I was living in Biloxi.
I was asleep when the first plane struck. My housemate, Sean, knocked on the door to my room to wake me with the news that a plane just hit the World Trade Center and I needed to come watch. Sleepy-eyed and incoherent, I stumbled off my futon and joined him on the couch in the living room, where we sat glued to the TV.
At that point, no one knew what had happened yet - was it as accident? Was it on purpose? We watched the news reports ad footage and saw the second plane fly straight into the other tower. Both of us said, “Oh my God…” at the same time. At that point, we knew what everyone else in the world knew: this was no accident.
We watched as people streamed out of the buildings and ran screaming, and watched, horrified, as desperate people who knew they were going to their deaths anyway, threw themselves off the building from dozens of stories up. To me, that was the most unfathomable thing and are the images that are burned into my memory the most - that people faced with a fiery and horribly painful death were throwing themselves in scores from the towers in abject terror.
We watched the towers come down and couldn’t believe this was happening. Sean turned to me and we stared at each other. “We have to go in to work,” one of us said. Jamie, our third housemate, was already gone, but we weren’t due in until later that day - Sean, for his evening shift, and me, because I had worked overtime the day before shooting football widows for the first Monday Night Football.
The newsroom was chaotic and frenzied. Phones rang off the hook, editors barked orders, and reporters and photographers scurried around to get out the door to cover everything. I ran, too.
I photographed countless businesses putting “God Bless America” on their marquees, American flags suddenly flying everywhere, frantic mothers who were pulling their children out of school - photos I couldn’t use because they were all too scared to stop and give me their identifying information, people filling up gas cans because of news reports the pumps were closing. I sat in line at a station myself for an hour, listening to the radio, afraid that if the gas stations really WERE closing, I wouldn’t have enough gas to do my job the next day.
I didn’t eat that day - no one did. We spend the whole day documenting what was going on to put it in the paper, documenting people’s shock and horror and shoving down our own ability to process what was happening ourselves so we could do our jobs.
When I finally got home late that night, I pulled my car in the drive, cut the engine and left the radio on, listening. I laid my head on the steering wheel and cried and cried, finally able to stop long enough to let myself feel SOMETHING.
All air traffic had been grounded and the skies were eerily clear, but we heard jets take off from the Air Force Base all night - terrifying sounds because we knew they must know things that we didn’t.
That’s what I remember.
Where were you?
I was in college at SWT about to graduate with the possibility of a great job in Washington state as a marine biologist. My clock radio went off and I heard the DJ say “I cannot believe this is happening. If you haven’t turned on your TV yet, do it now. Oh my God, another one!” I leapt out of bed and turned on my TV. I saw the two towers burning and smoke filled the air. Then they reporter said that an airplane had hit one of the towers. I was confused because both towers were burning and then in a small screen at the bottom of the TV they showed what looked like a building burning. It was labeled “The Pentagon.” Then they replayed the second plane hitting the 2nd tower. I then knew that this was intentional. My mind then replayed the image of Bin Laden in a 1998 recording. I felt a sense of fear back then. It freaked me out.
I saw the camera zoom in on people hanging out of windows waving for help. I knew that these people were going to die. They were above the smoke. Then a man wearing a pair of black slacks, a white button down shirt and a blue tie with glasses looked left, then right… and then help leapt out. The camera then zoomed out quickly. I remember yelling “Oh my God!” My roommate came back in from her morning shower and we watched it all unfold.
I called my mom at work and asked her if she had heard. She had and was asking me details. Just then, one of the towers began to erupt in even more smoke. Within a second the tower began to shrink slowly at first and then faster and faster. I thought I was imagining things, but it was collapsing and I remember screaming. My mom yelled “What? What?” I told her what had happened and apparently her coworkers were in her office because she repeated it to them.
I went to my morning class and my professor came in and said that she couldn’t hold class because she herself didn’t know where a loved one of hers was. Her husband came in and announced that there was another plane unaccounted for and was not repsonding to the control tower. And all planes were to land at once. He also said that the other tower had also collapsed.
Tears welled up in my eyes because I had never known a world where there was so much terror and so many unknowns. I thought to myself that they would probably shoot this plane down if it wouldn’t respond… where was it going?
I went back to my room and stopped as I opened the door to my building. Everyone was in the lobby watching the news on TV. I dropped my bag and saw that the plane had crashed… this one in a field.
SWT held a memorial that evening in the quad area. Our president spoke and a group sang God Bless America. Little did I know how many people were there till I saw it on the school’s website. It must have been atleast a thousand people. We all came together to pray, to hope and to support eachother.
As the days went on I watched the news and hoped that there would be more surviviors. One, maybe two would appear. Signs started going up with people’s pictures on them. “Missing Female” or “Have you seen…” It was so disturbing that these people would not find their loved ones… nothing. Not a shoe, not a piece of jewelry or anything.
You remember where you were, who you were with, even what you were doing. You remember details like you woudn’t ever imagine. Like the man who leapt from the building. He was probably someone’s husband or maybe someone’s father. I have never watched someone die before. Within seconds, he was dead.
I went up to Austin for a few days and went for a walk at UT. Suddenly a deafening roar filled the air above me. I felt myself gasp and duck. I then looked up along with several other people that were on the ground. An F-16 jet was right over us. Didn’t hear it coming. Scared the crap out of me and everyone around me. My mind raced. Is it happening again? Are they patrolling the skies? What’s going on? Jets from San Antonio AFB were patrolling the hill country. They did this for several days.
I graduated at December. This 1st graduating class from SWT after 9/11. The job I had lined up disappeared because funding was immediately cut from the government. I was graduating college with no job lined up. I knew that this would be a trying time for America and myself.
We all remember where we were when Challenger exploded or when Princess Diana died. My grandmother remembers clear as day where she was when Pearl Harbor was attacked. She and my grandfather were laying on their bed listening to the radio hearing the awful details unfold. As they listened they both knew that my grandfather would be called overseas. My parents remember where they were when Kennedy was shot. My mom said that she was driving to work and had to pull over she was so in shock. She even remembered what she was wearing that day.
My husband has his story. My parents and grandmother have their stories to add to their memory. My friends have theirs.
Our children will ask about where we were when we were attacked September 11, 2001 just as we asked our grandparents about Pearl Harbor and our parents about Kennedy.
I pray a lot for my country more now than I ever have. I hate to say that it took this event to make me start, but my prayers are for peace. I am angry at those who laugh at our heartbreak, but I am a firm believer in Karma and those who do evil to others will get their’s in the end.
It was a few weeks into my freshman year of college, and I found out in an 8am class when a professor, trying to be casual, said that there were some attacks in New York and we could leave on our cell phones and leave class if we needed, but continued with the class. Mark Thames called soon after and told me what was going on, which was the beginning of a week’s worth of bawling and freaking out and studiously avoiding television coverage because my roommate and I had no ability to process seeing what had happened. It was too much to know.
The positive things that surfaced afterward were a sense of solidarity and community for at least a few months among the more thoughtful and political students at our school who were concerned the immediate reaction would be more violence, but this time from the state. In one way or another, through this coming together I met Danny and all but one of my best friends from college (one I met through random chance in another country).
I was bursting pregnant with Jiri - ready to drop any nanosecond. I sat on the floor and held Eva and cried and cried that I was about to bring a baby into this world. He was born the 16th. To this day I wonder about the hormones and fear I pumped him full of right before he was born.