So Where Were You?
Fred Cole ·
September 11, 2012 at 3:34pm
Today is the 11th anniversary of 9/11.
Where were you that day? When and how did you find out? What are your recollections?
I don't know if there was a thread last year, or any other year, asking this. There probably was, but we get new members all the time, and even if you shared last year, it can not hurt to share again this year.
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Apr '11
Re: So Where Were You?
On that fateful day I was home in Miami wondering what I was going to do with the rest of my life, having just quit a job I hated flying jumbo jets. I switched on the television to check the opening numbers from Wall Street and saw the second airplane hit the WTC. I made a few phone calls and shortly thereafter I was in Afghanistan.
Jul '11
Re: So Where Were You?
I had just moved to Columbia, Missouri, to start my PhD work at Mizzou. I spent the night of September 10th assembling a computer desk, and watching the Denver Broncos beat the New York Giants on Monday night football. Not a care in the world.
That next morning, on that same computer desk, I popped up the Drudge Report, which was my home page. HEADLINE: "WTC under attack; thousands feared dead". I stared at it for about a minute, trying to figure out if I was being played, like Drudge sometimes does. Only when I turned on the TV, did I figure out what was going on.
I couldn't get a hold of anybody I was close to, so I went to the university, where I was a GA for a media course of about 500 students. Surprisingly, a lot of them showed up. A woman said during the class something to the effect, "Oh, we're not at war." Another student got up and started yelling at her - "There might be tens of thousands dead today in New York, and YOU THINK WE'RE NOT AT WAR????" A surreal day all around.
Jul '11
Re: So Where Were You?
I will say that today is the first 9/11 I've been able to really set those events aside. I wouldn't have even thought of it unless this thread had popped up. That fraker Bin Laden now swims with the fishes. Justice has finally been done.
Apr '12
Re: So Where Were You?
One thing I'm seeing here is that I was not alone in instantly realizing what was going on. So many people were ignorant of what had been going on in the world, of Osama bin Laden, of the previous WTC attack, and of other related information. They were surprised and asking me why I wasn't upset. "I've been expecting it. Glad it wasn't much worse." Pakistan had had the bomb for three years. North Korea, Iraq, and Iran were all players already having or supposedly working on nuclear weapons. Compared to the Sum of All Fears, a Debt of Honor scenario was not so bad.
Mar '11
Re: So Where Were You?
At the Willard Hotel in DC. My wife's story is much more dramatic. She was on a Capitol Dome tour with her boss and his two cousins. As they stepped out on the portico right underneath the Statue of Freedom, they saw the flash from the Pentagon. Odd, they thought, but they figured it was some sort of gas explosion. They went one lap around the short balcony and were told by the Capitol staff to get the heck out of there, and fast. My wife ran as fast as she could down the winding staircase and when she got to the rotunda was greeted by eery silence and many high heel shoes that women had tossed in an effort to get away faster.
When I realized what was happening, I ran outside to see if the dome was still standing. God bless the men and women of Flight 93. It was our 2nd anniversary. I would have been crushed to lose her.
Edited on September 11, 2012 at 5:42pmApr '11
Re: So Where Were You?
I'd been up all night on a conference call in my office building in suburban KC trying fruitlessly to deploy a new NPA-NXX (phone number range) for SprintPCS at the time. It had been a very long night. Suddenly, a voice on the line broke into the call. He wasn't an invitee. It was Security commandeering all the company conference bridges. He said something about an emergency in NYC; a plane had hit a building. I don't even remember whether he mentioned the WTC. We were ordered off. So I headed home.
Here in KC, as it was just yesterday, there was barely a cloud in the sky. Absolutely beautiful azure. It was one of those stunningly nice days that seem so rare after the midwestern heat and humidity finally let up. I noticed a contrail floating serenely above the office parking lot. It was in the shape of a tight U-turn. I drove home and noticed the same U-shaped contrail as it floated right over my house a few miles to the west as I put out my flag. I walked back in to the TV and watched as the world changed forever.
Edited on September 11, 2012 at 5:52pmRe: So Where Were You?
This post commemorating last year's anniversary is worth reading again.
I am in London for this 9-11 and wonder if observances back home are continuing in the same "tragic" mode I wrote about last year.
A murderous act of war should never be euphemized as a morally neutral calamity.
Edited on September 11, 2012 at 5:48pmMar '12
Re: So Where Were You?
Cornelius Julius Sebastian
Fred Cole
I remember that too. The politically savvy Palestinians, still led by Arafat, aware of the optics, clamped down on it quickly. But its not a thing to be forgotten. · 22 minutes ago
Not forgotten. · 59 minutes ago
I remember seeing the pictures of the palestinians celebrating in the streets live in CNN International. We had a similar phenomena in Spain as well. Some friends told me of people cheering at bars in Gijon (where I lived at the time), but it was particularly notorious in the Basque Country, where pro-ETA youths were celebrating on the streets. I remember also that the head of the biggest mosque in Madrid told El Pais (the spanish NYT-clone) that it was the happiest day of his life.
I have not forgotten either.
Aug '12
Re: So Where Were You?
I was teaching my 8AM class in the Modern Languages Building at my alma mater (Wabash College). When I went back to my office after class, news of the attack on the WTC was leading yahoo news Germany's coverage. I burst into tears and fell to my knees in prayer for the victims almost simultaneously. The rest of the day I stayed glued to the news when I wasn't directly in front of a class. Driving home I noticed that there were no contrails in the sky. It was eerie.
Jan '11
Re: So Where Were You?
I was home about to wake up my daughter for school (1st grade) when my sister called me & told me to turn on my TV. My husband was getting ready for a morning run. He had a few hours before he had to be at the airport for his weekly trip to Seattle. The towers fell while I drove my daughter to school. I saw a friend at church who was in tears. She had many friends who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald and died that morning. It was an awful day.
My husband didn't fly that day, but he did the following week & for many weeks thereafter. A colleague of his was on the plane that was flown into the 2nd tower. I'm still uneasy when he goes on business trips.
Today I pray for the victims, their families and loved ones, and for our troops.
Nov '10
Re: So Where Were You?
I was at my house getting ready to leave for the office when my wife called and said to turn on a television set because a plane had crashed into the Trade Center. I did so in time to see the second plane turn and fly straight into the side of the undamaged tower. It plainly was a deliberate act. Afterwards came the news of the crash into the Pentagon and later that of the disappearance of the fourth plane and its crashing in Pennsylvania.
As the day drew on, my thoughts ran mostly to where they would strike next. The fact that nothing beyond the four airplanes developed during the following days surprised and heartened me. I thought then and think now that if the weekend had seen other successful suicide attacks in widely dispersed locations (crowded malls and filled football stadiums seemed the most likely sites) the country might have been severely thrown off stride.
Thank God the enemy did not have the resources or the insight to plan and execute so grand a scheme. Otherwise, the human cost and the damage to the nation's self-confidence could have been far greater.
Aug '12
Re: So Where Were You?
My neighbors had taken a trip to Alaska and asked me to let the dogs out in the morning and check their food and water. One dog was ill, and another friend was going to take him to the vet that morning. When I went into the house, I found the dog dead. I called the friend about it, but she was curiously less concerned about that than about the air disaster in New York she’d been watching on tv.
When I got to work and learned that the second plane had hit, my stunned co-worker gaped at the Internet reports in disbelief. I remember being surprised that he was surprised: hadn’t the jihadists been telling us for years that they thirsted to destroy us? Weren’t we the great satan? Did we think they were bluffing?
My co-worker had noticed on his morning walk, before the news reports, an odd disturbance among animals–many more wandering dogs and jittery cats than normal. The animal kingdom seemed to be affected, as with an incipient earthquake.
My neighbors had extra days in Alaska and a circuitous journey home by land.
May '11
Re: So Where Were You?
Listening to the Howard Stern show on my walkman in the office in Boston.
May '10
Re: So Where Were You?
In Seattle and working in my home office on the computer. My best friend called and said turn on TV, I did and he stayed on the phone. Just as I turned the TV on the second tower collapsed, I'll never forget my friend Jim's words: "it's gone, the World Trade Center is gone." This morning Jim and I discussed those words he uttered that day.
An interesting side note is that several of my daughter's friends, a very liberal crowd, contacted me to see what I thought they should do as there was a great deal of Air Force activity in the area because of the Boeing factories, and a large, close air base. These mid-twenties kids seemed to automatically gravitate to a conservative for answers on whether I thought there was a danger in the local area.
Jun '12
Re: So Where Were You?
As I walked to the subway that morning, I thought "what a incredibly nice day. Just perfect." Six stops later, getting coffee at my cart, a young woman about my age was just sort of standing there, wringing her hands, clearly upset. She wasn't in line. She said "a plane just hit the WTC." My initial thought was: some idiot in a Cessna tried to impress his girlfriend just plastered himself. I hope he only killed himself." When I got to the office, my brother was calling from uptown, telling me to turn on the TV. Thats when I knew it was different.
Of all the horrible images, here's what really sticks in my memory: we left work about 11am. Subways were shut down. We joined a million people walking home, about 5 miles for me. No one really talked. No cabs honked. The crowded, maddening, vibrant city was on mute.
May '10
Re: So Where Were You?
Arsenal: At the Willard Hotel in DC. My wife's story is much more dramatic. She was on a Capitol Dome tour with her boss and his two cousins. As they stepped out on the portico right underneath the Statue of Freedom, they saw the flash from the Pentagon. Odd, they thought, but they figured it was some sort of gas explosion. They went one lap around the short balcony and were told by the Capitol staff to get the heck out of there, and fast. My wife ran as fast as she could down the winding staircase and when she got to the rotunda was greeted by eery silence and many high heel shoes that women had tossed in an effort to get away faster.
When I realized what was happening, I ran outside to see if the dome was still standing. God bless the men and women of Flight 93. It was our 2nd anniversary. I would have been crushed to lose her. · 1 hour ago
Edited 1 hour ago
On the one year anniversary of 9/11 I spent the morning on The National Mall with my eyes on the Capitol Dome. God bless Flight 93 indeed.
Apr '12
Re: So Where Were You?
And when 3/11 came, they were the first ones blamed. Of course, that led to the downfall of the Spanish government who blamed the ETA, which has not been good for Spain.
Aug '11
Re: So Where Were You?
I was visiting family in the US. I was having coffee, watching some morning news program, and suddenly Diane Sawyer had breaking news about a plane striking the World Trade Center. I was transfixed, and as the news progressed, I feared it was NOT an accident. I watched as the second plane hit the second tower, and at that point I realised we were at war, and that the enemy had to be Arab terrorists.
Like just about everyone else in the US, I watched TV most of the day. I feared the airports would close and that communications would jam. I had to make certain I got information through to France where my husband was. We were planning to leave from there to return to Kuwait for another year (oil business), and our travel dates couldn't change, as flights were fully booked.
As it turned out, I left the US on schedule. The airport was deserted. I was almost the only passenger, and I was interviewed for TV! Hardly anyone had the courage to fly! It was very, very bad for the airline industry. I didn't go on to Kuwait from France. War.
I respected poor Bush.
Jul '10
Re: So Where Were You?
I was a speechwriter for Mayor Giuliani and I was tying my tie when I heard the first report on WABC radio. They thought it was a small plane. I went to my window and stretched my neck upward to see a perfectly blue sky.
I turned the television on and watched for the next 15 minutes or so. Then I witnessed, in real time, Flight 175 being flown into the South Tower.
I finished tying my tie. Ran outside and hailed a cab, which only got me about 10 blocks from City Hall. All the other traffic was headed in the other direction by that time. I ran the rest of the way to work that morning.
The last time I ever saw the North Tower I stopped for a moment in the intersection of Centre and Chambers. A great smoking gash cut through the northern facade. I thought to myself, "We can fix that."
Little did I know, by that time in the morning people were already jumping from the towers. Burning jet fuel was melting both structures and the fate of the buildings - and the 2,606 people in and around them - was already determined. Never forget.
Aug '11
Re: So Where Were You?
When I arrived in Bordeaux, I was thrilled to see a gigantic American flag draping the entire heighth of an airport building. There really was total solidarity. Unlike the Dems, I don't think Bush blew it with world opinion. We would share info in the western world to defeat an enemy that knew no bounds.