by mama1119 65 Replies latest jw friends
I was taking a break from a busy day at work to have lunch with my mum (five hours time difference, Scotland to NY), and the newsflash came on in the background. Then I watched the second plane hit live on TV. At that point we were transfixed to the TV and saw the towers fall. I don't recall going back to work that day.
I was shellshocked for days, but somehow managed to find my way to registering at this place the very next day!
I was at work (government office) when one of my coworkers told me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I thought she meant a small single engined plane had hit it and I thought maybe it was due to fog, so I didn't think too much of it. 15 minutes later she told me another plane had hit the other tower, so we grabbed the keys to the Council Room, (which is a very large round room that looks like a mini United Nations conference room). There are three movie-sized screens up there, so we put the TVs on and watched the proceedings. Everyone started filing in to watch.
I was completely stunned as my generation had never really experienced anything horrifying like this. When the first tower fell, I felt like I was watching a scene from Independence Day and couldn't believe what I was seeing. Many of us started crying as we realized that thousands of people were dead when the towers fell......My boss' cousin-in-law was in Tower 2 when it fell.
I was right here on JWD in chat when they told me to turn on the TV set. I couldnt stop shaking for hours and thought there might even be terrorists in planes over Canberra because Canberra is the capitol of Australia.
I was coming home from dropping my daughter off at school, listening to the radio. A listener called in and said to the DJ's, they might want to check this out, but she heard a plane or something hit the Twin Towers........you could tell she was not kidding around.
I got home........I did not have TV at the time......I did go to a chatroom at about.com. Usually the room was full but this morning it was me and another person. He was telling me what was going on and we were in the chatroom talking about it.
My sister came online and we chatted. She lives in Jacksonville Florida and expressed her concern of the president flying over going back to Washington DC, in case his plane was a target.
I was eager to get to work as there is TV there. I came rushing through the door asking what the TV was saying and going to the back office to see it. The owner of the store said.......Oh, we turned it off. I was shocked!!! I will never forget the shock I felt at how unaffected she was about this.
The rest of the day we got only two customers. I wanted to go home and be there for my daughter when she got off the bus. Hold her and comfort her and myself. I could not get off work early.
I think two days after 9/11, I was so upset at my bosses ho hum attitude......at noon I said I have to go and left the rest of the day. She came to me the next day and said she heard I was upset that she did not let us go home early on monday.....she said What could you do? I said I could have been there for my family. By October I had quit that job. There was no business whatsoever.......No one was buying anything. I worked furniture retail.
I often wonder if my old boss looks back on that day......and the weeks afterwards at her blaise reaction to the biggest event that changed our lives and regrets not taking it seriously.
It was so disturbing to me, so deeply sad, I never thought about religion, and I was a very active witness at the time. It was bad and sad for everyone, no matter what religion, race, or background you were from.
I was at work and the entire office staff were glued around a 9" television watching as it happened. They closed the office, sent us home to go pick up our kids at school and fill up our gas tanks.
I'll never forget pumping gas and total strangers were all asking each other if everyone was OK and was there anything anyone needed help with. I have never seen a community pull together so fast and truely be concerned about the well fare of unknown neighbors.
r.
One more thing, my husband was in Germany on business due home the next day. He didn't get to come back for 2 weeks.
It was very frightening to have him overseas and me alone with 2 boys.
r.
I had crawled back into bed after getting my older kids off to school. My little boy was sleeping and I sleep when he does) My mom called me. Right before the second tower fell. All I could do was watch the news all day and hold on to my baby boy(he was really a toddler and didn't appreciate my attention much at the time!) and cry. My JW mom was convinced of course that it was the beginning of the end(Gosh, they have a LOT of those, eh?)
I lived and worked in NYC. I have people I care about that live there. I still cry every time I see an old movie with the towers or a new scene without them. Both tear me up-they were my symbol of NYC. One of the first things I did on my first trip into the city was to go down there by the Towers and see it all-Battery Park. Standing at the base of the towers, eating in a little Greek restraunt. I adore NYC and am looking forward to going back.
NYC was everything I had ever dreamed it was and nothing like it-all at the same time. It is so much MORE than a girl from the suburbs in Washington State can grasp. Even now, that time I lived there feels like a hazy happy dream (mostly).
I was cycling
My wife turned on the TV while getting ready for work just a few minutes after the first plane hit. She woke me up and said something major appeared to be going on. We watched for another three hours or so. I was absolutely dumfounded when the first tower fell, and it took a few minutes for the smoke to clear before I could fathom that it had actually collapsed. When driving to work, I thought to myself that this is really going to change the U.S. and maybe even the world.
AlanF
I've read all the comments here and found them very touching. Thanks to you all.
I was at home on 9/11, having digital cable installed for my computers. There was a younger workman outside running the cable to my computer, and an older technician installing the software and modem. My mother-in-law called very shortly after the news broke and told me a plane had hit the WTC. I turned on the TV, and these two workmen and I watched the whole thing unfold over the next couple of hours. To say we were shocked and moved is an understatement. As they worked, I had all the TVs in the house on so we could keep track, after the second plane hit the WTC, which we saw live on TV, and then the reports of other planes hitting the Pentagon, we all ended up in one room watching everything happen. We were watching when the first tower collapsed, and the older guy just about lost it, he was so upset. I would have guessed at the time that 10X the number of people died that day than were actually murdered. The fact that so many got out is an incredible testimony to what so many people did right that day.
It was all so surreal.
There was another odd thing that happened that day that also completely affected my life.
That evening I had to cover a town meeting, which was cut short, and two of the women there, friends of mine, said let's go across the street to this restaurant and have a drink or two. We did. There were few other people in the restaurant, only a local woman and her sister and brother-in-law visiting from Ohio. They hadn't had access to TV that day, and didn't really know what was happening. There was a TV up at the bar, so we invited them to join us and watch, and we filled them in on what had happened.
The woman was sitting next to me, and we talked most of the evening. Her name turned out to be Lori, and she and I have been living together for almost exactly the past two years.
What a strange day that was for me, in so many ways. Truly, my life has never been the same.
S4
