Question Of The Week, 9/10/06
Good morning. Since tomorrow is September 11, 2006, the fifth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center I'm going to cheat a little and use my September 11, 2005 Question Of The Week for this weeks question. So this weeks Question Of The Week is. What were you doing and what were some of your first thoughts and feelings when you heard that the World Trade Center had been attacked. I'll post my answer in the Comment Section Monday night.
God Bless America, God Save The Republic.
God Bless America, God Save The Republic.
posted by David Schantz | 10:33 AM
7 Comments:
I was riding the bus to work. I hadn't heard any news yet that morning. A coworker got on the bus and told me "they got the Pentagon too." I looked up from my newspaper and said "Huh?" She said "you know, those 2 airliners that crashed into the World Trade Center. Another one just crashed into the Pentagon."
After I looked at her even more blankly, she told me the whole story. Then more people started getting on the bus and we were all talking about it. I was too numb and dumbfounded to know what to think.
I'll admit, I got caught up in all the hysteria for the next few months. I actually told a few people that I was glad we had a Republican in the White House at a time like this. I was in favor of those secret tribunals when Bush was pushing for them, and our invasion of Afghanistan to topple the Taliban. I didn't vote for Bush in 2000 but I didn't turn against him until the summer of 2002, when he started using 9/11 to whip up all this hysteria about Iraq.
I was at a conference at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in midtown Manhattan. First, right before we got started at about 8:30 a.m. someone said "I heard something hit the World Trade Center, and it fell down." I just thought that was ridiculous. I mean, how could the World Trade Center fall down?
Then a couple of hours later they stopped the conference and told us what happened. There was an announcement that anyone who couldn't go home could stay in the hotel that night, for free I guess. But I lived just a couple of miles from the hotel so I decided to walk home. I didn't want to stay in the hotel anyway, because it is a landmark hotel and for all we knew, another target.
I was walking downtown and of course everyone else was walking uptown, fleeing downtown. But there was no panic. I could see the huge dust cloud; it looked like something solid, not like dust at all, as if it were a sculpture in concrete against the sky. After I got within 10 blocks of my apartment the air started to smell like smoke and there were bits of paper falling down around me. I went into a local bistro that had the tv on. They gave me a glass of water and we all watched the video of the towers falling down, and there were screams. Then I walked the rest of the way home, and fortunately the smoke and dust in the air didn't get any worse. I went to the roof of my building where some of my neighbors, and one or two WTC evacuees who were friends of my neighbors, were hanging out, some watching the dust cloud which was billowing in our direction. I turned to my neighbor and said "we knew this was going to happen. Or if we didn't, we were stupid."
Since I work in California, I was at work. We huddle around a TV in the main conference room after the first plane struck. When I watched the second plane hit, I could no longer stand and watch. I went back to my desk and stared at pictures on my walls. I did very little that day. I kept thinking of all the people that perished and their families. It was the quietest day I ever had at work..if my phone rang, it was a personal call asking how I felt about what had just happened. I have never felt such sorrow before and since.
What were you doing and what were some of your first thoughts and feelings when you heard that the World Trade Center had been attacked.
I had gone to the bank. On the way there and back, I was listening to a book on tape. The only hint that something was wrong while I was at the bank was the slow computer-response for my deposit (around 9:05 A.M.). Nobody at the bank had any idea that we'd been attacked!
When I got home and popped the tape out, the radio came on. "The Pentagon has been attacked....The White House is being evacuated."
I raced into the house, turned on the TV, and saw the replays of the strikes on the WTC. I called my cousin and asked, "What's going on?" She filled me in. I then called my husband and told him to come home; he did so in a few hours.
I sat in front of the TV all day long, for over 13 hours)--except for breaks to hang a flag from my front porch (my uncles 48-star flg from his funeral at Arlington back in 1959), to fill the bathtub (a country girl's response to any crisis), and once I could get a phone line, to call my homeschool coordinator to cancel classes for that day (two fathers were supposed to be in the Pentagon--one was called out to Justice and the other was on the other side of the building, so both were safe, but it took hours to find out).
When I saw the towers fall, I couldn't believe it! It was like a movie, but real.
I spent most of the day eating Oreo cookies--an entire bag. Nerves, I guess.
Air cover here in the D.C. area hummed all day and all night, for weeks afterwards. I'm under the path for the security loop.
I barely slept the night of 9/11.
I immediately knew who had attacked us that day and determined to find out why. I know now--evil, pure evil.
I will NEVER FORGET that day. It changed my life. Every time I see the same kind of cerulean-blue sky, I look up and remember.
Thanks for stopping by to answer this weeks question. I cheated again and looked back at the answer I gave last year. I still don't understand why our TV and radio were tuned off that morning. I'll never forget the on-line article I was reading about an attack on the WTC and assuming it was a drill. The phone call that I got from my Step-Daughter (telling me what was going on and to turn on the short wave and TV) made me feel like I was having a nightmare that I couldn't wake up from. Today I was thinking about how I felt right after that call. I remember having a cold/numb feeling that I'd never had before or since. I still feel that we will see another terrorist attack on United States soil and I continue to pray that I am wrong.
God Bless America, God Save The Republic.
I was standing outside a building that I was working on just below the castle in Prague. It was a beautiful day and I was giddy because my best friend was arriving that night from San Francisco and I had arranged to have two weeks off from work. I was just there checking on the last details of a job I was doing, and I was having a conversation with a Ukraninan guy who sells paintings of Prague to the tourists who dominate the area.
A british lady who lives in the building suddenly drove up with a panicked look on her face. She had the BBC turned up loud on her radio and she stopped and said, "Did you hear?"... "The World Trade Center has been bombed, or planes hit it, I'm not sure." Right then the first tower went down while we listened and like Elizabeth, I couldn't really understand it.
I realized that my friend was supposed to be getting on an airplane in about an hour and I mentioned that. She said, "oh, sweetheart, he isn't coming."
He showed up a week later, mad as hell.
I was in my Geometry class when i heard the news. And all the girls cry even were College Students. We're shocked!
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