Patriot Retort:
I remember the morning of September 11, 2001 like it was yesterday.
Some friends of mine were in Europe and I was housesitting for them.
And that morning, I woke up violently ill, but decided to go into work anyway.
I lasted about fifteen minutes before I realized I needed to go home.
When I got to my friends’ house, I flipped on the TV in their living room just in time to watch the first tower crumble to the ground.
And everything changed.
For two days straight, both TVs in their house stayed on. I couldn’t bring myself to turn them off.
and i will always remember bush calling islam a “religion of piece
I was sick that day and woke about 2 or 3 in the afternoon. Turned on the tv and couldn’t
figure out what I was seeing. So I thought I was dreaming and went back to sleep.
Waking about 6 or 7. There it was on the tv again so I asked my wife what was happening.
She said I should go back to sleep cause I was still hot.
So the next day I was well enough to understand.
Couldn’t believe it.
I was at my part time job- the boss yelled over the intercom for a meeting at dock door #3. after he told us what happened and he also had a television for us- he sent us all home. sad day in my life for all the loss of life.
I remember flipping to nbc after the 1st tower was hit. bryant gumballs was arguing with a guy who said it was obviously an attack gumballs said that he was being unfair or some such tripe, when then second tower was hit.
My husband was in Syracuse doing some training. The person who was training him wouldn’t stop even though she was told what happened. He had no idea about how bad it was until that evening. He was not able to get a flight out until that weekend. I was sitting at my desk, listening to the radio, and I also had the TV on (I have no idea why). The weatherman on the radio said “hey guys, a plane just flew into one of the towers” Like MJA, I didn’t have the TVs off for 2 days.
Going about the morning business.
I ran an outdoor venue, and one of the sound crew called me.
I sat at the foot of the bed watching for an hour, until I had to leave.
We listened to the radio all day
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2 days prior, my wife of 3 weeks and I wrote a seething letter to United about their mistreatment of our wedding flights to Hawaii. We kissed any resolution goodbye 2 days later.
Time stood still. For days. A month later we discussed how impossible it would be to get the top of a wedding cake protected in a metal bucket in a backpack with ice packs, unchecked, thru security. The realization of our lost freedom sank in pretty deep. America sure did change.
I was recalled back to my squadron at 3AM (Active Duty Military at the time) sat through numerous intel briefings for quite some time.
I was just stumbling into the kitchen for a first cup of coffee. Geoff C. had the tee vee on and the first tower had just been hit. #1 child just starting 1st grade that year and still in bed. Didn’t want the tee vee on when she got up. Treated the morning routine routinely. Called the AF recruiters to see if I could re-up for anything. So angry during all this. We should have turned their desert into glass and apologized later. Mistakes happen, you know.
I was at work on 9/11, but not much work was being done because most of the employees were glued to a TV or radio.
Little information was available, but everyone pretty much knew who had to be behind the attack. At the time we had a young computer programmer who was one of the nicest, gentlest people you could want to meet. The kind who’d give you the shirt off his back if you asked for it. But he was of Arab ancestry (United Arab Emirates, I think, but I’m not sure) and of course he was Muslim, although you’d never know it from his appearance or behavior. He was an American citizen and very much into Western pop culture.
Anyway, his supervisor called him in and told him she thought it would be best if he went home for the rest of the day. Not “Would you feel more comfortable going home?”, or anything like that. Just sent him home. I thought it was a pretty sh1tty move on her part, and I really felt bad for the guy.
What did she think the rest of us were going to do, assault him?
What a maroon.
We had just moved to Las Vegas from San Diego about 3 days before. We were living in a furnished 1 bedroom apartment until our new house was finished. We seldom turned the TV on. I took the dog for her morning walk and as we passed an open window of another apartment I heard the President speaking. I rushed back and turned on the TV and sat in horror as I watched the towers come down. My husband kept telling me to turn it off after a while, but I couldn’t. Like Dianny, the TV stayed on for 2 days while I tried to come to terms with how our lives had changed.
I was getting ready for work (west coast). The wife turned on the TV in our bedroom while I was getting out of the shower. We watched stunned. I remember FOX surmising it might be some sort of weird aviation disaster until the second plane hit. I had 48 people working for me back then so I had to get to work. We shut the shop down at noon and sent everyone home. I had a flight booked the next day to Tucson for an engineering meeting with a customer. Obviously that didn’t happen. But the first day they let planes in the air I was on my way. I remember boarding the plane and there were only two or three other people on the flight. I sat about in the middle of the plane and one of the stewardess mentioned that I was a big guy ask me to sit in the front row. I scanned the two or three other businessman on the plane and kinda of laughed and move up front. Looking back and remembering that day, and the days to follow, what I see missing is how really upset and scared people were. To many people have forgotten.
Was seeing my physician and a nurse came in and said, “they think a crazy pilot in a small plane smacked into the WTC.”
I got home in time to see the second one fly into the second tower.
I called my church office and immediately got our prayer phone circle up to notify and contact church members. We arranged a prayer circle for 4pm that day.
Received a phone call from a Senior Army analyst who worked at the Pentagon who was wounded in the attack. Was asked to go to Pentagon to serve as a para-military aide to chaplains.
Rest of the day a blur.
Never got to Pentagon but went to family area instead. So please don’t consider me a hero or first responder.
My daughter was in the hospital and I was on the phone with a lady from my insurance company about coverage. She put me on hold and I wandered into where my wife was watching TV. I saw smoke coming out of the World Trade Center. I asker her if she was watching a modern type Mighty Joe Young movie. She said no, a plane just hit the tower. Impossible, I thought, on just a beautiful clear day and a blue sky. I was thinking a Piper Cub piloted by some hot shot looking for Tetterboro Airport. What else could it be? Then the second plane hit. Then it hit me: Terrorists:
The lady from the Ins. Co. got back on the line and I told her what happened. She was in Pennsylvania and she knew about it and sounded shaken. I told her I would call back on the matter. She thanked me.
I worked on several floors of both towers for many years as a carpenter. (1987 through 1999) I immediately called my old boss and he told me that yes, he had men on the job there. He broke down on the phone.
I lost three good friends that awful day. Rest in Peace: Maurice Kelly, John Rizzo , and Charlie Mills. I will Never Forget.
Getting ready for work, my roommate came upstairs from her apartment to tell me to turn on the TV. She said a plane flew into one of the WTC towers. Just minutes after turning on the TV, the second plane hit. We knew it was terrorists.
Called in to work and they were telling everyone just to stay home. I kept wondering why someone didn’t do anything about the fires. Didn’t know what they could do, but kept wishing they could do something.
I held my breath as the first tower fell. Was in shock for days.
Oh. also that night there were no lights in the neighborhood. I lived under the flight path to the Mpls airport. NO PLANES for several nights. But I jumped up and looked out the window when I heard the fighter jets fly over. Wondered why I didn’t see their lights, then it dawned on me why they weren’t advertising where they were! doh!
I felt such a surge of pride and comfort as I heard them fly over many times that first night.
I’ll toast to all of the victims and their loved ones tonight. As a group, not individually. Then I’ll drink a toast to settling the score.
It all started during the last 15 minutes of a 10 hour overnight shift. I was supposed to go home at 8:00 CDT to get some sleep, but I couldn’t pull myself away from the TV at work. My drive home took me down Donelson Pike, which goes down the middle of Nashville International Airport. Jets were barely making it to the end of the runway before other jets touched down at the other end.
Sleep was an exercise in futility.
It was a horrible day. Thanking the good Lord that there has not been a repeat on that scale in the U.S. since.
I worked the noon to 6pm shift at a daycare. I got up, took care of all the critters, (horse, chickens, goats, pigs and a calf.) And 3 dogs and 2 cats. Then ran some errands, heard something on the radio about a plane crash in the twin towers, but didn’t realize how bad it was. At work, all the parents came in hushed and whispering. We were trying not to upset the kids. But when I got home and watched tv, I just cried and cried.
9/11 is our wedding anniversary. Flew into Boston Logan that Saturday. Off to vacation on Lewis bay. Fishing trip to the rip with my old buddy Dan. Quick weather check on the tv. Small aircraft had hit first tower. Small aircraft my ass, I thought. Huge gash. Saw plane 2 hit Minutes later.
Everybody knew we were at war. Few of us realized that politicians could fuck it up this badly. Afghanistan should have never seen American blood spilled there. They should have been annihilated day one. Men women and children goats chickens dogs cats.
That we’ve been at this for 16 years is inexcusable.
“Then I’ll drink a toast to settling the score.”
Black Water can settle that score. The U.S. Gov can’t. Just sayen.
Like TN Tuxedo, I worked off Harding by the airport. I remember driving home that afternoon and not a plane in the sky. Never saw that before.
You know those old Roadrunner cartoons where the coyote runs off the cliff but he’s still levitating in the air before he looks down and hoods up a “Yikes” sign? That’s where we are with our government.
They failed us. They keep failing us. They restrict our freedoms and continue coddling potential terrorists out of political correctness. They deploy the tools they got under the Patriot Act against the citizenry and political opponents.
Jimmy Carter infamously intoned about a Crisis of Confidence. Well, we have a Crisis of Competence. No faith in DHS. No faith in the FBI. No faith in the CIA. Our government is hopelessly corrupt and incompetent except when they’re malicious against the innocent. Then its ruthless efficiency, destroying evidence, and going to the mat to defend it.
But pour water over a terrorists face? Yea, that’s whats un-American.
Very few News items leave a mark for me to count time.
The first one was landing on the moon , the second one was Watergate , the third one was the Berlin wall coming down , the forth one was Challenger exploding .
9-11 will be the one that I will never forget or forgive.
That was one sad day. We did not let our 5 year old daughter watch TV on her own for days.
They still have not been payed back in full , but they will be.
I was stationed at a Trident base, you would not believe what going to ThreatCon Delta on one of those means.
I agree with Brad, Faux was running a NBC video feed, I saw the initial footage while prepping for work, the second jet hit as I got to the front gate.
The the world went to shit.
Like most people, I had just been at work a few minutes. A guy working near me told me what happened, so I quickly put my ear buds in to listen to the radio. When the towers fell, and I heard the announcer say, “The Twin Towers are no more”, I sat down on my footstool and cried.
The place I was working at the time was directly under the flight path of DFW Airport. Jets came over every couple of minutes. In the next few days, while all flights were grounded, it was eerily quiet.
reboot
Man would I like to share a twelve pack with you pal.
Brad, next time you drop into Guam tell Fur to give you my email. 🙂 Be ready for Panama canal heat and humidity though!
Hell, you can have my email anyway.
I’ve seen just about everything but aliens and nookler explosions in the last 33 years and I don’t intend on stopping the fun. I just don’t live inside the pressure cooker anymore, I look in from the outside.
My first 90 days at sea was when Ronnie blew up Khadafi’s front porch and we were off the coast in the Med doing observations and call ins. What a different world in ’86.