10 Years Later.

[Charlie don't surf]

None of us will forget where were on 9/11, but I equate seeing that, at least for me, equal to seeing the Challenger explode. The only difference there was I wasn't not an adult, I was in 8th grade, but remember it like it was yesterday.

X2, I though the same myself-

[mrlexan]

Reg, were you living in FL back then? I was visiting Daytona when the Columbia accident occurred too, but was living in Michigan at the time.

I saw the first one with Young and Crippen, I think it was 4th or 5th grade and all those up til 1997.... wish I could have gone South to see the last.

[Charlie don't surf]

Reg, were you living in FL back then? I was visiting Daytona when the Columbia accident occurred too, but was living in Michigan at the time.

I saw the first one with Young and Crippen, I think it was 4th or 5th grade and all those up til 1997.... wish I could have gone South to see the last.

No, we were following it in school because of Christy McCullough and watching it on one of those blue metal carts with NYSDE/AV DEPT spray stenciled on the cart, the TV etc. It was a live launch on a sunny mid morning in New York state- I remember us kids only having a vague idea of the enormity of what occured, but or teacher screaming and leaving the room-

[Dirtdiver]

I was also attending a NYS school at the time but we were not watching even though Greg Jarvis (a former local resident) was onboard. Mr Bradbury came into our study hall and said that there was an accident with the space shuttle. Everyone did not believe him until he rolled the giant tv cart into the room and turned on the only channel we could pickup.

[mrlexan]

I was in Mr. Ference's Science class in 8th grade at Kennedy Middle School. He gave us the option of staying inside or going outside to watch. I opted to go outside to watch and I will never forget that moment. I believe my parents house is about 50 miles from the Space Center.

[Charlie don't surf]

I was in Mr. Ference's Science class in 8th grade at Kennedy Middle School. He gave us the option of staying inside or going outside to watch. I opted to go outside to watch and I will never forget that moment. I believe my parents house is about 50 miles from the Space Center.

You actually saw it- wow.

I do remember hearing about the first plane hitting and info was real vague- one of the girls in the office's mom called and told her, said it was terrorists. I told her she was nuts and PO'ed that she would even think that- then we watched the second plane...

[MelvinsArmy]

Yeah, it was a bit like the shuttle disaster. I remember I was home sick from school that day and watched it live on CNN from the TV in my parent's bedroom.

At work on 9/11, it was a gorgeous day in New York City. I had my window wide open on the 11th floor. Where I worked, we'd hear planes flying over all the time, we were under one of the flight paths, either to LaGuardia or JFK. Well, one morning I was working away and heard a plane ROAR over, it sounded like a jumbo jet had passed within 50 feet of our building's roof. I stopped working and asked my co-worker if she had heard it. She had her headphones on, didn't hear a thing. I sat still waiting to hear a BOOM because the plane was so loud thought for sure it would hit something. No boom and back to work I went. A few minutes later Howard Stern announced that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I was excited, thinking it must have been a little Cesna or something. You see, a month or so earlier, some crazy French man jumped off the cliffs in NJ with one of those parachutes with the fan attached and flew himself onto the Statue of Liberty. He was dangling from the torch. From my work, LIbery was obscured by the skyscrapers in lower Manhattan. Now, a plane hitting the WTC, that I could see. So, excitedly I ran to the other end of the building, expecting to see the tail of a Cesna hanging out of the top of the Trade Center. Instead what I saw was a towering inferno. In was totally insane. We stood and watched thru an open window for a bit. A few people went back to work, but for me and a few others, this was just too interesting to return to our mundane jobs. As we watched the tower burn, we talked about the people who must have been trapped in the floors above the impact zone and hoped that they could get out somehow, although we figured their chances were slim. Taking it all in and getting scattered reports from 1010WINS (NYC's go-to AM news station) we saw a plane approach from the south. There was already a helicopter (or maybe two, I forget) near the Trade Center. We couldn't figure out what a plane was doing flying so low, towards the buildings. We thought, maybe it was a government plane coming in to assess the damages or possibly dump water on the building. I think in the back of all of our minds we understood exactly what it was. It was a second plane hijacked and used as a missile to hit the second building. Then it did. The plane disappeared between the towers for a long couple of seconds. It reappeared as a giant yellow and orange fire ball on our side.

In the time after that, the minutes went by like hours. Ever hear the expression "fight or flight" well that's what was going on. I literally had the shit scared out of me. I went no less than three times before I went home that day, before 10 o'clock. Literally had the shit scared out of me. See, when that second plane hit, we knew right then and there people were trying to kill us. Not only were people trying to kill us, they were killing us. It seemed only a matter of time before my number was up. It was such a clear and beautiful day. We went up to the roof a few times to get an even better view. We kept looking North, towards the Empire State Building, figuring it would go next. Luckily it is still standing. The Best Thing I've Ever Seen In My Life was a fighter jet, either an F15 or F16 fly over the building maybe an hour in to this whole thing. When we saw that jet, we knew nothing else was getting thru, at least from the air. I think I called my mom two or three times. My grandma had called her early in the morning (they're all in Iowa, so their an hour behind us) and woke her up and told her to turn on the tv. Mom was glad to know I was out of harms way, or at least away from the WTC. On the phone, she heard the report about the Pentagon hit and at that point I figured we were all totally fucked. I told mom that I loved her and hung up. My girlfriend worked a few blocks up the road from me. She kept calling frantically wondering what to do. Eventually I told her I was leaving, I'd go by her work, pick her up and we'd figure out how to get home together. We did. The subways were shut down (not that I'd have taken them anyway, fearing a chemical attack like what happened in Tokyo a few years earlier) instead we walked to the west side of the island and took a converted dinner cruise ship back over to NJ.

That's the abbreviated story. So much more happened in those few hours. If there has been one life-changing moment in my life, that was it. Fortunately, I did not know anyone who died. However, strange as it may sound, loosing those buildings was like loosing a best friend. I've lost a best friend and believe it or not, those buildings meant as much to me as anyone I've ever known, although I obviously did not appreciate them like that at the time. They were like a cross between a compass and a sun dial. You popped up out of the subway in lower Manhattan, you looked around for the World Trade Center and immediately you knew where you were, which direction you were facing and where to go. Kind of like the sun. Then they were gone.

That day changed me as a person. For the first time I felt hatred. I still do from time to time. It's not any kind of racism or hatred of a group or religion or whatever. It's just the total elimination of the turn the other cheek kind of attitude. That will never happen with me. It was strange when they finally got Osama Bin Laden. As soon as that second plane hit, his name entered my mind. George W Bush, the worst president at least in my lifetime, by far, failed with a capitol F as far as I'm concerned. He turned a world who lined up behind us, completely against us. For me, that was the second blow of 9/11, that total and absolute failure of our leadership. He didn't even try to catch the guilty parties. Did not even try. So when W was retired and this spring a bullet was put in the bastard's face, a whole slew of emotions came rushing back. Much of the insanity of that day returned. Things I had totally forgotten, or had buried deep inside. For the first time in my life I was ecstatic about the death of another human being. People were saying you shouldn't be happy, and to them I was saying "fuck you". I was happy. I kept wrestling in my head over whether or not it was good to celebrate vengeance, but in the end it really wasn't a contest. I felt weird for feeling so good, but eventually I embraced it. A cancer had been eliminated. Finally I had a little bit of closure. Finally a colossal failure on the part of the people I trust had been corrected.

[SRTracer121]

man do i remember this, i was in philly and only 10, but i remember it, my dad, a [then] 15 year vet of the Philadelphia fire department, got us out of school early and we watched the news unfold on the tv. remember it pretty clearly too. remember the live footage with the movement alarms going off in the rubble and the remaining walls still standing.

if nothing else i remember the pictures of the fire fighters running up the stairs. more then anyone else they knew they were doomed. those guys just knew. im sure they did the minute they showed up, but they went up anyway and did their job. the one picture that sticks with me the most is the young guy running up the stairs. my dad had a co-worker who came over the house all the time who looks like the guy in the picture.

i can only imagine what the widows and children of the firefighters have to deal with along with all those families left behind.

http://satellitesaint.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/fireman_stairs_wtc11.jpg?w=450&h=292