In memory of those lost on 9/11/2001.
Where were you five years ago this morning? I was at Lori Copeland's house in Missouri, getting ready to fly home to Florida. (We had just finished a Heavenly Daze book). I was watching one of the morning news programs and heard the news with everyone else. I watched, horrified, as the second plane crashed into the second tower, and I almost stepped out into the hall to wake Lori and her husband up. When I heard that the third plane crashed into the Pentagon, I DID step out into the hall and call up the stairs to Lori. "You'd better get up," I said, "I think we're under some kind of attack."
I remember feeling slightly giddy--like it was some crazy cosmic joke or something, but of course it wasn't. Lori and Lance and I watched the TV all morning, disbelieving when we saw the towers come tumbling down. We heard that planes were still in the air and unaccounted for--we had the strange feeling that no one in America was safe; that anyone could step outside and watch a plane come down upon them. I called home and got my husband out of a staff meeting. I called my daughter and told her what little I knew. We suppose we all had an urge to reach out and touch our loved ones however we could.
Now, of course, we know the entire and awful truth. And as tragic as that day was for America, it could have been so much worse. Those towers are usually filled with tens of thousands of people, but they weren't. We experienced terrible loss, but we also experienced mercy.
It took me three days to get home; I finally ended up riding across the country on a Greyhound bus . . . and that's another story. But I am praying today for all those who lost loved ones on this day seven years ago. This anniversary has to be painful for them.
Where were you on September 11, 2001?
~~Angie
13 comments:
I still get chills thinking about it.
I was in California getting ready for work (have to beat the rush there) and they broke into the radio program to say something was wrong in NY so I turned on the TV. They brought in the live feed of the Today show and I watched the second plane hit the second tower. Then on the way to work I heard on the radio about the Pentagon being hit. That's when the tears came. I've never heard a quieter Starbucks than the one I went to that morning. Surreal...
We had just moved into a new house three days prior.
I was getting my kids ready for school and in that morning hassle state when my husband called and told me that a plane had flown into one of the towers. I said ok and kinda wondered why he was bothering me about it because I pictured a small two-seater kind of thing.
Then he said it was a jet and that one had hit the Pentagon. When he mentioned the Pentagon, that's when it meant something to me. That's an attack. That's war.
My kids then asked me for ice cream for breakfast, (I had never let them, don't know why they asked) and I said, "why not."
I went ahead and took my daughter to school. It didn't even occur to me not to. I was on auto - pilot, I guess.
Then I called a bunch of people for a prayer meeting and only one showed up. So we spent the morning in prayer.
I remember the eeriness of the day. No contrails in the sky. No planes. Except we could hear the fighter jets that were monitoring the skies at altitudes beyond our view. Eerie. Sad.
Since we're in Texas, it was 9:00 here, so my kids were already at school; they were in 1st & 3rd grades. I was home not feeling well and my husband called and told me to turn on the TV. I remember sitting there watching it and wondering how life was about to change.
And being very grateful that God was still in control.
I was off work that day and spent the morning outside mowing the lawn. When I came in and was cooling off before taking a bath, I checked my e-mail. All of them had strange mentions of "what's going on" that I didn't get. (Including one from Angie in MO.) After the third e-mail I decided I'd better turn on the TV and see what was happening. It was midmorning by then, so I had to watch and try to absorb everything at once. The Towers were already down. My first view as my TV warmed up was of a pile of debris. I sank slowly onto the bed trying to understand what had happened. At that point, I still thought, "accident." Took a while for the truth to soak in.
I got a little emotional about it talking about in on the air this morning. On my blog today, I've re-posted the tribute I did to one of the people who died on that day, a lady named Jean Hoadley Peterson who happened to be a devout Christian. I was "randomly" assigned to memorialize Jean year before last as part of a blogging project called "2,996." Still blesses me to read about her!
Like Kay, we had just moved into our house the day before. Normally, Scott would have been headed to work, but we were both home to unpack. I had been up early watching the news, but had turned it off BEFORE the attack. Scott turned it on when he got up, just in time to learn of the first attack. We thought it was a crazy accident at first. But after the second tower, there was no doubt.
By evening, it felt like everything in our world had changed. My generation (post-Viet Nam)had never experienced anything that could compare with that. For the first time, I felt unsafe in my own country.
I was working at the racetrack, almost done with our horses, when one of our owners showed up explaining the news on the radio had said something about the Twin Towers and exploding planes. Still dark, I hurried to finish and went home to turn on the TV. Chilling. Sorrowful.
My husband came home from work to tell me what was happening. Our world had already sort of fallen apart two days before when our college son's close friend was killed in a car accident. Our son had been asked to speak at the funeral so he'd driven home from Iowa and was sleeping in the TV room. We woke him up, turned on the TV and sat there watching together in stunned silence, thinking especially about our son who'd lost his friend and our friends who'd lost their son, and wondering how things could get much worse.
Looking back, we see how that week of tragedy drew all of us closer to God, more dependent on him than ever.
I was watching the news as the second one hit the second tower as well. I get chills every time I think about it.
God bless America and those serving to protect us.
I was teaching in my classroom and saw a 'news alert' flash across my computer screen. The news alert said a twin-engine Cessna had hit the WTC. I was a little vague about what the WTC was and so were my high school students (I had 3 for a computer apps class). We started to look up more information when the report changed to a jet hit the tower. The next class period went on as normal (majority of the faculty and kids were unaware that anything had happened). Then we had a special assembly where the administrator told the junior/senior high students about the morning. I really didn't get to see much of what went on til I got home from school and had to absorb the whole day's worth of events. Very sobering. School was incredibly quiet that day.
I was on strike. But, my employer was Transport Canada, in the civil aviation sector. We immediately stopped the strike and went back to work, so that we could be ready to help in any way we could. There were a lot of planes in the air that day, and many of them landed here,
I was in IN getting my children ready for school. We all watched the 2nd plane crash into the tower. One of my dear friends was supposed to be in that tower that day, but she got up late and was late for work...praise God, but it took all day to find out of she was okay.
For months, my youngest son flinched if a plane flew over head.
My friend called and told me the towers had been hit and to turn on the tv. I was at home with my 2 and 3 year olds. I distracted them with a video and watched events unfold on my computer. I wept and prayed all day and invited a few friends to come over after work and weep and pray with me. By 6pm we had over 30 people in my living room. Holding hands and praying for a country that seemed foreign: newscasters breaking down in tears, familiar skyline fixtures obliterated, the symbol of our national security broken and estimates of fatalities in the 30-40,000 range. It was all too much to take in.
The next day I put my little ones in a wagon and wheeled them to the park in our neighborhood. As I walked the street, every home had an American flag flying in defiance of the evil that threatened our peace and security.
At the park I sat on a bench watching my kids play. They were unaware of the fear that had gripped our nation. A middle-eastern looking man joined me on the bench and said, "This is really awkward, isn't it." And I realized that people in America were going to be looking at our middle-eastern neighbors with scrutiny and mistrust. I went home and wept some more.
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