Where were you on 9/11?

[dabrockster]

I was on the 31st Floor of the State Office Building on 9/11 across from the Capital. My supervisor came to me and told me what happened. We spent the rest of the afternoon watching on TV that horrible day.

At 2 PM they finally let us go home. I went outside and everyone was walking in silence. There were no buses. They had shut down and the roads were empty. It was so eerie that the city was so silent and people were just standing around in a fog. The silence was deafening. The looks in peoples eyes was pure shock and saddness.. It took me hours to get home.. I usually take a bus but because there was no buses I walked to my car. We all walked in silence..

[PaloAltoCougar]

Oddly enough, I was on Cougarboard (which may have been BYUBoard at the time). I had just returned from my morning run and logged on while I cooled down. The initial post headings confused me, "Crap, and now the Pentagon?", "Someone's going to pay for this!" and the like. I flipped on the TV and spent the rest of the day at home, transfixed by the events.

[SoonerCoug]

I was at Vanderbilt for a medical school interview. Cardiac had to drive to Nashville to pick me up because I couldn't fly home.

[Indy Coug]

I was in Indianapolis. I came in to work and was working for 30 minutes not realizing that everyone else in the office (it was a small office of 12 people) were in my boss' office watching it on TV. My wife called me and asked me if I knew what was going on. Just a few minutes after starting to watch it, the first tower came down. I tried working for a short while after seeing that, but I just gave up and went home.

We had another office in the World Financial Center across the street (where I had just recently visited) and had no idea how many people we knew might be dead. Fortunately, no one died from that office.

Fast forward a couple of months later. Everyone in the WFC office were displaced to other offices, including a couple to our Indianapolis office. There was a plane crash on Long Island that was initially thought to be another terrorist attack. When the news broke, the girl sitting next to me from the NYC office just broke down and cried and cried. It just brought home how many victims of 9/11 there were, and it wasn't just those that died and who lost a loved one.

[Babs]

9/11 was the day we first found out my son was handicapped. We were actually sitting in the doctors office when the plane hit. It was utterly surreal - that building a physical representation of my psyche, both of them first teetering in a suspense of disbelief and denial, then dramatically imploding from the unexpected blow.

And I think that for all of us the ramifications were immediate and pervasive, but in a very personal sense my world was radically and permanently changed.

[woot]

9/11 was the day we first found out my son was handicapped. We were actually sitting in the doctors office when the plane hit. It was utterly surreal - that building a physical representation of my psyche, both of them first teetering in a suspense of disbelief and denial, then dramatically imploding from the unexpected blow.

And I think that for all of us the ramifications were immediate and pervasive, but in a very personal sense my world was radically and permanently changed.

Wow that's powerful.

My story involves meeting my crazy ex-girlfriend's crazy mom for some reason in a parking lot to exchange some possessions of some sort. Not sure why the crazy mom was involved at all. Also, I got stung by a bee that morning.

[Babs]

Wow that's powerful.

yeah, well, I'm nothing if not dramatic.

[FMCoug]

I was in the Dallas temple. It was an all day thing as part of Stake temple week. I got there about 6am and didn't leave until 3 or 4 in the afternoon. It was very surreal because news kind of filtered in (I was at the name desk giving out family file names so had the chance to chat a bit) but the reality and enormity of the situation didn't really hit me until I got in the car to go home and turned on the radio.

[I.J. Reilly]

I was waiting in the library for school to start. I had the custom of watching the news in the morning, and by the time I had turned on the tv, the first tower had been hit. I was watching as some anchor was talking and the second plane starts flying in over the shoulder. I could hardly believe it. At first I thought it was a news helicopter or something surveying the scene and then it didn't stop and it just flew right into the other building. I almost fell over in disbelief. It was then I knew it wasn't an accident. What a sad, sad day.

[FN Phat]

I was in a corporate apartment in the Warehouse District of downtown Cleveland. I woke up and saw the 1st plane hit the towers. I was sitting in disbelief and was glued to the television.

Later that morning a low flying plane flew over the skyline of Cleveland, nearly clipping the Key Building (where my parents were working). Everyone was running through the streets. Reports indicated that the plane had to land due to an emergency on board.

[Eddie]

I got in my car to head to work and flipped on the radio. They were talking about a plane having hit the first tower. Initially they had thought it was a small commuter plane - it was early enough in the events that no one was sure what was happening, there was a lot of confusion, and a lot of speculations.

My in-laws are heavy into aviation. FIL was the head of Delta's safety dept. at the time. I called my wife from the car on a cell phone and told her a plane had hit the tower and to turn on the TV.

By the time I got to work, the second plane had hit. Everyone gathered around the TV in the conference room watching. It seemed like there was so little information that the reporters would just repeat the exact same information every 10 minutes. Then the towers went down - it was surreal.

There was no work being done. Not even close. And obviously no one cared. Our CEO didn't exactly close the office, but did tell us that anyone who wanted to go home could do so. I don't think anyone stayed.

It seemed like the only thing on TV - every channel - was reporting on the plane crashes. 24/7 for 72 hours straight. After the first 48 hours I was ready for something different. I just didn't watch TV for the rest of the week.

[The_Tick]

I was sleeping. My wife had the television on in the room but not on the news. My mother was getting ready for work and had her TV on the Today show.

My wife woke me up. I remember that I was shaving when the 2nd tower was hit. We sat on the foot of the bed in silence as the towers came crashing down. My oldest came in and sat down with us and we just watched and cried.

My wife and I then went to work. I worked in a hospital at the time so work had to continue, but there were televisions everywhere.

I honestly can't grasp that it has been 8 years.

[marsupial]

I was 8 months pregnant, working out on an elliptical trainer at the Lifestyles 2000 in Orem. I was watching the TV without headphones wondering what the crap was going on. I remember bawling a few days later watching an interview with a woman on the Today Show who had lost her husband. She was due around the same time as me with her first as well. The thought of losing danimal so suddenly and having to go through with the delivery and subsequent child-rearing without him brought me to tears.

Four years later, I was 9 months pregnant, watching news coverage on Katrina and crying as well. I was glad that no major tragedy was attracting world attention when I had our third, but I was kind of waiting for something to happen.

[il Padrino Ute]

I was sitting in my den doing a bit of work when my wife told me to turn on the tv and watch what was happening. It was only a few minutes later that I watched the jet hit the 2nd tower. It was difficult to believe that that was really happening.

When I saw the first tower collapse (the south tower), I immediately feared for my cousin. She worked in one of the towers, but I wasn't sure which one. I learned later that day that she was in the north tower (the first one hit) but we didn't receive news that she was able to get out of the building safely before it collapsed until almost two days later. It was a sickening feeling to not know.

[pellegrino]

That morning was the first day of comps. The first exam started at 9:00 and I was supposed to be there at 8:45. I finished that exam around 12.00 or so and as I walked out of the library I saw a group of undergrads praying in a circle. I thought that was odd because I had never seen or heard of something like that outside of the temple. I went back to the main office to hand my exam book in and televisions were blaring and I saw images of firefighters and smoke. As I turned it in I asked the graduate secretary what was happening and his words were: "A plane crashed into the WTC and there's another one out there. They've sent fighter jets to shoot it down. Your next exam starts at 1.30 in the library, we'll see you then." And then he turned away to watch the television some more.

I had never been more confused in my life, but I knew I couldn't think about it because I had business to take care of. I avoided everyone, got my lunch, went to my study carrel and prepped for the next exam, took it, and then went home at 5.00 where my wife (who was sent home from work that morning as soon as it hit the news) explained what had happened.

We didn't have TV at that time and it's probably a good thing because I still had four more exams to take over the next week and that would have been a huge distraction. To this day, I have never seen the images of the second plane crashing into the building. I don't know that I ever want to.