Last Friday marked the 8th anniversary of the attacks of September 11th and every year on the anniversary I read stories about people remembering where they were on that day. For some reason I'm always intrigued by where people were on that day and how they found out about the events that unfolded in New York City. Growing up I heard my parents recollections of famous moments in history (often deaths) with the same degree of interest. Where my Dad was when he heard about the assassination of JFK, where my Mom was when she heard about the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, or where they both were when they heard about John Lennon.
I remember the day very vividly. I was walking down a back ally on campus towards the fall career fair at the basketball arena that would kick off my final two semesters at Tech. I was walking behind a guy who saw someone he knew walking by. The passerby asked his friend whether he had heard about what was going on. The response was as in many cases one of query and confusion, "no what's up?" The passerby responded that he should just check out CNN. I didn't think anything of it and continued on to the career fair. Once at the career fair it was a scene straight out of a movie as people were milling about watching the televisions all tuned to the same thing. I remember hearing someone ask what was going on and the reply stunned me, "a plane hit the World Trade Center." We watched in shock, sorrow, disbelief, and numbness as the second tower fell. Shortly thereafter a friend who was working the career fair said that they were going to shutdown campus and that I should dump all my resumes as fast as I could on as many companies as possible. On the drive home taking a back road to avoid traffic I remember listening to the radio and tears just streaming down my face. I would spend the next 6 to 8 hrs in front of the television like many others. At one point my Mom called completely confused and in the dark over what was going on. She was by herself in Singapore, my Dad away on business in Paris, awoken to this nightmare by a phone call from India. Through the tears and the sobs all she kept asking was why would someone do this.
Barely a month later in a fit of frustration over a personal problem I fled to the only place that felt comfortable and oddly enough one of the last places to seek it: New York City. I can still see the glow from Ground Zero. I can still smell the mixture of smoke, dust, and who knows what else.
One day I will tell someone how I remember exactly where I was on September 11th.
CCP cranberry sauce
15 years ago
1 comment:
Maybe you will get other posts on "where I was" on 9/11. Mine picks up from one of your comments: I was in Paris in a conference room with a bunch of people. Someone walked in and said a plane had crashed into one of the Towers. Our immediate reaction was that small private planes have crashed into buildings before. As the meeting went on we heard it was a big plane. Then we had an email from a co-worker back in the States that the Tower had collapsed. While at the meeting we were trying to logon to CNN. Unfortunately the site had way too many users and we could not get on. We finally logged on to French broadcasts on the net and saw the pictures. It just numbed me and I could not understand how a plane could go astray like that. The meeting was abandoned as we hovered around the computers watching the pictures. Later that night a colleague from the US office and I went to a bar to eat, and sat in front of a TV set and watched, struck by the sense of fear of both what had happened and what may be still in store on the faces of the people.
The company immediately froze all travel, especially to the US. Since I was living in Singapore I was allowed to leave a day later. The Paris airport was eerie in the lack of activity. Armed French army personnel in fatigues and with automatic weapons patrolled the airport (this though is fairly common at the Paris airport). I got to the airport about 3 hrs before my flight. The plane was quite empty, but it was long flight.
The French were just as shocked as we were. Several of them came to us to talk and showed concern for us. I think the first few days were just spent trying to grasp what had happened. I just had difficulty accepting that the Towers had actually collapsed.
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