9/11 Ten-Year Anniversary: We are all connected
by LauraLoo
Where were you when 9/11 happened? I was driving into work when the first plane hit the WTC at 7:46 AM Chicago time. Then while at work the second plane hit the WTC, then the Pentagon and finally Shanksville. Our team met in the Board Room and watched the footage in horror. By 11:30 AM our company was released to go home and grieve our nation’s loss of precious lives.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7b2ZTlWiOg[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c5OEkFpziE[/youtube]
God bless America!
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Sep.11, 2011 8:20 am |
Video of the day |
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
I was waiting for transportation and had the T.V. on when I seen the events unfold. Danny was still getting chemo then and we were waiting for transportation to bring us to New Orleans. I believe all things are possible with God so my prayer is that the next time an attempt would be made to bring destruction on our country that those sent to die would be able to see the beauty of our country, not the perfection because the perfection of growth is that it is not perfect. And that when they see the beauty of our country they will also see the hope and want that enough for there own loved ones that instead of choosing death they will instead choose life for themselves. So my prayer for our own country and those countries who hate us is life instead of death, hope instead of hate and joy instead of sadness. Sorry to get off thread.
I was a senior in high school we were going over a test we had taken and a teacher came by which was after the first plane hit. And told my teacher he said we would get to that after we finished going over the test a couple of minutes later that teacher came by again after the second plane hit then my teacher turned on the TV and we watched it.
I was in D.C. in July 2001 so if it would have happened in July I could have seen it happen. We took a bus from our hotel to the pentagon where we got the subway, and about the time the plane hit the pentagon was about the same time we were normally getting there to get the subway.
I was 21. I was sitting eating an eggo waffle in my first apartment, watching “Good Morning America” before I headed to work. When they said a plane had hit the WTC I thought they meant a little Cessna. I thought “What kind of idiot pilot doesn’t see a huge skyscraper right in front of him? Was the pilot drunk?” I drove to work and they said the second tower had been hit. My boss and I sat huddled in front of a radio as workers from nearby Philly freaked out. Being so close to Philly was scary because we really thought we were next (NYC and DC attacked and we’re right in the middle!) We finally left work and I drove to my boyfriend (now husband) house and watched the news with his parents. So terrifying. And the huge black cloud that swept over the Philly region a few days later… eerie.
This is a very interesting, not-long read on choosing how to sort and lay out the names of the deceased on the memorial. They didn’t want to do it alphabetically, and obviously could not do it chronologically, so they decided to do it by location – but wanted to reflect the randomness of the day, and the bonds, whether intimate or casual, that are the undercurrent of life for each of us, and were for those who died, even up to their last day. It turns out the solution was a combination of relationships, algorithms, and design.
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2011/05/16/110516ta_talk_paumgarten
“By the end of that year, the foundation had received twelve hundred requests for adjacencies (and these didn’t include the self-contained adjacencies, such as, say, Ladder Company 7 or Cantor Fitzgerald, which, with six hundred and fifty-eight names, represented the biggest, and most challenging, adjacency block of them all). The reasons for these requests were varied. Sometimes the victims were cohorts, or best friends. In other cases, the families knew, from last phone calls, whom their loved ones had been with in the end—in an elevator, on a ledge—and wanted those people listed together.”
Here is more information on this: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663780/at-911-memorial-name-placements-reflect-bonds-between-victims-thanks-to-algorithm
Some of the adjacencies: “On that terrible morning, when American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center, Victor Wald, 50, was working in his 84th floor office at the small brokerage firm, Avalon Partners. Like his colleagues, he raced for the exits, and scrambled down the stairs. But, having suffered from rheumatic fever as a child, he collapsed in exhaustion on the 53rd floor, as frantic workers from the building’s upper floors hastily passed him by. Harry Ramos, 46, the head trader at the small investment bank, May Davis Group, who worked on the 87th floor, saw him on the stairs, and stopped.
They had never met, had no friends or relatives in common. But Ramos saw Wald and said, “I won’t leave you.” Ramos managed to coax Wald down to the 36th floor, where they sat together as the building collapsed.
When the National September 11 Memorial opens this fall, on the tenth anniversary of that world-changing day, the two friends’ names will be inscribed next to each other on the granite wall surrounding the Memorial Garden’s fountains.”
“People can learn the human relationships and stories underneath the names themselves. If, for example, you see the 650 employees from Cantor Fitzgerald together, you realize that an entire company was nearly wiped out. Had they been arranged alphabetically, that bit of meaning would have been lost.”
“Some of the adjacencies are particularly poignant. Two brothers, firefighter John T. Vigiano II, and police officer Joseph Vincent Vigiano, both died that day. On the memorial, John’s name appears at the end of his unit; next to it, Joseph’s name begins a list of the men in his unit.”
i was in my basement getting ready to watch the Ananda Lewis Show. The episode with NSYNC’s appearance was supposed to be that day. I didn’t know what had happened when I turned the television on and waited for the show to change to the one I was waiting for,
A member of my parish lost her sister on 9/11. I am sure her family was in New York today for the memorial.
I was a freshman in college. I had just finished up 8am calculus and was grabbing a quick breakfast when I heard the first tower had been hit. Everyone thought it was an accident. As I was walking to my next class, the second tower was hit. The professor knew what had happened and didn’t tell us; to this day I struggle with my anger towards this selfish man for withholding the information so that it didn’t interrupt his class.
In 1970 or ’71 I was at a look-out in New Jersey, some 20 miles to the west of New York. I could clearly see those towers, only about two-thirds completed. Wow! They were going to be the tallest buildings in the world! Even taller than the Empire State Building!
A few years earlier I’d seen “2001: A Space Odyssey” when it first came out. As a new teen-ager, I was looking forward to that year. Surely we’d all have flying cars by then!
Littlle did I know it would be such a monumental year for me - but more importantly for the country. I was dozing in the hospital bed brought in as a rental to my home. I’d broken a bone for the first time in my life - my ankle - and was recovering from a second operation because of an infection. I was on a vancomicin drip.
But that wasn’t on my mind when my mother came down and said to turn on the tv. How surreal. Was this a movie? A drug side-effect?
I’ll never forget that look on President Bush’s face after Andy Card told him about the second plane. What an important, moving moment on such an infamous day. What must have been going through his mind as he calmly sat there, barely listening to the children read, while his thoughts were a million miles away?
While his staff was preparing their departure and setting up a camera feed right there in the school for his first words to the nation, he didn’t want to startle the children by bolting out of the room just to stand around while things were set up.
I was going to mention those who thought he froze in panic, but they’re not worth the time.
President Bush gave the finest presidential speech I’ve ever seen a few days later in the Washington Cathedral. May we all stand as tall as he - and all the responders – did on that day.
When people ask me where I was on 9/11 when the planes hit, I have to truthfully say I slept through it.
The previous day I had been in my apartment in the Bronx, doing last-minute work on my doctoral dissertation at Fordham, which I was supposed to turn in within less than two weeks and defend in a month. I worked until around 4 a.m. and finally went into bed. I tossed and turned with anxiety about my studies and finally fell asleep around 6.
Around 12:30 p.m., one of my mom’s repeated frantic phone calls finally succeeded in rousing me. (I had put the phone in the spare room so it wouldn’t wake me at night). She was calling from home in Iowa, half screaming and half crying at once, like I’d never heard her before. I learned of the horror all at once:
“Where were you? Why didn’t you answer the phone? Don’t you know what happened? All hell has broken loose. The country’s been attacked by terrorists. The World Trade Center Towers are gone, razed to the ground. The Pentagon is in flames. There was another plane too that crashed. . . (this was the first I understood that planes were involved) . . . I’ve been calling and calling and was so worried when you didn’t answer. . . ”
I felt a chill, then went completely numb. I have no idea what I said in reply. Mom eventually calmed down. “Turn on the TV.” she said, “I’ll call back.”
I turned on the TV, and viewed the horror first hand. I didn’t dress that day. I didn’t work. I didn’t even eat because of the knot in my stomach. I just sat in front of the TV for hour as the world changed forever, praying for the victims, proud of the rescuers.
Dear Lord, please watch over our city, our country and our world, today, tomorrow and always. Amen.
I was thirteen, and was doing some yardwork for the church my family went to, when the pastor’s wife came running out after the first tower was hit and got me and the other boys to watch the whole thing on tv. I just remember watching with horror, praying that some would get out alive.
I was in a college class, and a young man came in looking dazed and asked if we could turn on the TV. The professor reacted with bemusement as he told us a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. A girl then announced she had just received a text message telling us *both* towers had been struck by planes, and we didn’t know what to think. She said one was leaning as if it might fall. Well, the professor did not seem to think this was all that serious, so she continued on with her class lecture, which lasted until 11 AM. I went to my next class where I walked in, the TV was already on, the picture was almost all snow but we were all staring at it transfixed: both towers had fallen, the Pentagon had been hit, a plane had crashed in Pennsylvania, and there were rumors of a bomb at the State Department in DC. Were there any more attacks coming? How many had already died? It was like the whole world had fallen apart in the previous 90 minutes.
That professor apologized the next day for not having realized the gravity of the situation, but it still left a mark on me, feeling that the bottom had dropped out from under the whole country, while she had been talking about things that are ultimately quite irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
Also, I would like to bring something to everyone’s attention, the plight of St. Nicholas Church of New York City. It was a tiny church next to the World Trade Center. When the towers fell, this church was crushed beneath the rubble. Unfortunately, they have not reached an agreement with the Port Authority, which excavated their land without their permission, making it so the land owned by the church cannot be built upon for the time being.
Please take a minute and visit their website, and watch this video about their struggle, and say a prayer that one day St. Nicholas will rise from the ashes.
Requests for prayers have been said, and thanks for sharing what you were doing the morning of 9/11 (as well as the sleeping Lori). :)
I’m now glad the 9/11 weekend is over, it was emotionally draining for me. At the same time, I’m so glad the ten-year anniversary fell on a weekend which gave additional time away from work to reflect, pray, listen to radio and watch TV specials, and watch videos posted on this site.
Alexandra, I’ll check out your links this week. I didn’t have time to do so yesterday.
LL
10 years ago I had just brought my son to preschool. Heard on the radio that a plane had hit the WTC. Watched the whole thing on tv in horror.
LL,
This weekend has been so hard for me as well. Feeling so heavy hearted.
At the time, I commuted through the WTC. That morning my alarm clock did not go off, so I was an hour late. (Thank YOU GOD!!) So I was on the NJ Transit train into Newark Penn Station when they announced that the PATH train (subway from NJ into the City) to WTC was closed, that a plane had hit one of the buildings. We watched the smoke from the train. By the time we got to Newark the second plane had hit. We didnt’ really understand what was happening, so my thought was just to figure out another way to get to work. I was trying to call the office but the phones were jammed. A very kind operator connected me with my husband’s office back in NJ. He told me that all federal office buildings were closed and that I should come home.
While in Newark Penn Station, there was a bar that was setting up for the day and had the TV on. That is where I saw the first building come down. A woman near me started to break down, that she knew people in that building. I remember thinking “Why is she freaking out?” Looking back, it felt like a movie and it wasn’t real, but truly SURREAL! There were people coming in from returning PATH trains covered in soot and sobbing. It was horrible. I got on the next train home and everyone on my car huddled around someone’s portable radio and listenend to what was going on. We were instant family. That’s where I was when the second building went down.
The word “armageddon” was running through my mind and I was thinking, how do I share Jesus with all these strangers on this train? So I walked through the cars and just told people to get to know Jesus!
After the first anniversary in 2002, I decided that 9/11 was no-tv day in my house. I am lucky that my former colleagues survived, that my friend’s husband went down to the subway rather than linger upstairs which saved his life, and that one of my friends got out in time but he never saw his co-workers again. Finally, one friend was emotionally broken by the experience and who can blame anyone for that?
I remember where I was when I heard, that I intinctively put my arms over my head and crouched down. I remember when I went back to the site 5 years later, I had to hold onto the fence to hold myself up while callous people around me were smiling and posing for pictures in front of the ground. I remember the troll dolls on my colleague’s desk. That silly little detail haunts me.
I was at my mechanic’s awaiting a diagnosis on my vehicle at the time when hearing that the first plane hit. In shock, I went about a block away to a convenience store to get some coffee or cigarettes or something; there I heard that the second plane had hit.
And then hearing more as the day deteriorated from there, and then all the crap from the multiculturally tolerant pro-abort crowd equating prolife activists with the jihadists, ad nauseam…Kyrie eleison.
What still blows my mind to this day is that no matter how far we were from the attacks, everyone still called their loved ones just to check on eachother. I was in Texas, a junior in college in “Intro to Social Work” class during the attacks. My class started at 8:00 central time and ended at 9:20. When I got back to my eerily silent dorm room, my roommate was sitting on our futon, glued to the TV and filled me in on the two planes. I remember seeing the two buildings burn, but not collapse, and I am sure that they had collapsed before I returned from class and what I saw was replay.
So I was in Texas, far from the carnage and my mother in Texas called me to check on me. My father in Pennsylvania rented a car (planes were grounded) and drove straight home to us. I was 21 and selfish, so I convinced my mom to let me stay in the dorms and not drive home just because I didn’t want to. I didn’t realize she wanted me home just to see me and know I was okay. I did go home when classes were cancelled 2 days later and my grandfather passed away from cancer that Friday.
It amazes me that we knew none of us were in danger, but we still called to check. My boyfriend called his sister and brother in law in Manhattan and I called my friend who worked in the Pentagon and all were safe.