I remember that dreadful day very clearly.
I was welcoming my 1st graders to our classroom and several students were upset about a plane that had crashed into a tall building in New York. In order to calm them, I said it was probably a small plane that had an accident.
Later in the morning Art (who enjoyed volunteering his time to tutor some of my students) came in with the news. I quietly warned him not to alarm the children.
However, our school secretary then came on the intercom to tell me that my daughter was safe in Chicago (having been evacuated from the tall skyscraper she was working in) and was being sent home from work. Tiffany worked for a financial group and she often talked to people in the Cantor Fitzgerald company in the World Trade Center. Now those people were suddenly all gone.
My class erupted with questions about why Tiffany was going home from work. Then several parents came to pick up their children to take them home.
My son was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mali, West Africa and he says they'd heard the news and were called back to the capital, Bamako to be safe, just in case. He said many Malians stared at them sympathetically as they walked by. My son and daughter-in-law who served at the same time was appalled at the backlash that caused all Muslims to be grouped in the same category as those terrorists.
It was such an awful time. The world would never be the same.
Do you remember what you were doing on that horrible day?
I was welcoming my 1st graders to our classroom and several students were upset about a plane that had crashed into a tall building in New York. In order to calm them, I said it was probably a small plane that had an accident.
Later in the morning Art (who enjoyed volunteering his time to tutor some of my students) came in with the news. I quietly warned him not to alarm the children.
However, our school secretary then came on the intercom to tell me that my daughter was safe in Chicago (having been evacuated from the tall skyscraper she was working in) and was being sent home from work. Tiffany worked for a financial group and she often talked to people in the Cantor Fitzgerald company in the World Trade Center. Now those people were suddenly all gone.
My class erupted with questions about why Tiffany was going home from work. Then several parents came to pick up their children to take them home.
My son was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mali, West Africa and he says they'd heard the news and were called back to the capital, Bamako to be safe, just in case. He said many Malians stared at them sympathetically as they walked by. My son and daughter-in-law who served at the same time was appalled at the backlash that caused all Muslims to be grouped in the same category as those terrorists.
It was such an awful time. The world would never be the same.
Do you remember what you were doing on that horrible day?
Yes. Like you I was in the classroom. Word was passed quietly among the teachers. TV was on in staff lounge for us to watch when we had breaks. My oldest daughter was working as an aide that fall in her off term in a special ed preschool class at my school. My other daughter was in high school. Parents came to sign their children out of school and other students asked why so many were leaving early. It was a terrible time especially being just north of DC.
ReplyDeleteI did some swimming very early and was on my way to a Bible study class. In the car the radio told of the first plane crashing. When I arrived at the class we had heard of the second plane. We all just said a prayer together and went home. My husband and I watched the TV all day, in horror. My daughter was working as an engineer in her first job and had been sent to a company in Canada that day. I knew that they were talking about a plane that was in Cleveland airspace for a time and was very worried about Alice. I got the phone number of the company in Canada and asked them to have her call me when she arrived. It turned out that she and her boss had driven not flown and had been listening to music on tape the whole time and had no idea anything unusual had happened. When they arrived someone told Alice that she should call her mother and she was at first mortified that her mother was calling when she was trying to be very adult. But then they told her boss that his wife wanted him to call home and she realized something must have happened. It was a day of shock, heartbreak and horror and we are not the same. But the terrorists are not Muslims anymore but young white American men with foolish grievances who are easily manipulated. It is still heartbreaking.
ReplyDeleteI will never forget
ReplyDeleteI was watching TV and when the first plane hit I too thought it was a small private plane. Then the second hit and our world as we knew it changed. I didn't move from the TV all day and the images that kept rolling across the screen were horrifying and almost unbelievable. We had always felt safe from foreign attack and now knew we could never feel immune again. My heart still aches for all the lives lost and families torn apart that day. It is impossible to forget.
ReplyDeleteG handed me my coffee, and I turned on the TV. 9-11 is my birthday.
ReplyDeleteThe backlash against all muslims was horrible.
ReplyDeleteI'll give G W Bush some credit, right after 911 he stood firm with Muslims and distanced the moderates in the religion from the extremists. Too bad the racist low-level Republicans don't know how to read a damn book.
DeleteI was in a nursing school lecture when we were informed. Our classmate from New York began contacting her relatives. (Being from Oklahoma City, and my younger son and I worrying about my folks after the OKC bombing,) I went to his middle school and picked him up, just because I could, and wanted to explain to him in my own way what was happening in NY.
ReplyDeleteWe nursing students were to attend an OB/GYN "mother/baby" clinical class the next day and were given the choice, as a group, whether to attend or not. We all chose to still go the the mother/baby clinical. It's a good thing we did. Even as moderately useless students, we walked into a unit where several of the regular nurses had called in. We had to tell new mothers trying to nurse their babies to turn off the news they were watching in order to guide them to successfully starting breastfeeding. One new mom had a baby girl on 9-11. She said they'd previously picked out another name, but after the tragedy in NY, they decided to name their new baby "Hope." What a beautiful response.
My son already knew he wanted to be a veterinarian, so we sent dog booties and supplies to the search dog teams. We received a beautiful poster of all the dogs, their names and information from the search dog organization.
Later, as a newly-graduated nurse, one of my first patients was a middle-aged woman who'd volunteered at Ground Zero. She was slowly dying from all the toxic things she inhaled, and had never smoked in her life.
We need better leaders in the White House to help prevent such tragedies.
Linda in Kansas
Isn't THAT the truth!
DeleteBob and I were watching "Good Morning, America" on TV and they were getting ready to go to commercial when Charlie told the camera man to turn his camera toward the World Trade Center. Then we watched as they shot the collision. Then we watched as the second plane hit the second tower. I had a beauty shop appointment and left then and when I got to the beauty shop I told them to turn on their TV to "Good Morning America" so we could follow what was going on. We watched it as long as we could. My Bob, a chaplain, was activated by the Red Cross and sent to New York for three weeks to work with the survivors as they were waiting for news of their loved ones that worked in the towers. They sent him back in February for four more weeks.
ReplyDeleteIt was such a terrible day, and yes the world would never be the same.
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts and prayers to all those still affected by this awful day.
All the best Jan
I've never ever forget about it.
ReplyDeleteI remember my husband waking me up - it was quite early in Hawaii and he said it was going to be a war. What?!??? As we watched the news and saw the building footage, I thought that it was going to be the end of our lives as we knew it. Quite horrible, and much too shocking.
ReplyDeletewe were moving into a new place and had no phone or tv reception so we were shocked when our neighbors told us what was happening then we watched it for hours at their house on their TV. Life would never be the same again...
ReplyDeleteIt took me a long time to get it that this was actually real life. I saw it over and over again and thought it must be a made up video. the rest of the day was something that was hard to understand.
ReplyDeleteI was just about to go out the door to meet someone I was tutoring at the library. All I knew as I left the house was that the news said a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers. I thought they said at the time it was a small plane. As I was driving to the library I noticed that everyone was driving rather slowly, like they were in a trance. After a little while I turned on the car radio and found out what had happened.
ReplyDeleteWe had a shortened tutoring session at the library because the person I was tutoring and I both felt like it was time to go home. That library is fairly close to St. Louis Lambert International Airport. I saw military jets were taking off one right after another. I was much more nervous driving home than I had been driving to the library,because I didn't know what might happen next or where it might happen. I was glad to arrive home. By that time, the horror of what had happened was beginning to be clear.
It was the first day of our walk to reading program, of which I was in charge as the reading specialist.
ReplyDeleteI got up with the news of the first plane, then heard about the second plane, and then the first tower collapsing as I went to school. I had to get busy checking with teachers to make sure eerything was ready to go, and then be ready for my two groups, 90 minutes with struggling first graders, recess, and then 90 minutes with struggling 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. I put it all out of my head and got to work. I checked in briefly at recess in the staff room to learn that the second tower had come down. I got a bit more news during my half hour lunch and then had to get busy again with my one on one tutoring. After school I had to prep for the next day and check in with my assistant to see if all our our kids had arrived in the right places. By the time I got home and got dinner on, I was exhausted, and only watched a bit of news. Because I had to ignore what was happening, keep on going, and never acknowledged it with the children, to this day I feel removed from the tragic event.
What I do feel 18 years later is that each anniversary seems to renew the feelings of hate that were generated that day. Fear of the "other" is stronger than ever. It is a sad anniversary in so many ways.
I was in 8th grade social studies when we heard the news.
ReplyDeleteWe were having a review of our department with people who had come from many different places. And we watched the towers come down on a little TV in someone's office. I have never forgotten the horror of that day, either. I cried a lot for days, along with so many others. Our visitors could not get home because all the planes were grounded. :-(
ReplyDeleteRemember that the airplanes were all grounded? In the Atlanta area, the silence of the skies was scary. The incredible blue sky that day, on such a tragic day, will never forget it. Remembering all those who died.
ReplyDeleteIt was awful. I was teaching gr. 6. The stupid principal (whom we called 'the princess') go on the PA and told the whole school about the incident. Stupid woman. The kids were crying, afraid to walk home from school.
ReplyDeleteMy husband, however, spent 30 days on the phone making plans to get planes home to and from Canada. He was an airline manager, seconded to do this. They put him up in a hotel.