09/11/2001 Memories

[MFS62]

What do you remember about that day?

I was in a government building and they shut it down and sent us home. My daughter was scheduled to fly to L.A. that day, we hadn't asked her flight number. When I got home, we sat, waiting to hear if she was on one of the planes that had crashed. My Son-in-Law was serving in the Army and kept calling us to find out if we had heard from her. Hours later, we heard from her. She had been on the Whitestone Bridge on her way to the airport with some business associates. Traffic was stopped, detoured away from the airport and the bridge was closed and she couldn't return home. Cell phones weren't working. One of her companions said he had a relative with a house on Long Island. They went there, and when she called to tell us she was ok she was sitting by a pool with a strong drink in her hand. We had one, too.

Never forget.
Later

[metirish]

I was working same job as I am now , at my desk around 8am , first patient for testing would have been 9am, I was on the Irish Times homepage when I saw breaking news , one of the docs remarked that it was likely a small private plane.....then the second plane, we all went to a lounge ,including the patient and watched.....my sister was working in an Irish pub on Stone street at the time, thankfully she had not left Queens that early for work, scary time , certainly I remember being numb, I grew up loving the USA and knew I would likely leave to live here at some point....

[batmagadanleadoff]

What do you remember about that day?

.....
There were no cell phones then.

There were. Cell phones had been around since the early 90s. I definitely remember having one on that day and having trouble using it. I think that later on that day, the connections were shut down and it was impossible to use them, at least for us regular civilians.

[metirish]

Indeed, I dated a girl that had a cell phone in the late 90s

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

Wifey Bucket (then just Buck-ette) had a cell phone that was inoperable.

I had just been laid off and so had no job to go to that morning. I heard it first unravel on Howard Stern then went out to Vernon Blvd and watched it. Then we discussed it on the mofo.

I don't like talking about 9-11 or feel aligned with the "never forget" it crowd; of course I remember it. But there was a lot of bad shit that happened because of that day that we're still dealing with.

[metirish]

If this happened today in the age of Twitter etc ,wow , even back then my work supervisor went deep into the Gov did this rabbit hole ..

[metsmarathon]

I don't like talking about 9-11 or feel aligned with the "never forget" it crowd; of course I remember it. But there was a lot of bad shit that happened because of that day that we're still dealing with.

this is exactly how i feel about 9/11, as well.

osama bin laden didn't defeat america that day. but he sure laid the groundwork for us to defeat ourselves.

[MFS62]

Indeed, I dated a girl that had a cell phone in the late 90s

Yes, I mean to say there was no service/ cellphone weren't working. I'll correct it.

Later

[batmagadanleadoff]

I guess I'm lucky in that I didn't know anyone personally that got hurt (or worse) on that day, and have no drama stories about worrying about someone that was on a flight that morning or working in the Towers.

One of my (of many) strongest memories of that date was the weather. That might've been the best day weather-wise in the history of the NYC that I lived in. Just perfect. You could've worn a fall jacket or a fall sweater or gone out topless on that day and either way, you'd've been totally comfortable.

[Edgy MD]

I don't like talking about 9-11 or feel aligned with the "never forget" it crowd; of course I remember it. But there was a lot of bad shit that happened because of that day that we're still dealing with.

this is exactly how i feel about 9/11, as well.

osama bin laden didn't defeat america that day. but he sure laid the groundwork for us to defeat ourselves.

I amn't comfortable with speaking about it, either, because declaring us all impacted and all united led to a lot of bad policy that many allowed to happen rather than feel less-than-American — or worse, being labeled as such. I don't know how much insanity would have happened had the attack struck in the age of ubiquitous social media. The false-flag believers that arose out of the 9/11 were a maddening-enough group.

I nonetheless do force myself to talk about it when it comes up, in part to honor my lost friends and classmates, but more importantly to resist ambitious political shitbirds continuing to use it as a pretext for whatever nihilistic malice they are cooking, or to play More Patriotic Than You/More Christian Than You as leverage as they grasp at power. The likes of the anti-Victory Mosque hysteria (around 2010?) and the Sharia Law Resistance Movement (peaking in 2012-to-2015?) felt like a form of terrorism in themselves.

Those evidence-free initiatives have had no other foundation other than shaming other people with "Don't you remember?!" fake patriotic fealty. In fact, Rudolph Giuliani's attempted run for president had no other foundation either.

Yes I remember. It doesn't mean I'm buying your bullshit.

[Chad ochoseis]

I was living in Bayonne and working primarily in the Princeton area, but my employer also had an office at 40 Wall where I occasionally would show up. The Friday before, my boss mentioned to me that Faith on our team had just lost her grandmother, and maybe I could work from 40 Wall on Tuesday the 11th so I could sign the sympathy card.

I wound up on the last PATH to pull into the WTC. I got on at Exchange Place in Jersey City, four minutes away, and everything was normal. I got off and everything had gone to hell in a handbasket.

The first weird thing was that the platform was empty. It's *never* empty at 8:55 on a Tuesday; a new train is always pulling in before the platform clears at that hour.

The second weird thing was the gas odor. Not gasoline gas, but like a gas main had ruptured, which was my first guess as to what happened.

The third weird thing was having cops barking at us to hustle out of the building via Cortlandt Street.

I looked behind me and saw a big hole on an upper floor, but it honestly didn't look that bad. I hoped that whichever nuthatch group that did it had called in a warning first, decided to be a real New Yorker about it and not gape at it with the crowd - I'd only recently moved back to the area, so I was sensitive about that - and just continued walking towards 40 Wall.

So, when I felt the ground shake and turned around to see an explosion in the South Tower, what looked to me to be halfway up, it scared the hell out of me, but I still had no idea what was going on. I finally got my head together and decided that if people were bombing buildings in lower Manhattan, I probably shouldn't be walking near buildings in lower Manhattan. So I continued on to the FDR bike/walking trail and started heading north. Thought about walking across the Brooklyn Bridge but figured that would also be a target.

I had a flip phone and kept trying to get through to my girlfriend in Morristown, my parents in Scottsdale, or my brother in Cleveland. Got through to GF at 9:30 and left a message on my girlfriend's answering machine telling her I had no idea what was going on, but I was OK. Finally got through to my mom at 9:45, and she was the one who told me that the "bombs" were airplanes.

Once I got north of the Lower East Side and into numbered streets, I walked back towards the city. I started chatting with some random woman who said one of the towers had fallen. I was still in denial; I said I'd seen it and it didn't look that bad. I was passing by some electronics store around 1st and 19th that had a TV broadcasting out on the street, and that was where I heard Bryant Gumbel yelling, "THE WORLD TRADE CENTER IS NO MORE!"

Ah, fuck. I just kept wandering north, aimlessly. Wound up in Central Park. Finally caught some bus heading uptown and got on; nobody was taking fares. I got off by the GWB, called my cousin up by Fort Tryon Park, and crashed with her and her family for three days. Then took a train to Morristown to stay with my girlfriend and her kids. I don't think Jersey City was exactly closed, but they were using it as a staging area for a week, so they were asking people to stay away from Hudson County if possible, so I did.

I knew some people who worked in the WTC, but they were mostly on lower floors and got out. A guy I'd gone to high school with was killed; the story was he had a brother who worked at NORAD and told him what was going on, and he died while evacuating his coworkers. (https://www.wjhg.com/2023/09/11/remembe ... -died-911/)

Epilogue...my then girlfriend used that time (you stayed in my house! With my kids! For three days!) to more or less con me into a marriage proposal. We were married for perhaps the worst two years of my life; in many ways, I'm still recovering. I actually joined this forum in 2006 when I was still feeling pretty isolated and wanted some company to watch the Mets win the NL East.

But I'm in a much happier place now (and the CPF played at least a small role in getting me there).

[MFS62]

But I'm in a much happier place now (and the CPF played at least a small role in getting me there).

I'm glad we helped. That's the best part.

Later

[Edgy MD]

I was living in Bayonne and working primarily in the Princeton area, but my employer also had an office at 40 Wall where I occasionally would show up.

Wasn't 40 Wall the building that Citizen Trump bizarrely bragged had on September 11 become the tallest building in lower Manhattan?

[Chad ochoseis]

Yep. It was THE TRUMP BUILDING, all caps.

[dgwphotography]

343. That number is still a gut punch.

[dinosaur jesus]

It feels impertinent saying anything after Chad's post, but here goes.

I was living in St. Louis. My German girlfriend was in San Diego visiting friends. The phone woke me up--it must have been soon after 8 St. Louis time. It was another friend of hers, calling from Germany. I don't think he even asked for her. He just started referring to the Towers, as if I knew what he was talking about. I was confused and annoyed and wondering why this asshole couldn't have waited with whatever his news was. Poor man; it was early afternoon where he was and he just wanted to talk to somebody in America. I turned on the TV and there it was. I watched the endless replays, from all different angles, for an hour, two hours, whatever it was. I've never watched them since, and never will. And then I walked to Vintage Vinyl to get the new Dylan record, which had just come out that morning. I'd been looking forward to it, but buying it was just a formality now. My girlfriend was stuck in San Diego until the planes were flying again. When she came back she was the only passenger on the plane, and she made friends with the stewardesses. She asked them how they managed to be calm and cheerful, and they said it was their job to be, and medication helped. I tried medication myself after, but it never did much for me. But then we got a cat, and things got a bit better. She was a great cat. RIP Minnie.

[Frayed Knot]

343. That number is still a gut punch.

Folks may remember that in June of that year there was a fire near Shea, from some kids fucking around in a storage facility, that killed 3 NYC firemen.
It got big play in the NY papers since they were city firemen; big play in the L.I. papers as they all lived in the burbs; and big play with the Mets as
they were from the house that served Shea and because of the connection to Rusty's charity. And it was a crushingly sad story: 3 young widows,
eight or nine fatherless kids, it occurred on Father's Day, etc.

And if in the aftermath of that day you were to tell folks that within three months we'd confront that same thing x100, I don't think anyone
would have been able to contemplate such a thing much less know how to deal with it.

[Frayed Knot]

Mostly I remember how slow I was to recognize the magnitude of what was happening even as I was fairly close to the fireworks (SoHo).

- I remember the weather (mentioned above) and was walking that day from Penn Sta towards downtown between 8:30 and 9:00 although by
sheer coincidence I wound up just missing seeing both planes hit (and in retrospect was glad I did) even though the first would have
gone more or less over my head from back to front only slightly to the west

- I remember hearing the sirens of a cop car, firetruck, and an ambulance racing by heading south and somehow thinking those sirens sounded
more urgent than usual. I know that doesn't make any sense but that's precisely what I thought and said to myself as they passed that wherever
those are headed it must be a doozy ... having no idea at that time that my definition of 'Doozy' was about to change.

- I remember hearing about it when Warner Wolf, Don Imus's sports guy though not working that day, called in to dictate what he was seeing
outside his apartment window although he was woken by the crash and at that point had no idea what kind of plane had hit and so neither did I.

- After hearing about it I changed my path to where I could see the north tower. It was smoldering but the fires were really just getting going
and a north breeze was taking what smoke there was away from my view and between the distance (about a mile) and being 1/4 mile up it
was hard to judge the size of the gaping wound in the building.

- After a minute or two looking at the tower I resumed my trek to work (and by doing so just missed seeing the second hit) and remember
seeing most other people going about their business. Typical NYC I thought. Sure this would lead the nightly news that night, but that wasn't
stopping those guys from repairing the cement steps right around the corner from me.

- At some point, after it finally dawning on me that this wasn't some kind of tragic accident, I emailed Bucket to tell him that he might be
getting a visitor as I knew I could walk to L.I.C. but wouldn't be able to get out to suburban Long Island unless transportation reopened.

- I sort of worked for a few hours as the story unfolded before just leaving at some point to start my walk uptown eventually asking some
passing cops what they knew about Penn Sta and being told that it was just about to reopen. Seeing the crowd converging on it I called
an audible and jumped a Subway eastbound towards Queens hoping to outrun the LIRR to Jamaica and avoid Penn Sta entirely (it worked).

- I finally got home (and was close enough to Ground Zero to where I would be off the next three days as well) to find an email from the
parents, then living in Maine, asking all their adult children (3 in the NYC area, 2 close to D.C) just to check in due to all the phone issues
that day. They had no reason to expect that any of us were at WTC or the Pentagon but of course ya never know. By then it was late
afternoon and I think I was the last to answer.

[MFS62]

I used to ride Metro North into the city each day with a guy who was an engineer for the Port Authority. I had worked a project with his department and knew his office was on the 72nd floor of tower#1.
In the days after the attack, the local paper listed the names of people who had been inured or killed in the attack. HIs name wasn't there.
I knew he got on in Wilton, and decided to look up his number. When I called, he answered right away. He said that he had an old pair of Gucci loafers that needed new soles. On the morning of the attack, he stopped to pick up the shoes on he way to work. It took him about 20 minutes out of his way. He told me he hadn't heard the planes hit the building (he was in the subway), but when he got to the basement of his building, the elevator doors opened and smoke came pouring out. He said he "got the f**k out of there and went home".
Everyone else in the office died that day.
His shoes had saved his life.

Later

[Edgy MD]

Yeah, my friend Terry, as far as anybody knew, had never been to the World Trade Center. His company's HR director was running around the afternoon before, trying to get somebody to represent the firm at a conference at Windows on the World. Nobody was raising their hands, so Terry volunteered to go, and his first visit to the Windows was his last.

By sheer coincidence, the HR director was doc g's longtime girlfriend who I had met once or twice. I saw her at the memorial service two or three months later, and she was still having trouble not blaming herself.

One of the very worst and Trumpiest persons in my graduating class fancies himself a film/tv producer and has been trying to hustle a bunch of folks in our high school class to give to his project to make a film to tell the story of the impact on 9/11, despite his having lived in Arizona for a few decades. He was a big mook bully whose two favorite organizations were The Oakland Raiders and The Cosa Nostra, but now seems to think that everybody from our class who died was his best friend back in school. Nobody I know has given him two cents, but he's a persistent bullshitter and has finagled meetings with the mayor and village councilmembers. I really don't want him anywhere near putting his version of the story on the record.