Where were you at 8:45 A.M. on September 11, 2001? What do you remember about that day?
The movie version of Come From Away, the musical about the flights diverted to Newfoundland because of 9/11, is available on Apple TV. Wonderful! GRADE: A
9/11 20th ANNIVERSARY and COME FROM AWAY [Apple TV]
I’ll never forget this …
Had an appointment at the doc (heart problems, blood pressure too high, got some tablets) and was done early so I decided to have a look in one of our big furniture stores. When I arrived there all the store workers and customers were standing around one of the tv sets they had as a decoration.
Of course I got curious too and walked over – and saw the smoke coming out of the buildings. Everybody just stood there listening to the comments and watching that scene being repeated several times so it became clear that this was not a horror movie but real.
That was a gigantic shock for me because around 15 years earlier I had been on a business trip to the USA and my colleagues and I had been invited to dinner in the restaurant Windows on the World on the 100th (or 99th?) floor.
After taking the elevator straight up there (we were checked for our reservation of course) we were seated in the middle of the restaurant – no view there. So our boss took a 10 $ (or 20?) bill and asked for a table with a view. He was told we’d have to wait, had a beer at the bar and then got a table at the window – fantastic view of illuminated Manhattan.
A few years later I got a cheap flight to JFK and went for a weekend on my own, visiting the Forbidden Planet SF-bokstore on Broadway and of course the Empire State Building where I took a picture of the Twin Towers.
And again much later in 2009 I took my new partner to NYC, went up on the ESB again and when she watched the city I showed her the picture I had made on the last visit:
Do you see the difference?
Those visits were really moving …
Wolf, I had chances to dine at Windows on the World but never took the opportunities. I was never in the World Trade Center and I regret that I didn’t visit it.
We never ate there either, but on one of their visits to New York, we took my parents to the observation deck on top. It was a pretty clear day and you could see for miles. I couldn’t get over that Philippe Petit strung a wire across and walked between the two towers in 1974.
Jeff, I remember that Philippe Petit stunt in 1974! But I’m a guy who is leering about climbing a ladder!
I know I’ve shared this story before, but…John (my husband) was on his way to a business meeting. He was flying from New Orleans to Fort Lauderdale, planning to change planes in Orlando. He had left early that morning for the airport. I was a stay-at-home mom at the time and our oldest daughter had a big test in school that day. Normally, I would have been listening to NPR’s Morning Edition, but I had the radio off so that I could help her study. So I drove her to school (the twins, three years old, were in their car seats in the back), continuing to review her test material. After I dropped her off, I drove to Walmart for groceries. As I drove, I turned on the radio and, even though it was after 9:00 AM (central time), Morning Edition was still broadcasting—which I thought was very odd. Then I heard the reporter say something about the Pentagon being hit and I just remember Bob Edwards (the M.E. host at the time) go silent for a couple of beats and I knew something really bad had happened. I grabbed the girls and we ran into Walmart. There were a couple of TVs hurriedly placed around the store, all of them broadcasting CNN. I saw one of the towers fall—but I’m not sure if that was on video or live. My sister was in the USAF, stationed in Biloxi, at the time, but she was at my parents’ home in Georgia because September 11 is her birthday and she’d taken a week’s leave. I called her and asked what was going on and she was like, “Girl, have you been under a rock for the last two hours?” She caught me up to speed, but then I started to get frantic because my husband was on an airplane and at that point officials thought six planes had been hijacked and couldn’t account for all of them. It was several hours before I heard from him, during which time I was panic-stricken, thinking that perhaps terrorists would have tried to crash a plane into Disney World. Meanwhile, my husband was on a plane looking out the window and thinking to himself, “That does not look like Orlando.” The pilot then announced that the plane had been diverted to the nearest airport which happened to be Jacksonville. As everyone was deplaning, the pilot explained that the FAA had ordered all planes in US airspace to land. He said, “I’ve been a pilot for 20 years and I’ve never seen this happen.” Once John got into the airport, he saw people crowded around the CNN television stands (remember those in airports?) and probably saw the same things I was seeing in Walmart. As far as you can measure luck in things like that, John was lucky in the sense that my parents lived about an hour from Jacksonville and, once he was able to get in touch with them, my Dad drove to the airport to pick him up. My sister was immediately recalled to her base which is about an hour from where we live, so John was able to drive back with her the next day. There are events that mark “before” and “after” for all of us. 9-11 is one of that events.
Deb, I had just arrived at the College that Tuesday morning and my Chairman had CNN on in his Office. The first plane had just struck and a few minutes later, we watched the second plane hit! I met my 9:30 A.M. class briefly. Many of the students hadn’t heard about the attack on the World Trade Center. We discussed what was happening and what the implications might be. Then, over the loudspeaker, the Dean announced that classes were being cancelled. Faculty and students all left the building. I listened to NPR as I drove home. By the time I arrived home, Diane was frantic about the events on our television screen. She was trying to contact Patrick at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Katie was on a school bus heading for home. I remember everything being surreal!
The worst few minutes since the Kennedy assassination.
Patti, I remember wondering if there were more planes that would crash–there were. 9/11 was a Dark Day in U.S. history.
Patti, that is another day I remember so well.
I was at work when this happened and, because it was a long day, didn’t get home until almost 11:00 P.M. There was no TV around and I didn’t bother going online, figuring I’d check the television network coverage when I got home. Of course the people around me, many of whom had been glued to the TV before coming into work after me, talked about it all day and the more I heard the more surreal it sounded.
I remember jet fighters circling overhead throughout the day (something I imagined was happening around other large cities across the country) but it wasn’t until after work when I began to really notice the change. The Detroit Metro Airport was only about 15 miles from work and the sky above our expansive parking was typically filled with planes at any point of the day or night but on that evening it was utterly empty, a sight I’d never seen in my life and knew would never experience again. I actually found the empty skies strangely beautiful and serene and it was perhaps the only real beauty I experienced in the following year.
When I got home I turned on the television but after the 20th or so clip of home videos of planes crashing into the towers and their collapse I turned the set off because I’d had one of those rare moments of absolute clarity where I could see exactly what was going to happen in the days, weeks and years following (the relentless media orgy, the xenophobia thinly disguised as patriotism, even the war) and I didn’t want any part of it. I’d been around the block enough to know this was going to bring out the worst of the American character and it was going to be ugly. Less than a week later I passed a monster pickup emblazed on the side with a mural of an eagle in front of the burning World Trade Center and I thought to myself, “Yep…”
Twenty years later and we’re still dealing with this. So much social and political chaos, so many more lives pointlessly lost and six trillion dollars that could have been invested into education, infrastructure, the environment, housing, poverty, etc., etc., etc..
Oh, and the survivors and first responders everyone so loudly hailed as heroes, left to die or struggle with lifelong illnesses.
Byron, our Government made several mistakes that led to the tragedy of 9/11. I watched an interview with Condoleezza Rice on PBS NEWSHOUR last night and Rice declared that the events of September 11, 2001 could have been prevented if information had been shared between the FBI and the CIA. The CIA had been warning for months that the terrorist “chatter” they were monitoring was predicting a “spectacular” event. But, the CIA didn’t know the target was the World Trade Center.
EVen though I was in Brooklyn, I was just a couple of miles away from Ground Zero that day. I had dropped Jackie off in Sunset Park for the first day at her new school, a middle school she had helped her friend Lola to start. It was on the third and fourth floors of an elementary school – and by coincidence, had a clear view across to Lower Manhattan and the WTC. I drove on downtown to go to my printer to copy my DAPA-EM zine, and to go to the Tuesday greenmarket for apples. I got back in the car and started driving to the Red Hook post office when I heard about the first plane. Like most people, I’m sure, I thought of the plane that hit the Empire State Building in the fog in 1945. Then we heard about the second plane… .
Red Hook is across from the housing project, but it is fairly open and it was easy to see a couple of miles away to the WTC. You saw the smoke, mostly, and fire. Papers – mostly old fashioned fax paper, was blowing right over to wear I stood. Inside, most people were stunned into silence, but one Russian guy was yelling about conspiracies.
There is an entrance to the highway a few blocks away, but they already had it closed off so they could reverse the traffic flow and let emergency vehicles go directly into the Battery Tunnel, so I took the streets home. I got there just as the South Tower fell. I remember sitting in the car and hearing it on 1010-WINS. Cell phones didn’t work but Jackie was able to call at some point. She was in school until about 5:00 when the last child was picked up. They had pulled the shades down on the upper floors so the kids weren’t at the windows looking at the damage all day. I was able to call my parents in Arizona on the landline.
Jeff, I first thought that the plane hitting the World Trade Center was an accident. But, when the second plane struck, everybody knew this was a terrorist attack. Even after 20 years, the events of that day remain etched into my memory.
Just remembered:
I heard about the “plane flying into he tower” on my car’s radio after the visit to the doc but of course thought it was just a small plane, pilot error – like it happened many years before when a plane flew into the Empire State Building.
On one of my business trips in the 1980s a helicopter transfer from JFK to Manhattan was included in the business class ticket and we talked about it that flying over Manhattan was not allowed for safety reasons.
Of course that flight was fantastic – seeing the skyline approaching. Kind of crazy:
I still remember the helicopter flying over the suburbs, many nice houses where you also could see swimming pools – and then a really large cemetery before you reached Brooklyn.
Totally OT – or not:
A few years later an also unbelievable catastrophe happened in Europe. A German airplane with about 150 people was sent into a mountain in the Alps. The captain had gone to the toilet and the mentally challenged copilot took the plane down – horrible!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525
Wolf, your examples explain my hesitancy to get on any plane these days…
As with Wolf, as I heard the first reports on NPR as I was heading out the door for work–my car was in the shop, so I had to depend on public transport that morning–I thought they, in early-report vagueness, described a small plane crashing in, and I wondered if the pilot had had a heart attack.
There is a musical about this? Who thought of that? Mel Brooks?
I was working as a tree and shrub specialist for Trugreen on 9/11. I heard what was happening by listening to the radio in my truck. I didn’t get to see what had happened until I got home from work.
I was never in the twin towers. I visited the site in the summer of 2002.
Steve, Katie and a friend just visited the 9/11 Memorial in NYC last weekend. Very moving. Also very moving is COME FROM AWAY which tells the true story of the planes diverted to Newfoundland after 9/11. I knew nothing about that until I saw the play.
While Jeff was driving around, we were watching the world on fire out the window. Suddenly the buildings were gone leaving smoke and devastation everywhere.
One of my friends, a fellow union rep was back at school for her first day after maternity leave. Her husband Firefighter Peter Vega dropped her off, told her he loved her and headed for his firehouse for the last time. I will always have the memory of them as newlyweds. We were in D.C. for the annual AFT conference and it was their first anniversary. Peter showed up while we were having dinner to take her on a horse drawn tour. So romantic.
The tears are falling as I watch the ceremony as they do each year.
Jackie
Jackie—your memories of your friend just back from maternity leave made me think of something: I seem to remember reading that there were over 100 men who died on 9-11 who left behind pregnant spouses. Those “9-11 babies” are almost 20 now. Today must be even harder than usual for those families.
And your friend—did she ever meet someone new and remarry?
Deb, Jackie said that she, she did remarry. (She was actually more friendly with her sister, and I think she heard it from her.) There was a special this week (maybe on PBS) about the kids whose mothers were pregnant on 9/11 and hence, never knew their fathers, but you can only watch so much, and we skipped it.
Jeff, same here. We’ve been inundated with 9/11 remembrances all week long. The story about the kids whose mothers were pregnant on 9/11/01 when their fathers died at the World Trade Center was just a bridge too far for us.
She did remarry many years later. She was very private but bonded with one of the other widows from the house. They buried both men in our famous Greenwood Cemetery. I believe the Daily News followed her for a very long time. After many years I believe she did remarry. I don’t have my old school contacts anymore as we are all retitred.
Jackie
Jackie, Diane and I have shed tears over the stories on MSNBC and CBS dealing with 9/11. So much loss and death! Very tragic.
Being on the west coast, I was asleep when the plane strikes happened. When I got to work, someone said “we’re being attacked “ but she was usually sort of hysterical, so I didn’t understand. I couldn’t get any report on the little radio I kept in my desk, and there were meetings and reports, etc. I finally got the story on my way home at 6:00 Pacific time. By the time I got home and the TV on, they had apparently shown the clips enough times and moved on, so I didn’t see the towers hit, or the collapses for days, and didn’t get the full story until a documentary a year later.
Rick, we still don’t have the entire story of 9/11. A lot was going on behind the scenes and that has never been fully revealed or clarified.
I meant the plane strikes, building collapses (all 3), the Pentagon hit and so on, not deep conspiracy stuff.
I was watching the Yankees-Mets game last night and, at a certain point in the broadcast, they paused to remember the people who died on 9-11 who had connections to baseball. There were several men who had played in the minor leagues and then moved into business & finance, including working at Cantor Fitzgerald (which had offices on the top floors of one of the towers). Just when you think you’ve cried all you’re going to cry….
Deb, my eyes misted up several times this week watching and listening to stories of 9/11. So much sadness…
Well…19 April 1995. I was sitting in my office at a Borders Book Shop, doing the light accounting, when the first reports of the Murrah Building bombing came over NPR.
“Only” 169 people killed, but even more kids than on 9/11’s insane brutality combined. I was a Federal Brat in Oklahoma City for the summer, as my father took FAA courses in Lawton, and was attending kindergarten in the summer of ’69, so that struck me hard…that had it been John Birch Society thugs then rather than Christian Identity thugs in 1995, they could’ve pulled my corpse from that rubble.
So, as mentioned above, I was making my way out the door to catch a bus to the train station to get to work…from the furthest western edge of Philadelphia to 30th Street Station out to Radnor. It was a longer commute than usual.
Even than it would be the next day, as by the time the bus got us to 30th Street, one had to walk through the Amtrak concourse to get to the regional/suburban rail, and all the trains to/through NYC and DC were being cancelled. Seemed more than odd, but I had a train to catch in the other part of the station.
Still hadn’t heard/learned of the fuller devastation. Started to hear a little bit of it when the train to the western suburbs, such as Radnor, kept stopping and starting between station, and even hid in a tunnel briefly while the engineers tried to figure out what they were supposed to do.
By the time, I got to work at TV GUIDE, I had the preliminary information, and as we were already as much an online service (and cable interactive guide) as we were a magazine, we got busy, even as the monitors played, and we did our best to keep up with the coverage information. Home Shopping Network and its competitors, and similarly frivolous feeds grabbed at any newsfeed they could get, HSN had its corporate partner, which was feeding CBC coverage. PBS affiliates, my particular responsibility, were pulling in special NEWSHOUR and BBC WORLD NEWS and other coverage, while others were having discussions about getting ready to go forward with children’s programming for those who wanted their young children sheltered.
It was a busy day, immersed in video feeds.
It was weirdly reminiscent of what Algis Budrys had described in his essay about his oddly muted experiences, while working as a flack for a pickle manufacturers’ professional association, trying to wrap up his business-trip visits and get home from NYC to the Chicago suburbs in the days after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, and the resulting unrest…including interactions with chest-beaters as well as the desperately miserable, the grimly resigned (they mostly news editors in Budrys’s case, who didn’t see much use in a press release from Pickle Packers International, even with a photo of a model and US Rep. Gerald Ford standing next to a promotional statue, when the headlines ran to DC QUIETS DOWN…much like trying to find out what networks, particularly the small ones, cable and broadcast stations wanted to do about schedule revisions, while our eyes were on the monitors around the room when not on our computer screens. “I’ll hold.”
The same sort of Life Goes On, in the face of nearly anything, however calamitous for too many, was in place. Budrys was contrasting it with how flashy most crises are in fiction and drama, and how fond some of us are of that mode.
I knew one of my 1998 colleagues in our offices in Radnor had moved on to a job in a WTC office, and wondered about her (she’d moved on to a better job with a less targeted home base in the interim, I’d found out a week or so later). My sister discovered that an elementary school friend, one she’d met on her first day in Keolu Elementary, had died in the Shanksville crash, I’ve just learned today. https://www.nps.gov/flni/learn/historyculture/christine-ann-snyder.htm
The WorldCon had just happened in Philadelphia a few days before, and I’d just met a number of professional and avocational fantastic-fiction folk in person for the first time, having had been corresponding with a number of them for a year or more via social media…the Bouchercon was in the part of Arlington, VA, not too terribly far from the Pentagon, a few weeks later, and the shadow of the events loomed.
We certainly have too much viciousness among us to deal with. Wasn’t till this year I was thoroughly reminded that 11 Septmeber 1973 was when the fascist takeover in Chile happened, with the aid of US forces under the direction of Nixon and Kissinger.
And the idiocy will not stop coming, nor the thuggishness, nor the sadness. We do need to quit worshiping the flashy.
Todd, the U.S. has gone through some very difficult times since 9/11/01. We’ve had a financial collapse, political gridlock, and now a Pandemic. Despite effective and free vaccines, the infections increase as do the deaths. Lincoln said that a house divided cannot stand. We should all ponder the implications of that.
There is never unity. There can only be a certain degree of contentment with how countries are administered…and few if any countries have consistently earned that. Moving in that direction, at least, can help…but it discommodes elites at some level or in some ways, and they certainly resent and resist that.
Todd, I agree with you. Contentment is the goal, but discontentment seems to be the Norm.
Usually since elites largely succeed in curbing improvement for others’ lives, and thus discontent, whether expressed toward the actual malefactors or not, is the commoner state of affairs.
Todd, elites have to be careful. Look what happened to them in the French Revolution! And the Russian Revolution!
They largely reasserted themselves, or at best were replaced with similar elites.
Contentment is the goal of some governments…most are satisfied with enforced silence.
Todd, all governments are about three or four days away from domestic upheaval…if the food supply or water supply is interrupted.