Zander,
Today represents one of those days in history in which everyone old enough remembers where they were on 9-11-01.
I was getting off Hwy 40 onto Ballas....going to work. I was on the exit ramp, listening to Y98, the Phillips & Co Morning Show. One of the morning show crew started talking about the first tower being hit. At that time, all kinds of erroneous information was going around. Like it was a small commuter plane. They wondered if the pilot had passed out or just lost control of the plane. At that point, no one was thinking America was being attacked. Or how much worse it was going to get.
I kept driving to work. By the time I got to work and walked into the office, the 2nd tower was hit. We all knew then! Not an accident!
The company I work for had offices in those towers. People at our headquarters were trying to reach those employees.....hoping they weren't in the office yet. (Everyone from our company was safe, they were out doing installs or had been working remotely at the time.)
It was hard to get information. We were all trying frantically to get info off the internet as to what was going on. But so was everyone else in the world. The internet was slow and was timing out because there were too many hits.....CNN, MSNBC, local news channels...etc.
One guy in the office had a radio, so there were about 15 of us huddled around his desk...just listening for any news.
We heard they were getting all the planes out of the air. Then a plane hit the Pentagon. Then another plane crashed into a field.
It was too much. No one was getting any work done. We all stood there wondering what was going to happen next. Hardly believing anything that had happened was real. Worrying about our families. We had no way of knowing that something wasn't going to happen in our city.
We were all told to go home and be with our families.
I lived in an apartment by myself at the time......well, with 2 cats and a dog. I called and confirmed that Mom and Dad were still at work and they weren't getting off early. Kim and her family were fine for now. So, I went home.
I walked into the apartment about 4 hours after I'd left that morning for work. I heard water running. One of the cats had turned on the water in the bathtub!!! Seriously! They were still kittens then and because they were rescue cats from Grandma's farm.....they were feral. (They came around.....see how lazy they are now?)
I ordered a pizza (I remember there was about a 2 hour wait for the pizza because everyone else was hunkering down at home too) and literally sat in front of the tv watching cable news for the rest of the day. I could not tear myself away. This is what I did for the next few weeks...I was watching the news. Until I started getting so depressed I had to make myself stop! Unbelievable - all of the stories!
Yes, I remember.......
12 comments:
I was at home...I work at home in our home office and I never have the TV on but for some reason I did that day.I saw the second plane hit and Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer said at the same time ...This isn't an accident. I sat all day glued to the TV, as you did for the next couple of weeks until I couldn't bear to watch anymore! Both my nephews delayed college to join the Marines and Army to fight the enemy...both are now sad young men, who were sent to Iraq. It has been sad for all of our family as others in this country.
I will NEVER forget that day--I started to write about it to post today, but I couldn't. my sister was on a plane out of NYC that morning (she's fine!) and I couldn't reach her for hours--it was just terrifying.
{hugs}
Amazing how something like 9/11 can destroy your faith in humanity. And how something like a Zander can bring it back.
Ok, now I can leave a real comment.. it's so scarry how we both worked at the same place then but have such different stories.. Go read mine, we didn't get to leave.. what a day.. what a memory.
It still seems so hard to believe, even today.
I remember where I was and what I was doing and how scared I was for so long...
Thanks for sharing your memories...
I was at home, just getting myself and daughter (who was about 7 months old at the time) ready to go out for some errands. The phone rang... it was hubby asking if I had heard what happened and to turn on the TV... I hadn't yet heard anything. So watching the news I was asking him what happened and if this was an accident... then I watched the 2nd plane hit and knew. Horrifying.
I was at home, I stayed home, I kept my kids home from school and begged my husband to come home..he didn't! I didn't know what to do...for days. My husbands employers company had people in the towers at the time. I didn't personally know them but it was a very sad day. It definetly changed my faith in humanity.
I had just started college, so I had only been living in OK for a couple of weeks. I had a class that morning, and someone mentioned at the end of the class, "Hey, did you hear about something happening at the WTC?" Nobody knew anything, really, because we had been sitting in the class while it was happening. I went straight to the Union, and they had already set up special TVs around the food court so that people could watch the coverage. I was shocked, and simply went to my favorite quiet place on campus (I wish I could have packed it up and brought it with me!) and read my Bible and prayed. I later called my parents to talk to them, since the whole living apart thing was so new to us. It was definitely a defining moment of my college career, as it was right at the beginning like that.
We had the exact same day, you and I. I heard it on the radio, we were getting information on the internet and then the radio. We were sent home. It was an unbelievable day.
Your story is so totally different from Tricia...guess you had the better management team huh?!
Such a scary time...
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