I was driving to my temp job, running late as I often do, when I heard the news.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was in my car trying to beat traffic on my way to the Pitch office. Pitch is an alternative newspaper, and I was temping in their accounting office. My duties including fun projects like filing and answering the phone, but it was a week of guaranteed pay, something my recent-graduate bank account needed desperately.
The radio station I was listening to must have had a TV nearby, because they began talking about the first tower being hit immediately. At first, I wasn’t concerned or even interested. It seems crazy to think about that now, but the truth is, I didn’t realize it was such a big deal. Quickly, I realized this was not a “normal” accident and that something bad was happening.
Now my heart was pounding, and not just because I was late for work.
I told myself to calm down. After all, I was going to the best possible place – a newspaper office. Surely, if anyone would know what was happening, they would.
But when I got to the office – yes, a few minutes late – nobody had heard. And when I tried to tell the people in the accounting office, they didn’t understand the seriousness of the situation. I even suggested that we turn on a radio, but they didn’t.
I realized then how silly I’d been, thinking of this as a regular newspaper office. I wasn’t at a major daily; I was in the accounting office of an opinion paper.
They finally realized what was going on and did turn on the radio. As we heard about the second tower and the Pentagon, I sat on the floor of the office and filed, numb and scared. A few people started crying and called relatives or friends who lived in New York and DC. One girl found out that her cousin had missed the train and therefore, was late to work. He was supposed to be in one of the Towers, but he wasn’t.
As I covered the receptionist desk over lunch, I sat glued to the radio. I looked online for news, but back then, the information highway was just a four-lane, you know? I listened to the radio news announcers tell us what the President was doing, and I wondered why they would share that information with the whole world.
And I sat there, wondering if I should ask my temporary co-workers if they’d like to pray. Sure, I didn’t know them and they worked for a newspaper that has very different values than I do. But maybe today would be what it took for them to turn to God. And maybe I could be the one to show them the way!
Um, yeah. I was too scared to suggest anything like that. After all, they had already rejected my original idea to turn on the radio. How could I even think about asking them to pray?
So I didn’t. I prayed, of course. But I didn’t take that opportunity to talk about serious things with these people I would know for just five days.
That’s where I was when the world stopped turning. Where were you?
i was at my apartment at school (you show-off, getting done in 4 years instead of 5;), and i was like you in that i didn't realize it was that big of a deal at first & felt bad afterward (still do), but my excuse was that i was eating breakfast and groggy — i am so not a morning person. But yeah, after the first one hit, & the news people came on & were all alarmed & then the other one hit During the story, it all started to come into better focus and I began to realize it WAS really serious (same with Katrina — I thought people were making too big of a deal of it at first; it was just another hurricane!). Anyway, the rest of the day all my professors talked about it, of course, and some people hadn't heard it until they got to class & heard. To be honest, I still don't think I really realize how big of a deal it was and all the repercussions. It's sad that these things really seem to have to affect ME for me to take them seriously enough!
i’m sorry that was so long
Not too long – I wanted to hear everyone else’s story! I’m the same way about hurricanes – I think because I haven’t lived on a coast, I don’t get it.
And…ummm…you took 5 years to get a master’s degree. I took 4 years to get a bachelor’s degree. See the difference? :)
I was in a Post Office dropping off stuff for the ministry I worked for and they had a small TV on. The first tower had just been hit. I got in the car to go to work and turned the radio in my car to the Today Show where Katie Couric was speculating “Air Traffic Control problems.” The pit in my stomach told me it wasn’t air traffic control problems. At the office (there were only two of us there) we found a fuzzy TV and turned it to ABC, where we watched everything unfold. The director of the ministry was out of town, prepping for a conference that we were all supposed to head to in two days. I was trying to tell her that we weren’t going to be able to fly – or at least that I was not going to be able to fly – and she yelled at me for my fear, not understanding at all what was going on. We spent the day changing travel plans for about 10 of us who were leaving on Thursday, and I left early to get as close to my family as possible. I cried the whole way home. No one was speeding.
Mine's long too! I was on my honeymoon. We were in Maine at a B&B and had no clue what had happened until we got downtown and thought it just was odd every radio station had news reports and no music. (I should note that our families back in Nebraska were complete wrecks since we were relatively–regionally–close to where it happened.) Once we started paying attention and started to understand, we felt really guilty about having fun when so many people were hurting. We have a picture of us going whale watching on a catamaran and there's the date in the corner–9/11/01. It's still eery. I'll never forget driving by the Portland hotel that was all over the news in the following days because the terrorists had stayed there just prior to carrying out their plan. And I'll never forget seeing the first military aircraft in the sky as we drove halfway across the country to get home.
Thanks for trying, Photo, but it took me 8 yrs to get a master’s — yes, 8 — 5 to get my bachelor’s (2 bachelor’s though;), then 3 to get my master’s! (including a year of makeup courses for going to grad school for a different major) …sorry, i know that’s not the point of the post, but i just didn’t want people to think it took me 3 years less than it did! ;)
and that Is creepy, amber… i think you deserve another honeymoon in better circumstances ;)
i was driving the kids to school. i heard something on the radio about a plane crash, but didn’t bother with finding out where. i just turned off the radio so the kids wouldn’t hear bad news.
after i dropped them off, i turned the radio on again. i think that was about when the second tower was hit – at first i thought they were still talking about the first one.
i got home and told enrique to turn on the tv. he already had it on. we sat there in silence all morning, just watching. scout came home from kdg at lunchtime and from then on, enrique and i took turns keeping the kids occupied and watching tv.
i think it finally hit me that evening, and i just started to cry.
i still find myself mesmorized (and teary) by the stories when i see them on tv. all i can think is “how could this happen?”
my girls were in kdg and 2nd grade, and i am so thankful for their teachers. they kept working, business as usual, making our children feel safe, while the rest of us watched the news in horror.
erma is now finding it all fascinating and horrifying – just like we did seven years ago. at that time, she just wanted to know we were safe, and then she was fine.
scout didn’t realize until a year or so ago that it was an act of terrorism. she thought it was just a plane crash. it had never occured to us to tell her.
at the time, though, she was very concerned about the people affected. that whole next month, she worried and prayed. she thought firefighters were still looking for people. when we realized what she was thinking, we tried to tell her lightly that they were all done looking – we couldn’t tell her about the many who were lost.
the flags at half-staff were hard for her to see. she called them “sad flags” and only really felt better once they went back up.
another thing she did, which helped her, was to write a letter to president bush. she told him she was praying for him and that she thanked Jesus for the firefighters.
imagine her surprise when he wrote back :)
I had a job interview that day, so there was still speculation when I headed out. The interviewer and I talked about it but totally didn’t grasp that the US would fundamentally change that day. It was right during that time that Josh and I had broken up and I was starting to get sick, and so I spent the rest of the week in bed -in a dazed sadness with the rest of the world.
I was in my living room watching the news with my dad. I saw both plane crashes hit relatively “live”. The first one I didn’t think of as a big deal either. I remember commenting to my dad about how that was a pretty big mistake to accidentally hit a building so far from the airport. When the 2nd one hit, I immediately knew it was a terrorist…just wasn’t sure what they were doing. I remember having to go to the grocery store later that day and it being so quiet all over…and seeing people crying in the store. It was so unreal.
i hope you don’t mind that i rambled on so much – i thought you might to hear some children’s perspectives, too.
i don’t know about anyone else, but i didn’t mind — i appreciated them! :) And that’s really cool about Scout’s letter!
I loved hearing everyone’s story! And hobsis, I never think you ramble too much (I mean, that would really be the pot calling the kettle black, wouldn’t it?!). And it is interesting to see it from a child’s perspective. Thank you for sharing! (to everyone!)
i went to my 9:30 class (i may have been late), and the girl next to me whispered ‘did you hear?’ i thought ‘ok, a plane crash, that’s sad. 200 dead.’
my roommate and i didn’t have a tv, so we really didn’t catch much of the news at all. it wasnt’ until the next day when i heard someone say ‘more deaths than pearl harbor,’ that it hit me that this was Huge.
It’s interesting to me how many of us didn’t realize how huge this was at first. Do you think that’s just the nature of disasters? Or is it also due to us being desensitized, thanks to 24/7 media coverage of everything from a fender bender on the highway to a devastating tsunami? Or maybe both, I guess.
i don’t think it’s that we’re desensitized (although we can be). i think with 9/11, it was that nobody would have ever imagined that something like that would ever happen. a plane crash is tragic. the tsunami in thailand a few years ago was unbelievably devastating. but 9/11 was an attack, an act of war. and none of us were expecting it.
I'll never forget.
http://darkchocolateisbest.blogspot.com/2009/09/september-11-2001.html
Thank you for sharing your 9-11. I posted mine as well.
http://www.studiojru.com
I was working in downdown Kansas City and I lived about 6 blocks from work. One of my most vivid memories of that day was on my walk home. It was completely silent. No cars. No airplanes. No honking horns…nothing. Silence. I still get goosebumps just thinking about it. It was haunting.