Remembering 09/11/01
September 11, 2008
In the seven years that have unraveled since the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks the pain is still fresh and emotions run high. The ripple effect resulting from the event have influenced individuals and nations near to and far from New York City and the United States of America. The impact was felt by many in different ways. Some lost loved ones young and old. Some lost jobs. Some lost a sense of control in life. The actions of those who orchestrated the attacks and the government processes that came into play after the fact have robbed us all of something, if not personally, on a global level. A tragic and pointed reminder that we’re not so far removed from one another.
There’s still so much left unsaid as several residents share their personal experiences and reflections.
Where were you on September 11, 2001 and how did it change your life?
Readers, please feel free to share your own recollections in commenting.
Anonymous Male
It was the day that caused the formulation of my friend’s email to 50 Cent. You see 50 Cent had a popular song at the time that said you should “party like it’s your birthday”, but my friend’s birthday happens to be September 11th, 1981 (he was a Political Science major too). He couldn’t party like it’s his birthday because his birthday is a very memorable and horrific day for the U.S.
My 9/11 was uneventful. I don’t have much remembrance of it … I was asleep when the first plane hit because my first class (Philosophy) was not until 9:30AM that day. We talked about it a little bit, and then got into class. Then I went back to my room and found out that a second plane had hit. Not very memorable.
The only thing that changed my view of the world was how so many politicians didn’t actually read the Patriot Act before it was put into effect in a knee-jerk reaction to that day. The only senator to vote against the Patriot Act was the senator from my district.
The Patriot Act practically punted all civil liberties in the U.S. up into Canada. I’m a bit cynical about 9/11 because of: (A) How the Bush administration used fear the control the country and its media; and (B) as if we didn’t hear enough about how NYC is the center of the fucking universe … now we had to hear MORE about it.
I have no problem honoring those that died and those that helped, and I understand how when you’re in NYC it’s like nothing else is going on anywhere else in the world … but yes the rest of the world does exist and we’re not talking about NYC constantly in the Midwest like the national media seems to believe.
Blake Udimo
I was in school and i remember all of us watching the TV - most of us not knowing what was going on. Our teachers had looks of shock and fear in their faces.
It marked the start of the “war”. I lost someone close ’cause of that.
I’ve become very anti-military and anti-war. It has shown me how easily someone you love so much can be taken away at the blink of an eye.
Dice Beattie
On 9/11, I was at my place with my bud and there was a loud bang and a big flash. We kinda freaked, then turned on the TV (I was in NYC) and saw what was going down. And it was horrifiying.
duckyfresh Watanabe
I was at home with my daughter, who had just turned 1. We had been watching Bear in the Big Blue House movies all day when one messed up, so, I turned off the VCR and saw the news coverage. At first I had no idea what was going on and thought maybe it was somewhere like Kuala Lumpur. It took several minutes to realize it was NYC. All I could do was sit and watch, horrified, as the first tower burned. And then the second plane hit.
I was sick to my stomach for days afterwards.
Thankfully, I didn’t know anyone anywhere near the area so I didn’t have that panic to go through. I don’t really know how it affected me in the long run. The effects on me were sadly short-term, as I have a tendency to stay pretty much inside and secluded all the time. So, perhaps … it did.
Giselle22 Bristol
I need to be scared because terrorists have never been a topic for me ever since then. There was a group that actually tried to bomb the CN Tower so now we have bomb detectors to go inside. It’s pretty scary.
Iumi Cline
I don’t exactly have a poignant response for the question. I was in my high school World Cultures class when we started learning what was happening. I kinda sat there and realized how pointless the class was. How can our understanding of one another internationally be so juvenile … so medieval?
The events and security increases and all the war to follow were just an indication how far from a stable future we are as a society. I was naive, I guess. I always thought up to that point we’d reach a sci-fi level of peace.
It didn’t change my life really. It just opened my eyes. There was so much ignorance. Just the way some of the kids were talking about a situation they knew nothing about. I realized that this was the exact kind of reaction wide-spread mediazation causes. The media promotes fear and leads everyone in a boobish circle.
Lux Yao
I woke up and got online and checked a forum to see all these threads about something happening on the news … so I went and turned on the TV and it was playing over and over again on every station. Just stood there frozen and horrified. I remembered thinking, “People are going to ask me years from now what I was doing when this happened.”
Terrorist attacks existed before 9/11. I recall being afraid and sickened and saddened and small.
Nexeus Fatale
I was prepping for an essay for a course while I was first working on my B.S. I was literally printing it up when I got a phone call from my mother who told me that something happened, and to be careful – a plane hit the towers. I said, “I bet it’s some sort of accident, I’m going into the city anyway”.
I turned on the television only to see the second plane hit, and wow … was that ever a shock. I don’t think I’ve screamed so much in my life before. NYC means so much to me, like, this is MY city. So, for something like that to happen in my home town, to have travesty happen where I’ve grown up and live and loved, was a shock. I remember not getting any sleep; watching the towers fall only made me gasp even more.
What did not help is that in Brooklyn, you could smell “it” days later. A smell you’ll never get accustomed to. Trains passed certain stops, and when they did the train became eerily silent. You knew why people were not talking or saying anything.
As far as change my life – at first I would have joined the military in a moment. I think we all would have but we Americans have seen the result of that.
When Pearl Harbor was bombed, America helped end WWII, which was a horrible and deadly stain in American history – this opportunity was much different. Whatever patriotic zeal was brought from the travesty seems to have tied into a web of lies and confusion.
Don’t get me wrong – I love my country, always will, but it’s made me become more cautious in understanding how every single thing effects another. 9/11 for New Yorkers is significant, but we’re resilient, we had the 93 bombing as well to rely on. But nothing like 9/11 happened before. It really made you realize that that’s a LOT more going on outside of our borders, and how careful we must be in selecting those people to not only represent us but what we do to ourselves.
Most importantly… 9/11 has made me love my city, NYC, even more
Phoenix Chapman
I had just started a new job in a new city like one week earlier, and I was driving to work and heard it on the radio. I thought they were joking, I didn’t really believe it. When I got to work everyone was talking about it and the news was on, and my boss’s wife went to New York to help because she was a forensic specialist.
My life didn’t personally change much, other than I think I became more compassionate in general and I now had one of those stories to tell when someone asks where you were on a certain day in history
I’m not sure that it changed my world view, but I was only 22 and my world views were changing and forming.
I am more aware of the people around me in general, which I’m not sure is considered to be a “world view” … but it is my experience.
Anonymous Female
I was at home, actually. Saw the news and was utterly shocked. It really made me think long and hard about the future – about what my kids future would be like, because at that moment I knew that the world had changed for me and millions of other people …. and it would never be the same again.
I felt such an overwhelming sense of sadness that I cried for a couple days. I cried for the victims their families. The country. My children. The world.
I just cried.
Actually, it was a huge sense of loss … like, I know it’s silly, but loss of innocence. It was if the U.S. was a child and it had to grow up immediately (if that makes sense).
» Teleport to the 9/11 Memorial @ World Trade Center (181, 76, 26)
» Info on how to get 9/11 memorial jewellery freebies from EarthStones (Abraxxa Anatine)
» Y Me: Remembering 09/11/01 (2007 post)
Note to Readers: Feel free to share your own 9/11 experiences. If your comments in any way diminish the experience shared by other residents on this post your comment will be pulled without hesitation.
Photo credit: Catero Revolution
I was working in a cell phone call centre when this horrific event began.
All of a sudden we began to get urgent calls from people unable to reach others in the NYC area. Our centre became chaos and we went into a “all hands on deck emerg” status, to try to handle the pure volume of calls. At the same time, someone turned our information monitors to an US news station, and we watched the unfolding events in shock.
I remember wondering if this was how people felt when the original “war of the worlds” was broadcast. There was a little hope in my heart that what we were seeing, was indeed a “hoax” or some sort of promotion of some new movie.
It was soon clear, as the nature of the calls because more and more distraught, that this was in fact real. For me personally, it was the first time I had ever experienced such an overwhelming fear in my life.
We had calls coming in from family and friends trying to contact loved ones in the area of the tragedy, and unable to do so, and I rode the rollercoaster of emotions with each caller, and stayed way after my shift ended, just to provide a voice and ear to these callers. I did not sleep for days afterwards, as the details from these callers played over and over, and I just wanted to know things were ok for them.
This event made us look outside our hearts, our families, our homes, our communities, even our countries, and reach out, perhaps out of relief that it did not happen to us, but also because of a new global awareness that it *could* happen to us.
That day, the world became a smaller place to me.
I was working in a preschool full of three year olds at the time. We had no t.v and the radio was usually only played cds at naptime. We knew nothing of what had happened until one parent came in and told us about the first tower and how it was hoped to be just a tragic accident. It was then that we turned on the radio, loud enough for us to hear when we were close, but soft enough not to allow the kids to hear.
It was only a matter of time before parents started streaming back to be with their children, some trying to hide their tears, others with cell phone desperatly glued to their ears. All of them wanting the same thing though, to be with the ones that meant the most to them.
We were in a bubble of isolation it seemed, only the radio to tell us what was going on. It wasn’t until later that night that I first saw the images on television.
It wasn’t until I had children of my own that I begain to understand what these parents where feeling.
I was at work and we had the news on when the first plane hit. I actually work for what was the largest tenant in the World Trade Center, although I do not work in the NY area. At first we all though it was some freak accident…until the second plane hit. Then we knew. I called my boss in a state on the west coast and woke him up to tell him what was happening. We were all in shock wondering about our co-workers in the WTC. I remember the horror of watching the towers fall wondering how many fellow employees were in the building. We ended up losing 7 employees that day in the WTC, all members of our security staff who were well trained and made sure the rest of our employees were safely out of the building before they would leave. Our company had trained our employeed rigorously after the failed attempt years before thankfully and our security staff made our employees leave the building when the first plane hit. In many ways my company was lucky that we lost so few, but 7 is still too many. They were true heroes.
[...] Catero Revolution has asked for my personal thoughts on the day and it would be redundant to repeat the same here. The idea of this post is not to talk about 9/11 as so much as it is to discuss one of the lessons learned from it. I believe that the tragic event of 9/11 could have been prevented. Poor leadership with a zeal for revenge politically and personally helped cause this tragedy. The fact the same madman has been elected twice is beyond my own comprehension, but that’s neither here nor there. His actions have reverberated across the world where many more have died than those in the two buildings that sparked this event. There has been much bloodshed, and due to the previous 7 years there is more to come. [...]
I live in Australia, at the time in an isolated area. My husband was sick, and away having surgery, so I wasn’t sleeping that well. The 11th is an emotional day for me anyway, being my mother’s birthday (she passed away from cancer earlier that year) so it had been a teary day already, on her first birthday after she had passed.
I remember watching tv in the early hours on what was for us, the 12th Sept, and flicking through the channels in the hopes of catching a late night movie, or something to send me to sleep.
All of a sudden, whatever tv show I had been watching stopped for a news broadcast, a live feed from New York.
New York is about 14hrs behind us, so there it was about 9am…..
I sat and watched in stunned horror, as the footage reeled across the screen, at first unable to comprehend the scope of what I was seeing.
I sat there, tears streaming down my face, watching the devastation, until I realised the sun had come up.
I reached for the phone and called my husband, and just asked him, “Are you watching the tv?”
He just replied softly, “Yeah”…and we just sat in silence together on the phone as we watched.
What can be said about something so devastating?
This moment changed the lives of everybody in the world, I think.
No single day in history, has ever had such a global impact, and hopefully, there will never be one such again.
Conspiracy theories, the blame game….all pales into insignificance for me at least, before the sheer enormity of what happened that day, when innocents lost their lives, and bravery took on a new meaning, symbolised by the NYFD men, who risked everything that day.
I was heading into work when I heard the news. At first I think everyone assumed like me it was a horrible accident. The another hit and you knew it was no accident. I work at a University and we set TV’s up on the news cnannels and updated people as we could. My first inclination was to head home to my child…but somehow it seemed like that is what the terrorist would have wanted, panic. So I continued to work and teach and look at everyone around me with a new sense of appreciation.
How has it changed my life? I hug my daughter just a little tighter everyday.
I distinctly remember the day. I was in my early 20s, and had got back from job hunting all day and switched on my TV to see the breaking news. The news buff that I am, checked out all channels and the same news was breaking, very sketchy, no information and all. That was so terrible to see once they started showing the pictures and then the videos.
I feel sad for the thousands who perished that day and their families. No religion, no belief and no reasoning can justify such a horrible act.
That said, the after effects of Sept 11 has been very evident to someone like me more than anyone. Hailing from a country which is the most peaceful in this part of the world, you are still picked out of the line for random searches and frisking when you travel abroad (yes, it does happen). That’s just an example. There are far worse things which has happened, more people have died in other parts of the world as a result of 9/11, innocent lives lost in wars, soldiers from the allied side still continue to lay down their lives for the sake of freedom and liberty.
Its easier said than done for the politicians that such sacrifices maybe worth it for the sake of keeping this world a more peaceful place. Then again, things as it stands in various parts of the world reminds me that its just wishful thinking.
Anyway, my condolences to anyone who was affected by the disaster. Although horrific, it is truly the defining moment of this decade in more ways than one and more likely than not, would remain one for the foreseeable future.
Claud
I was on my way to Best Buy and listening to the radio when the announcement came over of what had happened. When I got to the store, I just went in and sat on the floor in front of the wall of TVs and could do nothing but watch.
I personally wasn’t affected, but my thoughts were and continue to be with those that were. Especially the brave men and women that went into the buildings to rescue as many as they could, some trapped and others killed in the process. I want to say a special thank you to all who risk their lives to save and protect ours.