Can you remember where you were when....?

[John Bennett]

As today is the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I'm sure everybody who posts here can remember what they were doing when they heard about the attacks on the World Trade Centre etc.

It has become another one of those historic events (usually tragic unfortunately) that people never forget and the day is often seared into the memory. Others, of course, include the assassination of JF Kennedy/Martin Luther King/John Lennon, Man landing on the moon, the 7/7 bombings in London, the Challenger disaster and for those who are most certainly old enough, the day war (WWII) was declared.

So, with that in mind, what were you doing when..... any of the above took place? Or any other momentous event that I haven't included.

JB

PS Not expecting too many re: the start of WWII!!

[John Bennett]

Also the death of Princess Diana, the fall of the Berlin Wall....

[mariab]

I was researching in Paris, had actually just found an exciting source, was joyfully walking home and decided to take a very short cab ride, and the cab radio was talking, mid-sentence, about a bombing at the World Trade Center, so I'm thinking “Not again, like in 1993“. Later that evening my mom calls and starts saying “I bet Bush is gonna spent tonight on an Air Force plane.“, and I'm like “What on earth are you talking about, I'm late. I gotta run.“ Paris is a very self-centered town and essentially anti-American, so I'm going out on the evening of 9/11/2001 (still early afternoon in N.Y.) and nothing is out of the ordinary, nobody comments. On the next day, still clueless, I conclude my research, buy a Herald Tribune to read about the “bombing“, and POW – I'm floored. On the next day, 9/13/2001, I'm flying back to Berlin, and the Roissy airport is not only in an extreme security situation, but also silent like during a funeral. The entire time I'm engrossed in the day's Herald Tribune reporting from N.Y., tears running down my face (which is extremely rare and has never happened before or after in public). There's an obviously Arab looking elderly couple assigned to the seats next to mine, and I see them consult with each other and decide to sit elsewhere, out of discretion.
I arrive in Berlin still in tears and find the city all subdued, flags at half mast, black crepes hanging outside of buildings everywhere. Much more appriopriate than Paris. (Berlin is traditionally very fond of Americans, as they consider themselves freed by the American troups in WWII.) On that day, I think everyone felt like an American, if not like a New Yorker.

(*Obviously that was 10 years ago, when not too many people had laptops with internet access, nor did I have a TV at my place in Paris.)

[Ally]

The challenger disaster, I was in my 6th grade English class and we were watching it on the television. I remember all my teachers were making a big deal about the flight because of Christa McCauliffe and how floored they were afterward. I was sleeping when the 7/7 bombing occurred but I remember waking up and reading about it on CNN. 9/11 I was in the middle of teaching class when the planes hit and I remember rushing next door to tell another teacher to turn on her TV. (We were right outside of DC) and I remember Stephen AIMing me about 30 minutes later to tell me he thought there was an attack in DC because he'd felt the plane hit the pentagon.

[Monty]

If 7/7 occured 24 hours later I would have been caught up in that.

I have been caught up in the Canary wharf bombing, the BBC one and the Ealing bombing.

My advice is never to travel to London with me.

Monty

[Rubyretro]

I was sitting on the terrace of a café, here in Avignon, enjoying a drink with an English friend who had come to visit, when the attacks on the World Trade Centre began (it was about 3 in the afternoon here).

The waiter suddenly became very agitated and led us inside the bar, where the events in New York were unfolding 'live' on the TV.

We watched in sheer disbelief -as obviously we didn't know what was going to happen, nor what the eventual outcome would be. We didn't even know
who the attackers were. We wondered if we watching the start of WW111.

I did have a laptop with internet access, and my friend tried to contact her friends in Manhatten, but it was impossible to get through to them, neither by e-mail nor by telephone...all the lines were jammed.

I was very touched by the attitutude shown towards me by many of my Arab neighbours over the next few days... they were very embarrassed and
ashamed and went out of their way (even people that I hardly knew) to come and say that they were appalled by the tragedy, and had no sympathy at all with the terrorists -even though I'm English and not American.

Which reminds me of the murder of John Lennon ! I came out of my house in the morning and a neighbour that I didn't know came out of her house to tell me the news. On the bus, on the way into work, total strangers (of a similar age), were all turning to each other and saying " have you heard ...?"

I was working for American Express in Brighton at the time, and I don't think that anyone did much work that morning ; A bloke had a small radio on his desk, and all the staff (at least in my department), spent the morning glued to it.

I suppose that the moral of all that is, that when some sad event happens (either a major tragedy, with possible repercussions for us all, or the death of a young celebrity who we somehow imagined immortal ), then it shocks all sorts of different strangers into coming together for comfort/gossip.

[Bob Hinton]

Yes

I was flying back from Crete and our plane was suddenly escorted by 2 F16's.

[Sister Hyde]

I will always remember it I had just started High school in Paris and we had a 3 hours void in hour schedule so we went to the artist squat on Rivoli Street, when we came there all the corridors and rooms were empty, we went to the tv room where everyone was sitting and looking at the small tv very serouisly, we asked "hey what movie are you watching?" they just "shhhhhh" at us, so we sat down thinking "wait they look a bit too serious for it just being a movie", and saw the scene

[Tom_Wescott]

9/11 - I was at the office of my apartment complex renewing my lease when the lady mentioned the attack and said that at least 100 people were killed.

Princess Diana - I was in line at a movie theater to see the film 'Mimic' when two teenage boys ahead were talking and laughing about her death. I thought they were just being crude, but I asked and was informed she was really dead. I grew up with her, being only a kindergartener when she and Prince Charles married.

Challenger - My answer is the same as Ally's.

Everything else - I either wasn't born or was too young to care/understand.

Since I live in Oklahoma, I can also vividly recall the news of the Oklahoma City bombing. I drove there shortly after and I'll tell you it's weird turning a corner on a street and suddenly you're in a neighborhood where the buildings have no windows.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[mariab]

Right, the Oklahoma City bombing. I remember reading about it in the news, it was after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
The Challenger accident didn't have too much impact on me, at that point I was out of my tween fascination with space travelling.
Diana, I never could stand her. On the day after her death I saw the paper and was like “Nawww, not that ****** face again“, and when I realized she was dead, I'm afraid there were no pretty thoughts.
My boss and other people I know have recollections of where they were when JFK was shot. And my father (who's deceased) fought in the resistance against the Nazis in 1943 – but obviously he didn't die then, otherwise I wouldn't have been born.

[Archaic]

Family at Ground Zero

I remember 9/11 very well. Close family members of mine were in the WTC and the Empire State Building when the attacks occurred.

That morning I was laying on the floor with my old Black Labrador who had just suffered through a 3-day health crisis due to a hemangio-tumor. I almost lost her, but she hung on and pulled through. I had spent 3 days camped out on the floor with her after a night in the emergency veterinary hospital, and my elderly father was doing the same in his recliner. We were emotionally and physically exhausted after 3 nights with almost no sleep but so grateful that Merlyn was going to make it. It was a private little crisis, and we had no idea that a massive crisis affecting not only all of America but all of the world was about to hit.

I had finally dozed off when I got a phone call to turn on the news, and saw the attacks unfolding. My God, what a shock! Both of my parents are from New York, and that's where all our relatives still live. (I'm on the West Coast. 3,000 miles away.) I knew that my first cousin, my Dad's godson, worked in the basement of the North Tower as the station engineer. His sister, my other cousin, worked nearby in the Empire State Building. All my other aunts, uncles and cousins lived and worked nearby.

I watched the TV in utter horror, but I was also afraid to let my Dad see the news because he had serious heart trouble and early-stage Alzheimer's, and I was genuinely afraid it would give him a heart attack- especially when he realized his brother's youngest son was in one of the towers. My phone started ringing off the hook, everyone wanting to know how our relatives were. I said I would be the point person and relay the news to everyone, but suggested they not try to call NY as I knew the lines would go down and they were needed by the emergency workers and the immediate relatives. My day was a hectic attempt to follow the news while protecting my father from the sight of the buildings coming down, all the while not knowing if my cousins were still alive or what would happen next. The tv kept showing that awful footage of the planes hitting, the buildings burning and collapsing, the Pentagon in flames... If my Dad came into the room I instantly clicked the tv off- I didn't want him to know how bad it was until I knew if our family members had survived.

It was night-time before my aunt found out that her son and daughter had survived; my male cousin just barely. He helped the firemen negotiate the building, the stairwells, etc. in the dark after the power went out. We found out later that when the planes first hit he had saved the lives of several young women who had been working in the lobby and were cut up by flying glass- he took them downstairs and put them on the last subway train that made it out before the towers collapsed. He was one of the last people who made it out of the tower before it collapsed; he ran to the power station in Battery Park behind the WTC, banged on the door, and they let him in- then the tower came down & the debris flew everywhere. If he was outside just a few more seconds he would have died. He saw terrible things, people jumping... he was very traumatized and won't talk about it; I found out the details from my aunt.

When the first plane hit, my female cousin (his sister) working in the Empire State building knew immediately it was an attack by Bin Laden, but her coworkers didn't even know who that was. She said they should evacuate immediately, because the Empire State Building was a potential target. Her boss insisted it was an "accident" and refused to give the instruction to evacuate. My cousin said "Well, I'm evacuating!" She organized a bunch of co-workers, and (with their boss in tow) they managed to get out and into a friend's nearby apartment.

The aftermath of the attacks was horrible. My other aunt worked at an NYC hospital, and she told me they readied the Trauma Center and waited for days for the massive influx of casualties- which never came because so many people died at the scene.

My male cousin who has survived the attack went back to the WTC early in the morning of the 12th, and helped the rescue workers negotiate the chaotic rubble. The destruction was so terrible that everyone was disoriented; all the landmarks were obliterated. Having worked in the basement for years he knew the layout blindfolded, and he knew where stairwells, etc., were that might have provided a protective pocket for little groups of survivors. He handled a jack-hammer himself, but sadly there were no survivors under the rubble.

Many of our family friends and neighbors died. Some were NYFD, others were NYPD or office workers. Raymond York, an NYPD police officer who did outreach programs for school children, was one family friend that died trying to save others- I think there is now a street named after him.
Another cousin told me he "did nothing but go to wakes and funerals" for weeks following the tragedy.

My family has a history of serving in the New York City Fire Department that goes back 120 years, so the deaths of 343 FDNY firefighters particularly affected me... they were courageously running in to the towers while others were running out.

Early the next morning, Sept. 12, my best friend and I went to the local blood bank to donate blood, where we found a big line, but they turned us all away- so many Americans had volunteered to donate blood, and there were so few survivors, that it wasn't needed... I remember how shocked we were at that. We stood in the parking lot in a daze, wanting to do something to help. It was so terrible to be told they didn't need blood donations. I remember my best friend's little daughter saying she was "afraid someone would fly a plane into" her city. We assured her it wouldn't happen, but to be honest we didn't know if Seattle might be a target...(Boeing, Microsoft, etc) which it was in a later failed terror plot.

Hard to believe it's been 10 years, it's all so vivid. The selflessness of the first responders and of average citizens, and the heroism of those on Flight 93 continues to inspire.

I'd like to say "thank you" to all of those around the world who have taken a moment to remember that horrible day and all those we lost.

Best regards,
Archaic

[John Bennett]

9/11: At work (school) and a phone call came from one of my colleagues' husband. During the next hour or so, more news filtered in until at the end of the school day, I drove home and put the news on. I must have seen those scenes dozens of times in the next few hours, until I just couldn't watch any more.

7/7: Same place. News was on the staff-room TV and it was break, so loads of people were huddling round it. This was quite scary, as there were bogus phone calls coming in that there were bomb allerts at tube stations nearby. (one of my former pupils died in the attacks).

Diana: Living with my parents; my Dad was a printer working that night. He phoned the house at an ungodly hour to explain that Diana was injured in a crash and he'd be late as the presses had to stop and plates changed. He phoned 3 more times that night, each time with a worse story, until the news was eventually that she'd died. He got home at 10am (rather than the usual 4am).

Berlin Wall: Watching it unfold on a black and white portable TV in my student digs, Brighton.

Challenger: At my girlfriend's after having a free afternoon from 6th form. I think I was on exam leave. Put the TV on and... well, there it was happening before our eyes.

John Lennon: Getting ready for school. The radio said that most newspapers were published too late to report the death of John Lennon. I told my Mum and she thought I was messing about - until she heard the next bulletin. It was the big talk that morning at school, though I was surprised to find that one of my friends had never heard of John Lennon!

Man on the moon? - I was one and a bit years old. No chance. Although I vaguely remember the later ones in the early 70s.

[mariab]

Fascinating and a touching personal account, B.
On wikipedia there's a recording of the stewardess calling the Tower at JFK in N.Y. from the first plane (AA flight 11) before they crashed into the North Tower. She's trying to keep her cool, but is clearly distressed, and the operator is trying to be encourageing, but it's obvious she's distressed too.
Of course, something like this will NEVER happen again, since airlines and passengers are educated now – they got that clown who tried to ignite his shoe on a flight from Paris to Miami in December 2001.

[Fleetwood Mac]

9/11 - I was at work. And it started coming through about 3 o'clockish if memory serves. I don't think we in the office could believe what we were seeing really. A terrible loss of life.

Diana - no idea. I'm not a royalist so didn't have much interest in it.

[Magpie]

9/11 I was working nights at the time, and I had no TV, so I slept right through everything. I got up, showered, dressed and heading out to the local pub for the weekly trivia game, only to be confronted by a mass of shocked, morose faces. When they first told me, I thought there was some sort of mistake, until the TV showed a replay of the towers coming done.

Diana: I was on the air when I first heard that there's been an accident. The initial report was that there had been injuries, but no fatalies. Myself and another programmer proceeded to make a lot of jokes on the air that were, in retrospect, the height of tastelessness. several hours later, just as I was signing off, I got a phone call saying it had been announced that Diana was dead, so I had to break into the National Anthem to broadcast the news before signing off.