and my wife and I have to work like everybody else. Sure, it is already a day that will be remembered for decades. I have no expectations, as mentioned, for people involved to get over it. That's absurd. But there is truth to the idea that some of us just can't connect to that day in a personal way.

 

Having a hard time sleeping tonight just thinking about everything, so here goes:

Was working in a small city in B.C. at the time, 9 a.m. deadline, afternoon paper.

Saw the alerts start coming through on the wire. Just one sentence at a time. ALERT - A plane has crashed in to the World Trade Centre. ALERT - A second plane . . . and so on, for the next hour.

There was no TV in this newsroom, but folks turned on the radio. I called my wife, who was sleeping. "Turn on the TV," I screamed.

"What channel?"

"ANY CHANNEL!"

I still have that paper. The managing editor took the front page photo from Yahoo News, as the paper didn't have AP service. My sports pages, which were completed just as the planes started hitting, featured the points race at the local speedway. Talk about feeling like the work you do is pointless.

I don't know how it came to be for others, but the Enya song "Only Time" always makes me choke up a bit because the first time I heard it was as a part of a 9-11 online tribute just a week or two after the attacks. It listed the name of every person who died, and ended with a promise of revenge or something of that ilk. I listen to the song often even to this day and always think of those people when I hear it.

My connection feels limited too, especially when compared with someone like ginger. But I do feel connected to what happened. I think we all should.

 

On monday, Sept 10th, i was in philly attending a funeral for a member of my family. I took the train back to NY that night and i can remember it pouring down as i eventually got off the subway and walked to my apt on 15th and 1st. I was surprised that the next morning was clear and beautiful.

I got to work in midtown (3rd ave and 44th) and my then girlfriend (now my wife) called to tell me the WTC was on fire (her office had a view of the building). I went on CNN and there was already a picture of the first tower. I went into my friend's office to tell him to put the TV on. Right as we turned it on, the second plane hit. From there, the rest of the day was just a surreal blur. Watching the towers fall on TV, being nervous to leave the building because at the time it seemed like planes were literally falling out of the sky every 20 minutes, waiting to hear from my friends in the towers (luckily they got out).

A few things i'll never forget:

1. the smell as you got closer to ground zero
2. the eerie quietness of the streets. There were a ton of people walking around, but everyone looked like they had just been punched in the stomach
3. people putting up signs of their loved ones. that's the only thing that really makes me choke up--remembering the desperation in their faces as they pleaded with people to help find their friends and family


I've lived in a lot of places, but NYC will always be my favorite. We all saw the worst that humanity has to offer that day, but for once, NY and the rest of the US felt completely united. It's just too bad the feeling didn't last

 

Gomer,
There are no limited connections, only connections. What all of us felt and saw that day shouldn't come with a grading curve. We should share the experiences, make sure the next generation understands (and with all the documentaries out there, that won't be a worry). In NY, at least amongst my FF and cop friends, I wish they would talk about it more, because it's going to be deadly if they don't.
In my next life, I'll be a psychiatrist, not a journalist.
And maybe live again in flyover country.

 

Thanks for saying that because it really annoys me when people tell me I can't "remember" 9-11 or I can't "feel" 9-11 because I lived 3,000 miles away at the time. You are right in your statement of: "There are no limited connections, only connections."

 

This is sort of along those lines, and what I always think of when I think (in an admittedly myopic moment) that no one can understand what it was like to live in the tri-state area on 9/11: A NY athlete who grew up on the west coast put it best when he said "I can't go home and tell people take that building and that building and put them together and it's still not nearly as tall as one of the Towers."

I know we were all one that day, and no one's feelings about the day should be qualified. And I am a lucky one: No one I knew died that day, though everyone who escaped the Towers and the Pentagon is a far different person today than he was in August 2001.

But my friend's words on Sept. 21, 2001 really stuck with me, then and now. How could she not sit up at night, staring at the ceiling and wondering if she'd wake up the next day to a phone call in which the person on the other line says "Are you watching TV?"

How could every she not dread every Tuesday for months to come? How could she see a plane flying over a highway and not have all sorts of worst-case scenarios running thru her head?

How could she not look at a blue sky and think this is what it looked like on the worst day of our lives?

 

I remember 9/11 as vividly as if it was yesterday. I don't need to relive it today, I don't want to watch any movies, and I don't care to check out the anniversary coverage. I see it in my mind's eye as clearly as I saw it on Sept. 12, 2001. I can play that video in my head anytime.

I was riding a campus bus on my way to my 9 a.m. class at the University of Georgia. We heard on the radio that a plane had struck the WTC. I took a chance, took a detour and went to the computer lab in the library. My friend IM'ed me and said that it wasn't an accident. So I ran to the conference room, which was already full, and where a projector screen was showing CNN.

There, I saw the second plane hit the Twin Towers, live, before my very eyes, along with a standing-room-only crowd of about 40.

Then, the towers went down, live, before my very eyes.

I sent a quick text to my closest friend, then-active in the Marine Corps, told her to be safe and I loved her. Called her a few minutes later. Called seven more times that day, trying to get word that she was OK. Called my mom, my dad, my sister, my brother and my grandparents. Called every friend I had a phone number for during that day. Didn't get in touch with half of them. But left them all messages, regardless. Two of them were in the Tri-State area, the rest were not.

I have never once felt that, because I was 800 miles away, I was somehow less connected to it. I did not lose anyone close to me that day. But my life changed on that day.

Yes, that was my generation's Pearl Harbor. It always will be.

I only wish that we Americans, as people of the world, had taken advantage of the opportunity afforded us on that terrible day. We had a chance to change the world: everyone was listening to us.

Instead, we chose to send the same old message. Contrary to what will be said today, the world did not change on that day. Our lives certainly changed. But we didn't change the world. We had that chance, however idealistic it was. We did have a chance.

I am saddened by what has happened after 9/11 just as much as I am saddened at what happened on 9/11. We will never get an opportunity like that again -- nor should we ever want any.

 

After sending my then-grade schoolers off to school, I watched a mindless television show, then around 8 a.m., switched to GMA -- just in time to see the second plane hit.

I called my editor and told her I knew what our front page story for this week would be (we were a weekly), and to turn on the television.

I had some work-related stuff to do at home, and I remember leaning back in my chair to look at the television in the next room -- just in time to see the second tower collapse.

I called my mom. I wasn't crying, but I was shaking so bad I could barely grasp the phone. And I wanted my mom just like I was a little kid.

As I finally left for town, I remember driving on auto-pilot. How could such an incredibly gorgeous September morning harbor such horrific events?

As I went around town gathering interviews for the "local reaction" story, the scenario was the same. Shock, disbelief, horror. Rumors of gas prices shooting up were causing gas lines -- gas lines! -- in small town America. A World War II vet comparing the day to Pearl Harbor, then his wife adding it was worse. He elaborated. "We knew Hawaii was part of the States, but we really didn't know where it was. Everyone knows where New York is." And the numbness continued.

My husband, was leaving for a road trip to the Twin Cities, and (yes, this may out me to some) I was angry that they were still going. He works for the federal government and all I could think was that he was going to be in federal buildings and driving around in federal vehicles in a major metro area and I didn't want him to. Who knows what could happen next? He left, and I was angry. Not at him, but at a world turned upside down in the matter of minutes.

By phone, I interviewed a coworker's relative who lives in the NY area. He described not being able to get to Manhattan for work and watching the scenario unfold from afar. "It looked like two cigarettes held straight up," he said. When the towers collapsed, he said people were dropping to their knees in prayer and anguish.

I talked to a close friend that night, who was supposed to leave for NY later that week to visit her brother. She told me -- second hand -- how her brother made it out of the building next door to the WTC and made his way home.

I received an email later that night that a friend in "our group" hadn't heard from her husband, who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald. Was it just three weeks prior we had whooped it up in New Orleans? It wasn't until several months later she received confirmation that her husband had indeed perished that day.

Eleven days later, we were at the Metrodome for a Twins vs. Cleveland game. A thunderstorm was raging outside, and twice there were two incredibly loud thunderclaps. Both times, the Dome -- which was packed -- went silent, then a twittering of nervous laughter as all in the stands realized it was just thunder, nothing more.

I asked my now-high schoolers what they remember of that day five years ago, and my daughter told me she remembers it all like it was yesterday. My son didn't say much.

I still get sick to my stomach over that day. I had to turn the station this morning when a video was replayed showing the first plane hit the WTC.

I have yet to come to terms with my feelings about that day. I do not want to watch the movies -- it's way too soon. I don't want to watch coverage today, and thankfully I have to be out and about today. But part of me wants to. I don't ever, ever want to forget the horrors visited upon our country on what was supposed to be a beautiful September morning.

I really don't think I ever can.

 

Amazing, watching the NBC replay, how much misinformation was out there.

For my part, I thought I was watching NBC when the second plane hit.

But, I couldn't have been... NBC missed the second one hitting live.

Must have been the trauma affecting me.

I though I had a pretty good recall of this stuff. I'm a little sad at how inadequate a witness of live events I suppose I would be.