September 11, 2001: Personal Stories 10-Years Later

Like a lot of you, I remember it being a pretty clear, average day. Not too much to report, really. As some noted, it seemed almost a little too quiet, to which some referenced a news anchor saying this. I just stumbled upon this collection of news clips from that day, before and after the attacks began. It actually does show the clip of the anchor saying, "...It's quiet, too quiet..."

"It's quiet… too quiet…"

*This is my first post by the way, and it definitely won't be my last*

I remember that day well, I don't any of us will ever forget what we were doing. I had just taken my daughter and her friend to school and had gone back home waiting for the vet to come look at our horse, at that point I hadn't turned on the television. A friend called and screamed "Do you know what's going on in our world?" I asked her what? She said turn on your television and it doesn't matter which channel. I turned it on just in time to see the second plane hit. I was in shock. The vet showed up and we watched in between treating the horse.

Later I went to pick up the kids from school. Normally it was chaotic at the end of the day, this day the kids were silent, standing in groups some crying all in shock. I asked the girls if they had lunch; they said no. They had spent the day with a special Mass and then in prayer. They said no one wanted lunch they just watched the coverage and prayed. My daughter looked at me and said "Mom, we saw history today didn't we?"

In the days that followed I found out that several of my co-workers had family in New York; we rejoiced together as they were found alive but one had a missing nephew who worked at the Twin Towers. It was over a week before he was found thankfully alive in one of the hospitals. He had been hit in the head and had been unconscious. It was truly a miracle one that so many sadly did not get. I will always remember the tears of joy and relief running down Larry's face.

I knew as I watched the coverage that my country was going to war. My younger brother was called up and served two tours overseas.

reply to post by gimme_some_truth


I had the exact opposite of quite. I live within a few miles of Langley Airforce Base. The planes were up and running all day.

I was at home in Hampton Virginia on that morning. I was not watching TV. My husband called from his work to tell me that a plane had crashed into the world trade center. My first thought was a small private plane. I turned on the TV while still talking to my husband. He said he thought it was an airliner not a small private plane. As I watched the second plane hit. I fell to the livingroom floor telling my husband "this is an attack this is not an accident." The jets started taking off from Langley about 30 minutes later.

This is something I do not want to remember. I was in the office of a non-profit agency in Minneapolis. I was there to go over some records. I was the only one with a radio that was on about 9:50am, 9/11/2001. I was tuned to Minnesota Public Radio, as I was when I was home, at that time of day. The broadcaster broke in with the comment “I have some very sad news to report” or something like that. He then mentioned that New York had been attacked and about the same time he reported the attack on the Pentagon. What I felt then was something in all my life I never felt before. Blind rage. I not only wanted to kill those responsible, I wanted to kill their families, their dogs, cats cattle, and burn and poison their crops. God I pray I never feel such hate again. It was awful. And I will pity those forever who made me feel that way that day. Because you did not win. I got over my “feelings” and it took me about all of five minutes. I regained my senses. Perhaps one day those who chose such actions will gain their own. And I have not felt that unfocused rage since.

reply to post by gimme_some_truth

Beautiful! You did a great job. I was and am in Colorado and just turned on the news when they hit. That was bad enough. Watching them fall was worse.
Pray it never happens again!
And thanks again. Gimme some truth, you really did give us the truth.

As some already know, I was in the Air Force at the time.

I worked in munitions systems and was stationed at Eielson AFB, Alaska. I still live here in Alaska but I am now civilian.

After watching the news for a couple hours and seeing the second plane hit the towers, some of my buddies were called in to work. I didn't know it at the time.

I later found out there was a plane from a Japanese airline that had, for whatever reason, lost communications to controllers on the ground. The plane was scheduled to land at Fairbanks International Airport.

My buddies transported live air to air missiles from storage to some of the F-16's from the 18th Fighter Squadron. The load crews loaded them on the aircraft immediately.

Noone knew what was going on at the time.

We now know that some of the F-16's were scrambled to intercept that airliner. At some point the Japanese airliner achieved communication with controllers again and it wasn't necessary to shoot it down.. I think there's some old news stories that go into more detail.

-ChriS

This is what I remember

A Muslim cleric was put on trial for the twin towers bombing. I don't know if anyone
remembers this or not. But they parked a van full of explosives in the basement of one corner of a tower. Being a bit of an armature architect I analyzed the placement. My conclusion was this. The plan was to cause the one tower to fall into the other tower.

The van was parked in that one particular corner of the basement on purpose. The plan was to take out that corner and cause the tower to fall in a specific direction rather like felling a tree. Then when it struck it's sister tower, they would both fall across the city of New York and leave a huge swath of damage where the bodies of the towers fell.

Years later we come to September the eleventh two thousand and one. I'm sleeping on the couch and my roommate comes in waking me up all excited. "Wake up! We're under attack! I've got food." I look, and he has two huge bags of take out food from the restaurant he works at. He sets down the bags as I turn on the TV. One tower is on fire.

He further says "Man, there are cops everywhere downtown like someone stirred up a hornets nest." We are living in Downtown Baton Rouge at the time. He says "We had just finished cooking everything for lunch when he boss comes in and says 'I'm not about gettin killed over some food, shut it down!' And he let everyone off."


So I watch, live, as the second plane hits.
Here is my first thought.

"Looks like they are failing to knock the towers over again. See how the one plane came in from a direction where if the tower struck were knocked over it would leave a huge path of destruction in one direction, and the second plane came in from the other direction to knock that tower into it's own path of destruction.

I think the second plane hit lower down cause the pilot saw that the first tower hadn't fallen over."

My roommate just says "Hmm."

Then... when a tower falls I immediately think this.

"That's a controlled demolition. Pretty smart. Letting either tower just fall over would be much worse. Someone did the same analysis on the basement bomb as I did. Too bad no one can ever take credit for it. People would crucify them."

And that's it.

For a decade now I have been watching America go insane about the issue, seeing dark conspiracies in everything and everyone. Even close friends breathing fire at me when I try to bring up the subject and add in the missing historical context of the previous attempt."


David Grouchy

So I reflect on these things for about fourty eight hours before comming to a decision.

Was it Islam. Was it crazy people trying to frame Islam. Was it our own Government

like Pearl Harbor. Was it some shadow government within our Government?

I realized something.

I didn't care who it was.
I only cared about the people hurt.
Not the ones doing the hurting, and I wanted
to let them know that while people in the east
may be used to military police standing on the corner
with fully automatic weapons, we here in America were not.

But how to get my message out.

So I went looking for the old alt.conspiracy usenet newsgroup.
It was defunct, but I did find the alt.jfk.conspiracy group and posted this.

September 13th, 2001

To Whom It May Concern:



You have underestimated the American spirit. Our history shows

that we always do the opposite of what an assassin or terrorist wants.
They shot Lincoln and we wouldn't let slavery sneak back into
existence, no matter how thinly veiled. They shot Kennedy and we
went to the moon anyway. They shot Martin Luther King, and now
we demand high ranking officials of all races and creeds.

These people you have murdered died free. They did not go to
work looking over their shoulders. They didn't board planes thinking
this is the end. They didn't show up to rescue people with a shred of
doubt.


Ours is an open society. This is the difference between us and you
who come from terrorism. The moment you struck the entire world
understood our anger. No one understands you. This is the flaw in
your closed circles. Now it may be too late for you.

I am coming at you,
Grouchy

David Grouchy

I was working third shift at the time and had slept through the whole thing.

The first I heard of it is when my wife woke me up, telling me that my sister had just called saying that we "were under attack" and that we needed to turn on the TV.

We went out into the living room and turned it on and saw all the shocking footage. The part of the attacks that hit home for me was the report of an airplane crashing on the outskirts of Pittsburgh (as they were reporting it at the time). I have several relatives who lived in Pittsburgh and became worried for their safety.

I checked the net but most stories were still sketchy and focused primarily on the WTC attack. I tried flipping through all the news channels and became frustrated by the constant replaying of the twin towers falling with no mention of what happened in Western Pa. Finally, I found a local cable channel that actually was reporting on the crash in Western Pa. I was relieved to learn that it had crashed in some barren farmland and was able to pay more attention to what was going on in the rest of the country.

At some point, my daughter, only about a year old at the time came out of her bedroom and stood next to me watching the TV. I don't think she even understood what she was watching. I reached over and grabbed her and gave her a great big hug for a long time.

In the days that followed, I became uncomfortable with the knee-jerk patriotism that resulted from the attacks. I hadn't began to question the OS at that point but I was uneasy with the way the country was reacting to the attacks. Everybody was running out and buying those flags to fly from their car windows. My wife wanted to get one for our cars. I told her she could get one for her car but, I didn't want one for mine. It just seemed wrong to jump on board with all the jingoism at the time and something told me that nothing good would come from the "patriotic" response of the American people at that time.

Some instinct inside me just told me that it was wrong.

I also send it out in a batch e-mail.
I have saved the replies.

A virtual time capsule of feelings in those days.

---- Original Message -----
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 13:10:21 CDT
From: "B---- J------"
Subject: I very regret about the victims

What can I do for you my friend? I very regret about all the victims, but I think that
this was not attack on your country, but on the capitalism and globalisation. I don't
underestimate any spirit of the world. I am a peacefull man and I hope that the world is
not turning into the III. war. I don't support terrorism, but although I am thinking
about the reason, why and why? If you'll read some book about the globalisation and what
the big world concerns are doing, maybe you'll get the answer. But once again I am not
for terrorism, but all the people we have to learn something from such happenings and
develope more respect to each other. best regards B----

---- Original Message -----

Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 11:33:26 CDT
From: "A-------- H----- S------"
Subject: RES: To Whom it may Concern

See what I think about your mail (R----- sent it to me):

It was so well written.


I makes me aks myself: Where are we going to? What's going to happen with our world? Is
it the 3rd World War start?

Why do we do that with ourselves?


Why don't we change war for peace? It's so easy to be gentle! It's so easy to talk!


And, in my oppinion, the WTC fall was only one more fact! Of course it was a big one.
But if you got choked with that, it's because of 2 reasons: or you lost somebody there
or you only watched to the fact on TV. But what about the rest? What about the africans
dying of hunger? What about all people killed every day without a reason? I'm sure you'd
be choked if you could watch to it on TV!


And more: if a WTC could fall every day, it would become so normal you wouldn't care
about it anymore!

WE MUST STOP ALL THIS!!!


They were wrong! They should never do such thing. But I don't think that a revenge could
solve the problem. Why don't we try music first?


The world we live won't get better if we respond all the time with the same answer!
Remember what Jesus did? He showed him his other face!

We yet know how to solve the problem. Most of the time we don't want to! That's the
biggest problem!

Let's stay united!

I hope you and everybody around you are ok! From deep inside my heart!

Your friend,
A---.

---- Original Message -----

Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 11:16:49 CDT
From: [email protected]
Subject: RE: To Whom it may Concern

David, Thanks for the letter.


Regards, D---- D Technical Support Representative Jasc(r) Software, Inc. Tech Support

Phone: (952)--- - ---- Email: [email protected] Web Support:

-----Original Message-----

Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 11:11:40 CDT
From: "G----- R-----"
Subject: Fw: To Whom it may Concern

I support these words! Do you?

----- Original Message -----

Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 10:57:44 CDT
From: "G----- R-----"
Re: To Whom it may Concern

David,


Sincere condolences to all families and friends of the deceased in 'America under
attack'. There are no words that can describe deep sorrow and burning anger that filled
my mind on Tuesday afternoon (CET). I hope those responsible will be brought to justice

ASAP.

Take care,


G----- R-----, Slovenia, Europe [email protected]

continued below

continued from above

----- Original Message -----

Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 04:42:59 CDT
From: "J--- P--- P------"
Subject: Re: To Whom it may Concern

And me too, buddy. Nice paper.

Keep in touch.

J-----

----- Original Message -----

Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 22:02:27 CDT
From: "K---- A----"
Subject: TRIBUTE TO AMERICA

TRIBUTE TO AMERICA This, from a Canadian newspaper, no less, is worth sharing. America:
The Good Neighbor. Widespread but only partial news coverage was given recently to a
remarkable editorial broadcast from Toronto by Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian television
commentator.

What follows is the full text of his trenchant remarks as printed in the Congressional Record:

"This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.

When France was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it. When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the United States that hurries in to help. This spring, 59 American communities were flattened by tornadoes. Nobody helped. The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions of dollars into discouraged
countries. Now newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent, warmongering Americans. I'd like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplane. Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tri-Star,
or the Douglas DC10? If so, why don't they fly them?

Why do all the International lines except Russia fly American Planes? Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or woman on the moon? You talk about Japanese technocracy, and you get radios. You
talk about German technocracy, and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy, and you find men on the moon - not once, but several times and safely home again. You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everybody to look at. Even their draft-dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless they are breaking Canadian laws, are
getting American dollars from ma and pa at home to spend here. When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke.

I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake. Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them get kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is
not one of those."

Stand proud, America!

----- Original Message -----

Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 21:37:45 CDT
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: To Whom it may Concern

to David


I do not know why you chose my address to send this e-mail I should let you know that I
have lost my uncle in W.W.II and I lost my husband in Vet war. I understand your hurt
and pain I feel the same I now must face that my son could go to war. and face the same
faith of his father and great uncle I know that we will face what may come and over come
it all. What makes me upset is the prices that our fellow American are charging helpless
people that are strand at our airports. And the price of gas in the Midwest as of today
and that the oil company are now charge as of 11:00 am yesterday up 25 cents

David Grouchy


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continued from above


I was surprised to hear President Bush say "They have underestimated the American spirit" about a week and a half after the event.


Here is a link to video and transcript
www.politicalvideo.org

george-bush-thanks-cia

The folks who conducted to act on our country on September 11th made a big mistake. They underestimated America. They underestimated our resolve, our determination, our love for freedom. They misunderestimated the fact that we love a neighbor in need. They misunderestimated the compassion of our country. I think they misunderestimated the will and determination of the Commander-in-Chief, too. (Applause.)

:|
David Grouchy

reply to post by BlasteR

I also live in Alaska and your post reminded me about that Japanese Airliner, I had forgotten all about that part of my day!

Now that you've jogged my memory I remember the reports coming in that a commercial airliner was still in our airspace and not communicating with anyone. My biggest fear in those first minutes of beginning to grasp what even happening in our country was the pipeline. I live in the Valley and didn't think Anchorage has any target interesting enough but the PIPELINE!!!! Then I heard the Japanese plane reports and I was sooooo scared my worst fear was about to become reality

I guess it didn't stay in my *critical information* memory banks due to a happy ending with that plane.

Be cool this winter Squarebankser

on 9/11, i was at work, the only news i received was from a contractor who told me about NY.
no tv or radio, the event didn't become real until i was at home, 6pm.

i went into shock, not abel to think clearly, i knew things would change, the financial sector was a disaster, the warmongers would take over.
my first thought was to quit work, stay home for 3 years, and then see how much the world would change.
then, if i stay home, my friends cars in the driveway, my relatives making me run their useless errands,being at work was better.

at work, a Cambodian lady walked into the break room, she had told me much about the war, refugee camps, the fears and problems of her community, and i realized that her fears were greater than mine.
i asked her if she was an american citizen. she told me she didn't know anything about these things.
i said i would get her the paperwork, went to the federal JFK building, talked to an attorney in Boston, and within 2 months her and her relatives were citizens.

this is what i learned from 9/11, that even when we are at our most depressed, feeling sorry for ourselves, it's still possible to reach out and help someone.

I was at work in the office at the school. I'm a secretary. It was around 830 central time and the principal went running down the hall, into the conference room across from my desk and was saying that his wife just called and said somethings happening in NY. I got up and walked in behind him and a couple of other people followed too. We started watching just minutes before the 2nd plane hit. It was just so weird that I couldn't comprehend it all. My first thoughts for some reason were "what's wrong with those planes, why are they falling into those buildings" it took several seconds, which seemed like minutes, to realize what was going on.

It's odd the things you think of when something like that happens. I started thinking about that movie "Red Dawn" it just came to mind. It was just a really, really sad day

It was the day after I met my wife, and the day before I was planning to join the army. Nothing made sense to me that day.

I wondered how long it would take to put the fires out, and to fix the damage. I wondered what it would be like to goto Nyc and see the damage, as I went to Nyc every christmas. When the first fell, I was shocked. Then began to wonder what its going to be like only seeing one tower during christmas. Never thought the first would fall. Never considered the 2nd would follow. I started feeling confused and not believing what I was seeing.

Needless to say, I have not returned to Nyc since. I no longer go for christmas. I no longer wish to see that city. You could build countless "freedom" towers, and I will not go. I do not feel free after that day. unfortunately, I wish to see the reflecting pools, but I'm not sure.

unlike a few responders in this thread.. I never saw the first crash, and I wonder how any of you actually did. perhaps people lie in their "stories" of 9/11.

On Sept 11, 2001, I had just dropped off my teenagers to catch the school bus (we lived in the country) and was on my way to work. I was driving down the highway and it was a nice day and it felt peaceful and quiet and then the news flashed on the radio station I was listening to. I pulled off the road and listened and that peace and quiet feeling was gone. I just felt sad.