it was my freshmen year of high school, i was home sick that day, after the first plane hit my mom came and woke me up and said that somebody had accidently flew into one of the towers, i was downstairs watching the footage when the 2nd plane hit, i will always remember my mom looking at me and telling me that this will change things, this was the closest thing my generation would see that would resemble Pearl Harbor. one of my moms friends had a brother in the the towers, and a brother in the Pentagon, and somehow by the grace of God, they both survived.
[quote]dollarbill44 wrote:
Sean_H wrote:
my original post and second post were on topic, almost all the posts refering or quoting me were off topic and were only trying to flame me, FUCK, i even said it is a big deal.
From your first post:
“I was never realy affected by it at a personal level, so i don’t know why people are still thinking it as a big thing. To me, it was just some buildings where people worked, they were bound to die some die soon or later.”
What am I missing? Oh yeah, how you think 9/11 is a big deal. Anyone who can’t figure out how 9/11 is a big deal to some, have not taken ANY time to stop and think about how it could be a big deal to someone else.
Anyway, on topic again.
I wonder when the current situation about etremely religous terrorists will be over and we can go back to having no war, no crisis. Surely we can have some peace for a period of 10 or more years. But then again, as TC once posted a while back, will it be good for induvidual countries?
No, the topic was September 11, 2001 - share your memories. Sadly, I think the debate you spurred has driven this thread so far off topic that it can’t be saved at this point.
Please excuse the spellings, my microsoft word doesn’t want to load.
This says a lot about your personal make up, to me. You can’t even proofread your own post. MS Word does not proofread content, only spelling and grammar, and it doesn’t do a great job of those either. In other words, you may not want to rely on Word as your proofreader. If you took the time proof your own work, you might realize that the way you say something is often just as important (if not more so) as what you are trying to say.
I realize you’re not even old enough to drink yet, so I will chalk this up as human-skills ignorance. But this thread probably isn’t the best place for you to learn your interpersonal skills on the fly. Learn to pick and choose your situations a little more carefully and you may find that people are a little less anxious to jump down your throat when you say something idiotic.
DB[/quote]
If i rember my first post correctly i said something along the lines of “it wasnt a big deal to me personaly, but i bet it was to other people”
I was just stating my memories about it, and if i was being truthful about that… well then, let’s say i felt the same way when london got bombed.
Sean_H,
So you don’t think this:
[quote]Sean_H said:
I was never realy affected by it at a personal level, so i don’t know why people are still thinking it as a big thing. To me, it was just some buildings where people worked, they were bound to die some die soon or later.[/quote]
is a bullshit statement? You should try thinking about what you’re saying before it falls out of your sewer.
My husband was stationed in England, and I got hired as a civilian employee for the US Air Force on Sept 10, 2001. We had been living in England for 9 years by this point. I came to my 2nd day at work for the USAF, and around 2:00pm my supervisor called down the hall that we should come and see the news.
I felt awfully strange going to watch TV on my second day at work. I had been on active duty in the USMC for 4 years, so slacking off at work was NOT cool with me.
CNN was playing in our break room. Within 10 minutes of walking in, the 2nd plane hit. My stomach lurched, the room was suddenly very cold to me. I knew… that was not an accident. Someone hated Americans enough to do this. Then the scroll bar at the bottom of the CNN coverage started saying “smoke at the Pentagon,” and I knew there was even more to it.
Shortly after the towers fell, the base “BIG VOICE” started telling the base to clear out. Our military base in England had its share of attacks, and the command forced everyone to go home. It was so strange to go to my home 20 minutes away from base with the idea that living off base was safer than being on base.
If that doesn’t make any sense, I’ll just tell you that when we finally were allowed to return to the base, it was under the heavy watch of .50 caliber machine guns pointed at my car, tanks, barriers, and inspections of our personal vehicles for devices.
I missed my USMC brothers, and I was devastated for the loved ones of the victims.
I appreciate the start of this thread. I wish it had not been hijacked. But - - it’s a free country and people are free to express their opinions, whether I agree with them or not.
We will never forget.
Semper Fidelis (always faithful),
Renee
I forgot to mention that soon after Sept 11th, people all over England hung the American flag out of their windows. Some would fly the Union Jack (England’s flag) along with the US Flag. People took time to put flowers all along the gates to the US bases in England. Their love and support were amazing, and I wanted to be sure that you all knew that. It was very genuine and heartfelt.
I woke up because of a telephone call from my ex, who normally hates me, but I was the first person he called. Funny how something like 9/11 has changed the outlook af so many Americans. Seems we are much more Unified.
Later that week, I went shopping to find American Flags to post at my house and on my car. All the stores a couple of days before had tons of them stocked, but the day I went, most were out of stock. The vendors said they couldn’t keep American Flags in-stock, the moment a shipment came in, they’d sell like hotcakes. I went to a large block party a month later in hopes of obtaining flags for myself, and every vendor had sold out of their flags.
So many peoples’ homes had set out American Flags on their homes. So many people had flags flying on their cars, large monster trucks had large ones on poles, flying in the wind.
Everywhere here in Hawaii, were American flags. People even wore American Flag clothing and still do today. What a strong statement to show how many people love our country.
Even today, so many people keep their American Flags flying from the front of their homes. 9/11 hasn’t been forgotten.
9/11 has changed the way we look at our country and the world. 9/11 has made us more patriotic and stronger in our resolve in our love for our country and our allies, who have also experienced the ugliness of terrorism. Sure there are America-bashing Americans, but I truly feel they are in the minority and are the type to hate for any reason.
Another thing is the outpouring of support and love from so many other countries of the world. I remember watching on the news people in England, Australia and other countries grieving, laying out memorials and speaking to the American people on the news. Many of the services they held were extremely beautiful and heartfelt. Makes you realize, we are all human beings, all are one people and all are brothers and sisters, no matter what country you’re from, what race, what religion, what skin color, we are all human beings of the same planet, of the same creator.
Thank you for starting a great thread.
I was at a restaurant in Tokyo with some people from my office, entertaining clients. It was getting a bit late, but we were all enjoying ourselves. My friend Chris answered his cell phone, and silenced the rest of us at the table with a gasp of shock. “A passenger plane has just hit one of the Twin Towers in New York,” he said.
We were stunned. I had heard of small craft hitting buildings before, but never a commercial jetliner. I thought of all the thousands of planes flying between the thicket of skyscrapers enroute to Hong Kong’s old Kai Tak airport with never a mishap. How could a pilot be so incompetent as to hit the tallest buildings in Manhattan…unless he did it on purpose.
We didn’t have long to speculate. The phone rang again. This time there was no gasp, but Chris had gone pale. "Another plane has just hit the other tower, he said. I nodded slowly, allowing this to sink in. No accident. No coincidence. The United States is under attack. We are at war.
There was no television in the little restaurant, and the radio reports were still sketchy, so Chris’ cell phone was our only source of information. Over the next half hour we heard the whole horrible story unfold, both the actual events, as well as the rumors and exaggerations.
One of the towers had collapsed. Another tower had collapsed. The Capitol building had been hit. The Pentagon had been destroyed. The President was missing.
Now I understood what Clausewitz meant by “the fog of war”.
As I rode a taxi home that night, listening to the Armed Forces Radio broadcasts, some of the fog lifted, but the truth was just as horrible as the rumor. Arriving home, I flipped on the TV and sat numbly as the every station mercilessly played and replayed the highlights of the attack, in slow motion and from multiple angles. Finally I could stand to watch no more.
For a while I felt numb, and sick, as if I had taken a really good punch in the gut. The blinding rage, and the thirst for revenge, had not yet set in. What I felt was a tremendous feeing of sorrow, and loss.
True, I hadn’t lived in the US for nearly a decade, and nobody that I knew was anywhere near the Pentagon or the World Trade Center when the planes hit, but the feelings of loss would not go away.
Everything is going to change now, I thought, a vision already forming in my mind the punitive retaliatory assaults that were sure to come…which did come just one month later.
Of course the United States will survive this, I thought. We’ll probably even win. But America will never be the same.
As some of you know, my dad was killed on 9/11. I’m not looking for pity, or anything like that… I just wrote this essay for a writing class and figured I’d post it here. Its pretty long, so be warned.
Five years is a pretty long time, especially when someone asks you to recall what you did that day. For many people, remembering what they did on September 11th 2001 isn't very hard. I'm one of those people who wouldn't have a problem remembering, but might have a hard time reliving it.
I woke up, got ready for school, and had breakfast like usual. Come time to go to school, my mom drove my dad to the train station and me to school. Unfortunately, he had gone into work early that day; a decision that would change hundreds of peoples lives forever. My mom dropped him off before I did underneath the train station in town; a landmark that I would see almost everyday. He got out of the car, and gave me a hug and a kiss thru the back seat window and then walked up the stairs to the platform as we drove only a few blocks away to school.
School started with my friends and me hanging out in front of the school until we were let in. My first class was technology. We started off the class, until a few minutes in, he received a phone call. His face turned blank and sat down, then hung up. He told the class something very bad had happened, and that he was told not to tell us anything. He told us, he said “You’re still young, but you’re old enough that you should know what’s going on. A plane was flown into the world trade center.”
Immediately, I thought of my father, who worked in the towers, and my cousin, who worked in an office some one hundred feet away. I began to tremble, and almost got annoyed as friends kept asking me “doesn’t your dad work there?” He rolled a TV into the room, and we all just watched the news in silence. Pretty hard to imagine a middle school class in silence, isn’t it? It happened.
At the end of the period, I was called down to the guidance office for my guidance counselor to tell me “I don’t know if you know what’s going on, but your mom spoke to your dad. He’s OK and he’s coming home.” I had never felt so relieved.
I went home after that. I walked into our Florida room to see my older brother who had gotten home before me, and my mom watching the news. Both of them had tears in their eyes. By the time I got home, the second plane had hit.
Shortly after I got home, family friends started coming over, comforting us and bringing us food. We live down the block from the high school, which my older brother attended. Friends from school came down to visit us during the day. More people kept coming, people I had never seen before came over comforting my family. The day went by extremely fast. Having kept in the back of my mind “Dad called, and he’s coming home” I wasn’t worried. My brothers and I did quite the job of forwarding that message to my dads friends as they called and explained to us how he knew him, and asked to speak to him.
Once it started getting dark, was when I and everyone else started to worry. He wasn’t home yet. “He had to be coming home, he said he was” everyone kept repeating. Come 1 o clock in the morning, while most people had left except my relatives, we went to sleep. Or, tried to, at least. My brothers and I slept on air mattresses in the hallway in front of the front door. We wanted to be there, so when he walked thru the doors we would meet him there. where we used to every night he came home from work. I don’t think any of us slept that night; we just lied there in silence.
The next morning, we all woke up. It was pretty glum for most of the day. It was similar to the 11th, except a lot of people came and a lot less “don’t worry” comments that were once reassuring, were said. No one really knew what to do. Over the course of the day, there must have been a hundred people stop by and try to comfort us.
That night the town had vigils, masses, and any other gathering one could think of to display people’s feelings. That night, family and friends packed into our kitchen, living room, porch, and dining room for a service said by a local bishop. I have never seen so many people cry in one room before. People stayed into the late hours of the night, which, at that point, we just wanted to go to sleep. Most of us actually got some sleep since we were so beat from the past two days or so.
The next day, the 13th, we had pretty much given up hope. The past two days events had been surreal. This, though, was as real as it gets. It finally hit us, reality, that he wasn’t coming home. It hit my brothers, my mom, and I harder than anything we could ever imagine. The joyful greeting my we always used to present to my dad after he got home from work, would never happen again. To this day, it’s hard to be at peace with never seeing him again.
That Sunday, we had his funeral mass. It was a sight to see. St. Agnes, our awesome, majestic, huge cathedral had been packed, and even then, people were out the door. My younger brother did an awesome job telling the entire church, yes, the entire church of well over a thousand people, a story about my dad. He did a much better job than I would have been able to. It was a funny story; we heard a lot of laughing, which was good. The priest, who is now an extremely close family friend wanted to celebrate his life, not mourn his death. On such a horrible day, it was nice to see how many people had cared for him and loved him.
While many people experience a huge loss in their life, it’s usually not at such a young age. While anyone in my position would do anything to change what happened, they couldn’t. The only thing I can do is to make the best out of the situation. The most important thing I have learned from this event is to life everyday to the fullest. James Dean once said “Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today.” Unfortunately, a lot of people found out the hard way that day that someone can be taken from you in an instant; not to mention your own life.
George Santayana said “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” This is as true as it comes. If we forget about this, it will happen again. We have to always keep something of this magnitude in the back of our minds; it’s obvious our America has. From civil liberties to patriotism, American life is different. Things will, and should, never be the same.
RRJC:
I can’t imagine what it is like. Thanks for sharing. It must take a lot to relive it like you did.
I don’t think I can ever fuck with you online again and feel good about it.
God Bless.
RRJC, What a hard lesson to learn at an early age. It is funny sometimes how things can change in an instant. Nice job on the paper…And I for one will never Forget 9/11.
rrjc, you’ve had to live through something no child should ever have to. My heart and prayers go out to you and your family.
RRJC~
Thank you for sharing your story about your dad. I feel very honored that you would share that with us. I’m so sorry about your losing him at such a young age. You have a maturity and humbleness about you and now I know why…your dad would be proud. Take care and God Bless…
C:)
Yeah, I’m with Rockscar on this one. You will get no more abuse from me, RRJC. What you have is my respect and deepest condolences.
V
RRCJ,
My heart goes out to you bro. Like others have said, I can’t even imagine. Damn.
-bigflamer
I remember much of that day. More than christmas or any other holiday for that matter. It was 6am (9am somthing over there i think). I heard it all by radio on the way to school. I felt so bad for one of my teachers, I dont know specificly why she was crying. But i felt so bad that day.
I dont know if anyone has said this or not, but man it angers me to a degree that movie producers have filmed a movie like 9/11 already. Its like they have no dissregard for the families, all they care about is making money. But maybe thats just me.
[quote]tin_soldier wrote:
I dont know if anyone has said this or not, but man it angers me to a degree that movie producers have filmed a movie like 9/11 already. Its like they have no dissregard for the families, all they care about is making money. But maybe thats just me.[/quote]
Yes, I agree with you. Some in the media and the conspiracy theorists seem to disregard what the families are going through, just to make a quick buck for themselves or to become famous.
To rrjc5488,
just wanted to wish you all the best for the future, words fail me at these times.
[quote]chinadoll wrote:
tin_soldier wrote:
I dont know if anyone has said this or not, but man it angers me to a degree that movie producers have filmed a movie like 9/11 already. Its like they have no dissregard for the families, all they care about is making money. But maybe thats just me.
Yes, I agree with you. Some in the media and the conspiracy theorists seem to disregard what the families are going through, just to make a quick buck for themselves or to become famous.
[/quote]
You know what? We should try and get people not to watch it. If nobody pays to go see it, the movie will crash and burn.
I understand farenheit 911, that had something to say about our government; our leaders. But “World Trade Center” is just a drama skit like you said “looking to make a quick buck”.
Its only been a couple of years. Let the scars heal. I dont think that day which afected so many; Is a day that they want to re-live.