by Blueblades 38 Replies latest jw friends
Plane Crashing into WTC had to be right at the top of my list. I was in the hosp visiting my very ill mother when I saw the second one hit and later the towers crash to the earth.
Mom never went back to hospital - but three years later I and my sister were together at Mom's home and found Mom dead on the floor.
Those two events are beyond ever fogetting. And irrevocably tied together in my mind.
Jeff
April 19, 1995... The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. After I finished my chores that morning, I called my mother just to check in, and she asked if I'd heard about it - she didn't realize that was the building my wife's sister worked in, and where her 18 month old son was in day care. I can say without a doubt that was the most shocking news ever for me. ;I went directly to my in-laws house, where it was an eternity 'til about 2 pm when we found out for sure my sister-in-law was ok. It was an even longer eternity (4 days) 'til we found out for sure that my nephew had been killed.
I was 20 miles away at my house, getting ready to meet a man about buying a truck. I was in the kitchen on the phone, when the windows shook. I didn't know what really happened til after I went and met my appointment. And then the horrible thought hits me: I would have been three blocks from the bomb site if I hadn't been buying the truck! Not only that, but one of my co-workers had gone in my place to cover my assignment downtown. I found out within a couple of hours that he was not injured, but had been in the thick of the aftermath. I told him "I'm glad you're alright, because you're wife would have killed me if you got hurt!" (And that is no exaggeration!)
When I got home that afternoon, and saw my little baby boy, I cried so hard for those injured and dead children from the day care that was in the building.
9/11 brought back a lot of those feelings.
I'm sure Cowboy can attest to the cheapening of the impact of this event when all the local TV stations in town kept trying to make this disaster "their own", trying to prove how much more caring they were about the victims and families. Co-opting misery for ratings is ugly to watch. Especially KFOR, who made certain by their coverage, interference with police procedure, and out-right speculative "journalism" pretty much guaranteed that the trial of Tim McVeigh was moved out of state.
Anyway, that day makes the top five.
Number two shock was when my son was in a horrible auto accident due to my negligence.
Number one shock was when I discovered that he had survived it....
Katrina and the plight of New Orleans was awful but the media had built us up to expect trouble so not such a shock
Your not being from the USA would explain this. It might be easier if you imagined London wiped out by a hurricane. And even then it might not affect you if you never really spent any time there. Are there any big cities in England that are beloved as NOLA is beloved? I guess Paris, France might be an equivilent.
911 tops the list, I can remember every detail of the morning. JFK is a close second. I was in 7th grade and the world wasn't supposed to be like that. School almost shut down, some of my teachers couldn't even talk.
A good one: on the morning of Oct 8, 1990 my mom called to tell me that my Dad had won the Nobel Prize in Medicine. He'd done the first human bone marrow transplant and ran the program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center.
Sept ' 64.
My parents had taken my newly married bro and his wife to check out their just bought house.
Telephone rings. My elder sister answered and I knew something was wrong by her face.
There had been a car accident and someone was hurt. My mother.
I knew straight away she was dead.
I was 8 yrs old
9/11 and also the WTS part of the UN
reading CoC and confiming....
#1 shock in life was going to high school one day and watching my best friend be shot in the head by her boyfriend on our way into Algebra class.
#2 OKC bombing - a member of our family was going to the federal building that morning and we were frantic.
#3 911 - I was watching on TV with our first son.
#4 One month later, my cousin was killed we drove through NYC on our way to NC and I could still see the smoke in the air from the WTC. Wish you were here by Incubus came on the radio....I couldn't stop crying.
WG
I wasn't around when JFK was assassinated. But the following events managed to shock the hell out of me:
