Pensees: Where Were You?

My daughter, then 3, asked for help putting a Blue’s Clues video in the VCR. She already had the television turned on, and when I came around the corner of the room, I was stunned by the sight of smoke pouring out of one of the WTC towers. As I tried to figure out what happened, the reporter started yelling. It’s hard to put into words the horror of watching the airplane crash into the second tower. Then, as journalists still tried to piece together what was happening, further depths of horror when the towers collapsed.

My husband was at church that morning, and I called him as soon as I realized that it was a passenger plane that had crashed into the first tower. But he was headed off to speak in the school chapel and told me he’d just call me later. After watching the towers collapse, I called the church again and told the secretary that I really thought they needed to turn on the television in the AV room at church to see what was happening. None of the church staff had any idea anything was happening; they were in a staff meeting by then. The staff meeting ended early that day.

I told my story of 9/11/01 on my blog!

http://joyfulnotes.wordpress.com/2006/09/08/i-remember/

Hey, Bob, here on the west coast it was 6:30 am, our TV has an alarm feature and we woke to the words from a CNN anchor saying “An airplane has just flown into the World Trade Center.” Having just been in NYC that May, and driven along the street right beside the towers, we immediately woke up and watched the whole awful scenario unfold.

I remember the eerie silence the next three days as flights everywhere were grounded. No noise in the sky at all.

Regards,
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

I was at work. It was a few minutes after 9 a.m. when my co-worker walked into the office and asked me, “Have you checked the news yet?” She knew it was my habit to hit a news site for headlines before beginning the day’s work. This day I hadn’t, and we spent the day watching the news online in numb horror. Back then we were still on dial-up, and I remember fighting to keep connected, making the rounds of the news sites when one feed would go down trying to find another that would cooperate.

My boss and another co-worker were in Washington DC for the AACS Legislative Conference. They were mere feet from the White House when security turned their group away. Traffic was gridlocked in DC, and they had to walk the blocks back to their hotel. One of them was able to get a cell phone call through to our office before the cell towers all jammed, so we knew they were fine, but for hours after that we couldn’t get in touch with them. They told us later of being able to see the smoke from the Pentagon and trying to get a clear story of what had happened as they walked back to the hotel. They managed to get a ride back to Georgia the next day; we went back to the airport on Thursday to retrieve their cars, and I remember being amazed at the clear, silent skies around the airport.

I mainly remember how we occasionally tried to work that day, only to find ourselves transfixed in front of the computer as the next event would unfold. I still have a folder with notes I took as the news came in - flight numbers & destinations, news of the crash in PA, etc. At one point they reported the wrong flight numbers for the wrong crashes, because I had to draw arrows switching their places. By the time I got a streaming feed online, the second plane had hit the other tower, but we watched both towers collapse in real time. It was absolutely unreal.

One of my most vivid memories is of listening to the radio in my car a few nights later. Politicians and officials in Washington (I believe) were standing on the steps somewhere singing God Bless America. I was crying so hard I probably should have pulled over.

I was on my morning workshift in my senior year of college. As you said, I thought it was a small plane, but then heard about the second plane and realized what was going on. I went to chapel and we prayed.

I was an intern at Shalom Ministries in NYC the summer before 9/11 and we stood on top of the WTC. Would have never guessed they would not be there one year later. Cannot wait until they build Freedom Tower.

One more interesting note about 9/11. I live minutes from NYC and teach at Madison Avenue Baptist Academy in Paterson, NJ. Paterson is where the men who flew the planes into the WTC lived before the event. As you saw, there were people celebrating afterwards on the streets of Paterson, having a high Arabic population. Pastor Harvey of Madison Avenue Baptist Church tells how the Arabs were celebrating in the streets when a Dominican gang pulled up and began firing at the people celebrating, killing some. The police did nothing!

I was sitting in a seminary class at BJS, History of Doctrine, and Dr. Beale asked Mark Vowels to stand up and announce that one of the WTC towers had been struck, apparently by an airplane, and that terrorist motives were suspected. I learned more sobering facts and saw footage between classes and in chapel.

It is interesting that the default assumption was that the news-reporting must be sensationalized and blown out of proportion. At the time, anyway, disbelief was probably the average American’s initial reaction. If the same kind of news were reported today—say a hit on San Francisco or Chicago—I doubt it would be any less devastating, but it wouldn’t take so long for the initial shock to turn into belief.

I remember being overwhelmed by the emerging stories of Christians who had been miraculously spared, Christians who performed heroically under pressure, or Christians who died with a clear testimony.

Most remarkable to me in the immediate aftermath of 9/11’s attacks were the unique opportunities that believers in secular workplaces had to minister to their colleagues. I decided then that I really wanted to be working in a secular workplace by the first anniversary of 9/11. And the Lord allowed that to happen.

The increased exposure to Islam and the spotlight on the 10/40 window after 9/11 really inclined my heart toward missions work in Muslim countries, and really served to intensify rather than deter my interest in missions work overall.

I was sitting in a hotel room in Martinsburg, WV not far from DC or Shanksville, PA. I had just finished my devotions and there was a knock on the door by one of our group (we were in town for a field administrators meeting - I used to be employed by a mission agency) and he told me about what had just happened and we sat there and watched the 2nd plane hit.

We did not realize the severity of what had happened because at the time no one really knew what was going on. We went about our day and played golf as we had scheduled. We went to dinner later on with a group of people and the restaurant was virtually empty. If we had known the severity of the situation at that time, we probably would not have played golf that day, but in retrospect, it was a good diversion from the TV and listening to the liberals (like Peter Jennings and Dan Rather) blatantly attack President Bush.

I was working for Coca-Cola in downtown Atlanta. A co-worker came in and asked us if we had heard about the plane that crashed into one of the WTC buildings. We all thought she was talking about a small, personal aircraft. Often it was hard to get to Internet news sites when big stories broke because of all the people clogging up our Internet connection. so, once we heard that the WTC towers were on fire, a couple of us decided to walk down to one of our lobbies to watch the news on the big screen TV’s they had down there. I remember my surprise when we were told that the buildings were hit by commercial jetliners. It was even harder to believe that it was done on purpose. I also remember the new casts from near the White House mentioning that they saw smoke in the distance but did not know where it was coming from. Before too long there was a group of about 30-40 of us watching in silent disbelief as the events unfolded.

The thing I remember the most was watching the first tower fall and not understanding what I was seeing. I was wondering how they were going to put the fire out but it never occurred to me that the towers might fall. Even when I was watching the collapse, I thought all I was seeing was distortion from the heat. I didn’t know what to think at the time. I just could not fathom what was happening before my very eyes.

I was in the eighth grade (I was homeschooled). I remember starting school about 8:35 that morning. I was starting to work on my English assignment when my mom called from downstairs telling me to come down. I went down in time to see the second plane hit the WTC. My mom allowed me to do my written assignments downstairs for the rest of the day.

I was teaching my first hour junior high English class and one of the students raised his hand asking prayer because “a plane hit a building in New York”. I remember imagining a little plane accidently landing in some building. A short time later, the principal pulled me out of class to tell me about the second plane and to give me a better idea of what was going on. We didn’t get much English done that hour. I remember the kids asking things like, “What is the draft?” and “Are we being invaded by a foreign country?” A amazingly good guess later established me as a political genius in their eyes when they asked me who was responsible and I told them I thought it was Osama Bin Laden. At the end of class, I joined the juniors and seniors where they were watching live footage in time to see the towers fall. I remember looking at the white faces of our seniors and hearing the question again, “What is the draft?” We were worried that our youth pastor who was traveling through Boston might have been on one of the flights. I drove home from school to get the phone number for his fiancee’s home so we could call and be sure. As I drove, the roads were empty. Cars were parked along the sides of the roads as people listened to their radios. My dad, who rarely kept in touch with me, called me on my cell phone “just to hear my voice and say that he loved me.” When everything was uncertain that morning, priorities became very clear for us all.

i was in the sixth grade doing my school in the basement when we got a call from my dad telling us what had happened and to turn on the news. my mom made me finish my school first but i finished in record time to see what had happened and i was curious cause i had no clue what the pentagon or the trade centers were it certainly changed my view on watching the news and being intrested in politics and whats going on in the world!

I was teaching 5-6 grade and had no idea until after the twin towers fell. I was a first year teacher and was one to get to my morning teacher’s meeting on time so I was there at 7:44CST (The teacher’s meeting started at 7:45)so I missed the first plane hit. At 10:00 I had entered the hall as it was a recess for my students and one of the young ladies met me at the drinking fountain and asked me if I had heard about the attack on NY. I thought she was joking and told her that it was not funny and that she should not be joking like that. She told me that I should go check it out on the TV in her classroom, so I did. I did not see any of it live.
Another teacher filled in for me for my next 1/2 hour of my class so that I could get caught up on the events.
It is definitely one of those days that will be etched in my mind as long as the Lord gives me memory.