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One of the best 9-11 articles

What I will never forget…

How warm it was that morning…it was a gorgeous fall day…

How tired I was…our flight back from the Miami (OH) game was diverted from Hartford to Boston due to bad weather…I may have been running on 4 hours sleep…

How my son (then 16 months old) wouldn’t let go of me when we dropped him off at the babysitter’s…almost made me miss my train…

How proud the company I was interviewing at was of their view of the city…you could see the WTC from there…wow, looks like one of the Towers is on fire…

Thinking how the hell do you fly a Cessna into the WTC?
How everything seemed to move in slow motion as the 2nd plane hit…
Calling my wife and telling her the WTC had been hit by 2 planes and the phone going dead…

Trying to still do the interview…the VP and I just looked at each other and said at the same time “Maybe we should try this another time”…she was trying not to cry (fiancé worked in Tower 1)…

Walking the 15 blocks back to Grand Central…all of the taxis had disappeared…
How quiet the city had become…

Standing against the barricade at GCS…they wouldn’t let anyone in due to a bomb threat…
Swapping cell phones with complete strangers so we could call our loved ones…calls weren’t going across area codes…my wife’s phone was a 914 and mine was a 203…

The sound of the towers coming down…and my first step was towards them…my second step was back to the barricade as I thought “your only job is to get home to your wife and son”…

Seeing people coming up Lexington covered in “dust”…realizing that parts of that “dust” were live humans earlier that morning…

Getting on that first train out of the station…wondering if it was going to blow up? Not caring…get me the hell out of New York…

The blind man sitting next to me on the train with his seeing-eye dog…how confused the dog looked…they were from Jersey City and got off in Stamford, CT with me…I gave him my last $20 I had in my wallet so he could buy something to eat…he had left his wallet on his desk on the 65th? 56th? Floor of Tower II…he had no idea how he was getting back to Jersey City…

Walking out to the taxi stand realizing I had no money to pay for it…getting a free lift home from the driver that had dropped me off a few hour earlier…

Getting to work and the hug my wife gave me(we worked for the same company back then)…the sound of a co-worker breaking into tears when his wife was finally able to call him, she had been late for work and not in her office on the top of tower 1…

Picking up my son from the babysitter…she told us that he knew I was OK because he saw me on TV…I vaguely remember one of the Spanish language stations interviewing the guy standing next to me at GCS, I guess that was the channel she had on…

Sitting in our apt, glued to the TV…scared to death every time we heard a plane the rest of that night…and there were commercial sized jets still landing well into the night…

The days and weeks after are still kind of a blur, the funerals of the fire company we had watched Super Bowl XXV with were the worst…we ended up moving to NJ that November and that’s really when things started to become “normal” for me again…
 
What I will never forget…

How warm it was that morning…it was a gorgeous fall day…

How tired I was…our flight back from the Miami (OH) game was diverted from Hartford to Boston due to bad weather…I may have been running on 4 hours sleep…

How my son (then 16 months old) wouldn’t let go of me when we dropped him off at the babysitter’s…almost made me miss my train…

How proud the company I was interviewing at was of their view of the city…you could see the WTC from there…wow, looks like one of the Towers is on fire…

Thinking how the hell do you fly a Cessna into the WTC?
How everything seemed to move in slow motion as the 2nd plane hit…
Calling my wife and telling her the WTC had been hit by 2 planes and the phone going dead…

Trying to still do the interview…the VP and I just looked at each other and said at the same time “Maybe we should try this another time”…she was trying not to cry (fiancé worked in Tower 1)…

Walking the 15 blocks back to Grand Central…all of the taxis had disappeared…
How quiet the city had become…

Standing against the barricade at GCS…they wouldn’t let anyone in due to a bomb threat…
Swapping cell phones with complete strangers so we could call our loved ones…calls weren’t going across area codes…my wife’s phone was a 914 and mine was a 203…

The sound of the towers coming down…and my first step was towards them…my second step was back to the barricade as I thought “your only job is to get home to your wife and son”…

Seeing people coming up Lexington covered in “dust”…realizing that parts of that “dust” were live humans earlier that morning…

Getting on that first train out of the station…wondering if it was going to blow up? Not caring…get me the hell out of New York…

The blind man sitting next to me on the train with his seeing-eye dog…how confused the dog looked…they were from Jersey City and got off in Stamford, CT with me…I gave him my last $20 I had in my wallet so he could buy something to eat…he had left his wallet on his desk on the 65th? 56th? Floor of Tower II…he had no idea how he was getting back to Jersey City…

Walking out to the taxi stand realizing I had no money to pay for it…getting a free lift home from the driver that had dropped me off a few hour earlier…

Getting to work and the hug my wife gave me(we worked for the same company back then)…the sound of a co-worker breaking into tears when his wife was finally able to call him, she had been late for work and not in her office on the top of tower 1…

Picking up my son from the babysitter…she told us that he knew I was OK because he saw me on TV…I vaguely remember one of the Spanish language stations interviewing the guy standing next to me at GCS, I guess that was the channel she had on…

Sitting in our apt, glued to the TV…scared to death every time we heard a plane the rest of that night…and there were commercial sized jets still landing well into the night…

The days and weeks after are still kind of a blur, the funerals of the fire company we had watched Super Bowl XXV with were the worst…we ended up moving to NJ that November and that’s really when things started to become “normal” for me again…

Appreciate this post. Even for a Sharks fan, so I won't say it ...
 
A buddy and I were on a work trip, meeting with clients and picking up antiques for auction. That morning, we left Charleston, SC early, bound for Hilton Head.
Word quickly spread via NPR and Shawn began to get edgy after the first tower was declared down… I was twitchy as well.
We hit the next stop and met up with some older ladies who were chain smoking and had the Fox turned up REAL loud. We went about our tasks, but could not stop pausing and watching coverage. We saw the second tower get hit.
Heading out of Hilton Head and pushing hard for the next stop, the newscast was heavily covering the fighter jets along the East coast ready to strike at other threats. By then, the Flight 82 (?) that eventually was heroically put down in Pennsylvania was identified as problematic.
Shawn had been concerned at the get go, but now realized that this was the flight that his uncle routinely piloted every week out of Boston. He was trying to reach his mom throughout the morning, but cell service (in it’s early days) was spotty.
We were like zombies as we made our last stop and hauled ace homeward. Late in the day, word came that his uncle was away on vacation that week and was safe.
I visited the memorial in Pennsylvania a few months back. It is a pretty sobering site. It brought that day and the aftermath right back, vividly. RIP in peace.
 
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I arrived back to work after lunch on 9/11/01 in Cedar Rapids, looked up in the sky, and saw Air Force One heading east over Iowa that day. I will never forget that. President Bush flew right over eastern Iowa heading back to Washington D.C. I could clearly see AF1 and its contrails. As well as his fighter escorts, which were tiny, silver objects around the plane. That's probably the most significant event I'll ever witness.
 
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I arrived back to work after lunch on 9/11/01 in Cedar Rapids, looked up in the sky, and saw Air Force One heading east over Iowa that day. I will never forget that. President Bush flew right over eastern Iowa heading back to Washington D.C. I could clearly see AF1 and its contrails. As well as his fighter escorts, which were tiny, silver objects around the plane. That's probably the best significant event I'll ever witness.
I distinctly remember seeing this too….you could make it out as well as the fighter escorts right over Iowa
 
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