Do you remember where you were on 9/11?

[KeithD]

My first world-class memorable event came before I really could remember it, although family memories made it memorable. It was another "Daddy's disappeared" event. Slightly belore I turned four, we arrived in Seoul, Korea, mere days before the June, 1950, invasion of South Korea by the North. My dad was the Army Attache in the U.S. embassy but was up on the DMZ inspecting a ROK border regiment. On the morning of the invasion, he woke up to find the whole regiment had taken a powder and he had to make his own way to the coast, dodging invading North Koreans. Another "missing, presumed dead" week and after only a few days in Korea, my family was evacuated to Tokyo.

 

[gordo12]

Canadian:

My mother phoned me at a very early time to tell me the United States had been attacked. My wife and I turned on the TV and didn't move for the next day and a half watching the same news clips over and over, hoping for some new information.

I didn't go to work. We ate our meals in front of the TV and speculated what was going to happen. Part of me was seriously concerned the US would use a nuclear strike on a small country.

I told my kids it was the end of the world as we knew it.

We watched as countless airplanes, denied landing in the US, landed at our airports where the passengers and crews were housed and fed while things got sorted down south. Where the capacity of the local disaster response or hotel industry was challenged, local families stepped in to take travellers into their homes and looked after them.

Because of the histories of our intertwined countries, it was a moment of intense sadness and pride for me. Intense sadness at the horror inflicted on our southern friends, yet pride that Canada, our Gov and people immediately stepped up to the plate to help.

 

[KeithD]

It's good to remember that 9/11 was a purposeful attack on the international community, not just the United States. It was the World Trade Center, picked as a target for that reason. 372 of the nearly 3,000 victims who died just on that day were from 61 countries outside of the United States.

This doesn't counter Gordo's post--just brought the broad target of the attack to mind. Canadians were great in the crisis. Canadians are great in all crises. If only Canada was located in the tropics . . .

 

[gordo12]

It's good to remember that 9/11 was a purposeful attack on the international community, not just the United States. It was the World Trade Center, picked as a target for that reason. 372 of the nearly 3,000 victims who died just on that day were from 61 countries outside of the United States.

This doesn't counter Gordo's post--just brought the broad target of the attack to mind. Canadians were great in the crisis. Canadians are great in all crises.

Yes, I couldn't agree more. Many countries around the world stepped up to the plate to help.

If only Canada was located in the tropics . . .

Can you believe our brain dead politicians turned down the idea of a tropical island joining Canada. It's been floating around for close to 100 years. Fkn wankers!

 

[Hypoxia]

Can you believe our brain dead politicians turned down the idea of a tropical island joining Canada. It's been floating around for close to 100 years. Fkn wankers!

Annex Cuba? Beware hurricanes.

 

[JKendallDane]

If only Canada was located in the tropics . . .

I seriously doubt if you or I will live to see it, Keith, but if the powers-that-be keep pretending "climate change" is nothing but a myth, Toronto as a beach-front Christmas vacation destination where you can show off your swimsuits in between frolicking in the surf wouldn't be all that much of a stretch in another fifty years.

.

 

[KeithD]

I live on a ridge on the eastern face of the Blue Ridge mountains. That might be beachfront property eventually. Unfortunately, my bungalow on Key West and probably even my vacation villa on Cyprus will be deep sixed then. And both of those are much more fun places than here.

 

[gordo12]

Annex Cuba? Beware hurricanes.

Nah, Turks and Caicos Islands. They get them there too.

bungalow on Key West and probably even my vacation villa on Cyprus will be deep sixed then. And both of those are much more fun places than here.

Ahh, I vote Keith to host the next Literotica 'free' getaway.

 

[vanmyers86]

Ahh, I vote Keith to host the next Literotica 'free' getaway. [/QUOTE]

I second this excellent motion. All in favor, say aye!

 

[JamesMiehoff]

I was standing in front of the TV drying off from a shower, getting ready to go to work. I flipped the channels wondering "WTF kind of 'Die Hard' movie trailer is this?"

By the time I saw it on 3 channels, it started to sink in that this was real and happening live. Then the second plane hit the other tower.

I jumped into my clothes and hauled ass to work. I was working for an airline at the time and it was pandemonium.

A couple of weeks later the pink slips started as the airline started to gear up for hard times. The next year, I gave back a chunk of my paycheck to keep my job. Back of the napkin estimates are that I gave back between $250,000 and $500,000 over the years since then because of it.

I found out later that an ad agency I had done some work for in a previous job had moved to one of the upper floors in one of the towers. I recognized 3 pictures of missing people that I had worked with. They were really nice people that deserved better than that.

There were a lot more victims than just those that died on that day. Economically, a lot of people were hurt, which was part of the point the terrorists were trying to make.

James

 

[Hypoxia]

...Worse attacks, atrocities, disasters, occur without much notice worldwide...

There were a lot more victims than just those that died on that day. Economically, a lot of people were hurt, which was part of the point the terrorists were trying to make.

My family was hurt financially but not terribly. We're OK now. My grandkids were born a decade later. 9/11 is barely relevant ancient history to them, like 1939 for me. I'll never forget. They'll hardly care... until they have to earn a living.

I'll note that responses to attacks etc are too often aimed not at perpetrators but at old targets. (Like Saddam, dissidents, liberalism, ethics, privacy, et al.) The 9/11 attackers' long-stated goal was driving the West from the Muslim MidEast. Wrecking and reshaping the Old World Order resulted -- unlike deadlier but less-noticed events, mourned away from any spotlight.

Would an ET-alien invasion unite humanity against a common foe? Ha.

 

[Polyacrylate]

Good follow-up question!

As an American, it's sometimes difficult to gauge what affects or engages the entire world. We tend to assume, often times, that if it matters to us, it must matter to everyone. That said, I think the Challenger explosion qualifies. I remember hearing about it after my morning classes, and being absolutely shocked with everyone else in the dining hall. Bhopal eas horrifying, and of course, Chernobyl was too. Although I was alive for other historic events, those are the earliest I have clear memories of.
.

It's interesting you mention Bhopal. I'm a chemical engineer, and took a course in college that largely centered on Bhopal, its causes, and its aftermath. This was about 17 years after it had happened, give or take. I had not previously heard of the catastrophe, and to my recollection, nobody else in the class had, either. I find it absolutely shameful that in the US, awareness and memory of Bhopal is largely restricted to a throwaway joke in the film Christmas Vacation.

Since then, I've done a few Bhopal-based exercises for high school students on career day ("Your goal is to earn profit, here is a chemical plant, and various processes. Work in your groups for fifteen minutes, and tell me what changes you would make, and how much money it saves." Fifteen minutes later: "oh, you all shut down the scrubber and the chiller? You just murdered 100,000 people!"). None of them have ever heard of Bhopal, either. I'm curious if the non-Indian parts of the world remember Bhopal any better than the US.

As for 9/11, I was in college. I had been up all night at work, and had just walked out the door to go to class when the emergency alert came over the radio. I shrugged it off, and walked on. I ran into a friend of mine, who confirmed that a plane had hit one of the towers.

It hadn't registered as an attack. I had thought it was an accident. I was going on 27 hours or so without sleep, and critical thinking had gone out the window. "Why was a plane in the middle of downtown NY?" I kept asking myself.

My friend and I walked on to class, mostly in silence. When we passed by the Student Union building, a kid in a ROTC uniform stuck his head out the door, and yelled, "All you dumbasses need to get in here and see this!"

"I'm not a dumbass, but this is probably important, right?" I said to my friend. I honestly don't recall if I connected it with the first tower getting struck. We went inside, along with a few other people going to class, to find literally hundereds of students gathered around an oversized projection TV.

It was playing CNN, showing footage of the plane hitting the second tower. People were crying, and it suddenly dawned on me that the first plane had not been an accident.

I remember the ROTC kid trying to take names and email addresses of people who wanted to join the armed forces. He said he would pass his list to a recruiter. He was literally promising a chance for vengeance, even if Osama had not been publicly connected with the attack. I doubt anybody in the room had even heard of him yet, or knew anything about him. I distinctly remember ROTC guy asking, after I brushed him off, "Don't you want revenge?" "Against who?" "Doesn't matter. We will get them."

I remember the confusion the rest of the day, a vigil that night, and the feeling that the world was never going to be the same. My statistics professor sent people home ("Just rest and pray. Tough days are ahead."), while my organic chemistry professor, who was Turkish, had a harsher sentiment ("These things happen sometimes around the world. If nobody you knew was inside, be glad for it, and move on with your life. The world won't stop for this."). Nobody seemed to have any answers, but then, I wouldn't have trusted anyone who offered them.

 

[Polyacrylate]

I'll go meta. Who remembers globally significant events? What really shook us?

My first major shock was of JFK. I was in junior high school typing class when the PA announced the shooting. A little later, in science class, came the death notice, and school dismissal. That affect me more than later assassinations (RFK, King, Malcolm), more than anything till 9/11.

I remember Dr King's murder -- cities (including my San Francisco) burned with riots. I don't recall such reactions to... well, US war crimes are too political for this forum. Okay, forget I brought this up.

I think the first globally significant event I remember from my childhood was not a catastrophe, but rather a moment of hope: the Berlin Wall coming down.

I was young enough that I didn't grasp it's significance or symbolism. I do recall Grandpa Acrylate, a veteran of the Korean war, calling my father in tears, believing humanity to be moving into a new era of peace. My maternal grandfather, a veteran of the European theater of WWII, was less optimistic, but still pleased. I remember my parents' exasperation in my curiosity about the importance of it all ("It's just a wall!" I remember 9 year old me saying, "If it was so bad, why didn't they knock it down earlier?")

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

I don’t really remember. I do remember that it started a normal day, and then, the principal came over the intercom and told us all to stay calm. And parents came to pick kids up; there was some confusion whether we’d be safer at school versus leaving/ being stuck in street traffic.

But of course, it’s not as much about individual memory as the importance of collective memory. We live in Battery Park so neighbors who are bulwarks against the mega-commercial tourism have told us about the before and after. Everyone at my former office that’s over fifty worked in the firm’s Tower 2 office so I’ve heard the horrific stories from them too.

But I vividly remember where I was during the OKC bombing even though I was really young. We had Waverly ivy wallpaper in the powder room, and my mom had said I was a mess, and took me in there to brush my hair. My grandmother called in hysterics. That’s one of my earliest memories. I have lots of family and family friends that were there and still suffer PTSD from the attack.

 

[BelleCanzuto]

There were a lot more victims than just those that died on that day. Economically, a lot of people were hurt, which was part of the point the terrorists were trying to make.

James

While some of the work I did with the Red Cross in the aftermath of 9/11 was with victims' families, a lot of it was with people whose apartments were no longer habitable because of the particulate matter that penetrated even closed windows when the towers collapsed. There were several buildings that were undamaged except for their windows being blown out. I also worked with a few people who were injured, but survived. So, yeah, a lot of people were hurt aside from the almost 3000 who died.

And as some people talked about the international aspect - I still remember talking to a detective from Scotland Yard who come over for the investigation.

There are other connections too. Vix mentioned the OKC bombing -- a trauma support group formed after the OKC bombing came to the Family Resource Center to assist. I was eating lunch with one of their female members and a couple of NYPD officers. The OKC lady and I got into a good natured, but spirited, argument about college football (though we ultimately agreed that Florida State sucks). She went on her way and one of the cops looked at me and said that he'd never seen two women arguing about football before.

Other indelible memories? The Challenger explosion is one of my clearest. The Christmas Tsunami. The Virginia Tech shooting (for personal reasons). The aftermath of Hurrican Katrina (that video of the people at the convention center, just shouting 'help').

A friend of mine's daughter was born in July of 2001. She just started college. It's hard for me to really grasp how much time has passed, and that there's already an entire generation of people for whom 9/11 is just history.

Gawd, makes me feel old.

 

[vanmyers86]

Resurrecting this thread to mark the anniversary. There are some insightful and poignant comments here.

It seems impossible that 19 years have passed.

 

[SunnyDays1]

at home sleeping, when my friend called and told me

 

[SimonDoom]

I was getting ready for work, and I turned on the Today Show. A smoking building filled the TV screen, and it took me a while to figure out what I was seeing. I couldn't process it at first. It was difficult to accept the enormity of it. I watched the towers fall down and thought back to a time I'd been to the top of the World Trade Center long ago. I have vivid memories of following the story all day, not really being able to work, and it's hard to believe it was 19 years ago.

 

[Erlikkhan]

I was in a tall office building across from the Pentagon waiting to go to a meeting in DC (which never happened). We were watching with horror on TV when someone screamed to look out the window. We saw smoke rising from the other side of the Pentagon. A few minutes later the TV announcers confirmed it had been another strike.

 

[litfan10]

I was teaching a sixth grade English class. The principal came on the intercom telling us to turn on the tvs.

I was in total disbelief and my kids were shocked and started to panic. A bunch of the kids started to crawl under desks. I didn't have to tell them anything. Even though we were at the opposite end of the state, the kid's instincts said if attacked get under desks.

I turned the Tv off, and we all just stayed under desks and just breathed and tried to relax.

I stayed with that class for the rest of the day as parents staggered in picking up the kids.
I can still picture some of those faces huddled under the desks tears streaming down their faces.

So surreal. So alien. Our safety bubble was permanently popped that day.

 

[KeithD]

That's an easy one for me, because we were having a fence put in and the crew was from New York. When I saw the first hit on the TV from my home office, I had to go out and tell the crew and suggest they might want to take off and attend to family business, which they did.

Also, while it was happening, my daughter, who lived in a high rise on the Potomac just west of the Pentagon, called to say she's seen an airplane go by nearly at her level and close to the building and heard the impact on the Pentagon, although she didn't know it was the Pentagon at the time, and didn't know what to do. The what to do was to get out of the apartment house "right now," not use the elevator, and call me again when you get to the street.

I was retired at that point, but previously I had been working in intelligence and, specifically, not long before I retired in antiterrorism. I wasn't the least bit surprised it was happening. I was just glad it wasn't on my watch (although I was called back to consult for several months afterward).

 

[Handley_Page]

Where I was at the time, the impact wasn't quite the same. Seeing the news pictures of the tower collapsing was 'not a calming thing'.

But on other shocking events ?
I remember the Union Carbide problem at Bhopal.
And the Abervan disaster ?
Anyone else remember the death of the Princess Dianna of Wales?

 

[HeyAll]

I'm on the west coast and was in high school at the time.

My alarm went off, which is a radio alarm. The hosts were somberly talking about the WTC and naturally I thought they were talking the attacks ten years prior. But as they went on, I realized it was something live and I got up and went to my tv.

 

[KeithD]

Anyone else remember the death of the Princess Dianna of Wales?

Yep, I was in a hotel in Atlanta, with the TV on, getting ready to go the graduation ceremony conferring a doctorate on my son. Certainly took the edge off the joy of that occasion.

 

[SouthernCrossfire]

I was in my office at work early on the morning of 9/11/01, with radio on low. A special report cut in to report that the WTC had been hit by a plane. As an engineer who'd read about the towers (a little) and knew of the B25 hitting the Empire State Building back in 1945, I rushed to the conference room and turned on the TV to see the newscast with a relatively clear sky (i.e., it wasn't a visibility problem). I was watching when the second plane hit, and heard about the other attacks on the TV. It was a sad day of the sort I hope we'll never have to see again.