My last post referenced 9/11. It will soon be twenty three years since that terrible episode. I can totally understand why blogmate Steve Reed still feels uncomfortable about referencing that day for he was living in New York City at the time. Even now the very thought of it must be laced with concrete dust.
It is often said that we all remember where we were when momentous events took place. I was forty seven years old and The Head of English in a tough secondary school in North Sheffield. September 11th, 2001 was a Tuesday and after the schoolchildren had gone home I had to attend a senior leaders' meeting in the conference room on the first floor of the main block.
Of course in those days nobody had smartphones and to catch up with the latest news you would have had to turn a television or a radio on. But such actions did not happen in senior leaders' meetings. We proceeded through the heavy agenda and the meeting probably ended around 4.45pm.
It was time to head home. I descended the stairs and I remember a colleague who had not been in the meeting telling me that something terrible had happened in New York - a plane had flown into a skyscraper. It was of course all very confused at first.
It took me less than half an hour to drive home - past the Sheffield Wednesday football ground then along Penistone Road before heading up to Walkley and then further up the hill to Crookes via Greenhalgh Street. Over to Manchester Road and then down Shore Lane to Fulwood Road. Past Endcliffe Park and then up Peveril Road to Banner Cross where we still live.
When I arrived home, my family were glued to the television in the corner, watching events live from New York unfolding. A lot of confusion remained but what we were looking at seemed horrific - like a disaster blockbuster film transferred to real life. And then The South Tower collapsed, followed half an hour later by The North Tower. Breathtaking horror in front of our eyes.
It was clearly not an accident because not one but two planes had been steered into the twin towers of The World Trade Center. It had to involve hi-jackers - probably Islamist terrorists. And I remember feeling astounded that anyone could deliberately throw their own life away like that to achieve such a terrible goal. After all - life is precious isn't it? Don't we all want to live long lives that contain as much joy and happiness as possible? Why end it that way and for what? For what? It just didn't make sense.
America had seemed impregnable while other countries repeatedly endured the pains of conflict and terrorism. But 9/11 revealed that America was also vulnerable to bitterness and revenge. It was not immune. And wasn't that also part of the shock of it all?
In the days that followed I watched a lot footage as the truth of what had really happened began to emerge from the dust. Wickedness had indeed been wrought upon New York by deranged Islamic terrorists. Were they really human? Ironically, The World Trade Center accommodated people from all over the world - the clue was in the name. So this was not just an attack on America, it was an attack on the western world as a whole.
Never such innocence again.
If you feel like responding, where were you when 9/11 happened? How did you feel?
I remember watching events on TV in the morning. I don't know why the Tv was on in the morning. I probably heard about the events on the radio and then went to the TV. It was unbelievable. They kept showing events over and over. At first I didn't think it was real. It's one of the things I'll remember for the rest of my life.
ReplyDeleteA disaster that appeared live on our TV screens.
DeleteMy birthday is September 11th. My sister-in-law's birthday is December 7th (Pearl Harbor Day). We've often talked about sharing our special days with national tragedies.
ReplyDeleteAre you both bad omens?
DeleteI was home in Miami, Carlos had gone to work, and I heard the news playing in the background about a plane hitting one of the towers. And as I sat on the bed to watch, the second plane hit the other tower.
ReplyDeleteCarlos came home from work and we sat and watched all the news and kept seeing the towers fall and fall and fall.
Utterly helpless.
Utterly helpless and beyond reason.
DeleteI was home in California, in bed as I had just broken my ankle and couldn't put weight on it. My husband came in and said a plane had just gone into the World Trade Center Tower. And I thought " of course it did. the world is ending." So got up and watched all the horror. A few days later my husband and son were out to back to school night and someone had violated the airspace with a private plane so two F-16 fighter jets went roaring overhead. But I knew no one would possible attack my little town of Petaluma so wasn't too worried. But of course, our world has never been the same. And now we're facing the end of democracy here. Such fun.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing this Lini. You are right - nothing has been quite the same since then.
DeleteI was an at-home mom, and knew nothing about it until my son came home from junior high saying that the word at school was that something awful was happening in New York. We turned on the television and watched live coverage. It was horrible, especially the souls who jumped to their deaths rather than be burned alive. That's the part I remember most. I've wondered so many times what I would do if I was faced with that choice. Other stories came out later, like the doomed fourth plane and the courage of those passengers too.
ReplyDeleteYes - the jumpers. There were over 200 of them. What a terrible choice they had to make. I wrote a poem about them titled "Icarus".
DeleteAnd as I jump
I think of our weekend at Bowman Lake
Tommy at the water’s edge
Carol-Ann begged him not to fall
Hickory chips smoking
Clear blue morning light
Upon the wings of death
Way beyond Gramercy
And as I jump
I relish the rushing air
Cooling
Like that summer in the Dakotas
Dad behind the wheel of our 74 Buick
Mom turns and says
“Just wind the window down Mikey”
Headed for Mount Rushmore
And as I jump
I see so many things undone
Places unvisited
Words unsaid
Carol-Ann I always loved you
Please tell Tommy
That I
Could fly
This is such a visual, heartfelt few words, Mr. Pudding. "I can fly."
DeleteSo glad you "got it" Donna. It's a few years since I wrote it.
DeleteI was at work and Steve had been to teach Business English for a couple of hours in the morning and then went home as usual, where he nearly always had the TV on in the background, providing him with news. He emailed me at work, telling me that a plane had just flown into a skyscraper in New York. I remember that I couldn't get my head round it and, like most people, at first thought it was a terrible accident. But as more facts emerged, it became clear that it was a terrible attack of so far unheard proportions.
ReplyDeleteOnce I was home, we kept watching various news channels, still somewhat incredulously. Some of the reports mentioned that the terrorists had learned to fly in Germany, and at least one of them had been living in Hamburg. It didn't make a difference to the attack as such, but made me wonder how he could have been living in my home country, probably benefiting from the freedom we enjoy here, and still carry out that horrible plan.
I was 31 years old, and Steve was a month away from his 31st birthday. We had no idea that he was going to be around only for another 10 years.
I guess that Steve's death was your own personal "9/11". Life changing anyway.
DeleteI very rarely have the tv on in the mornings and don't know why I did that day, but I saw the planes crashing and the buildings fall and I remember crying. It was a day when I was headed to my volunteer job. It didn't make sense then and still doesn't now even with everything that has happened since. None of it makes sense. Where is the World Peace that everyone hopes for?
ReplyDeleteWorld Peace? Just beyond our reach.
DeleteIt's very hard to understand the psychology of fanatics for whom the "afterlife" is a greater goal than life on Earth.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that you worked an entire day without becoming aware of the events. The planes hit around 9 a.m., which would have been 2 p.m. in England. The South Tower collapsed about an hour later, and the North Tower a half hour after that. So what you saw when you got home must have been video of the earlier collapse. Or maybe you got home earlier than you remember?
You are right to point out the apparent time discrepancies. I cannot really explain that but the way I told it is how I have always remembered 9/11. Perhaps we live in a time warp here in Yorkshire.
DeleteI was at work in a small branch of Barclays, and a customer came in and told us what was happening. We switched the TV on in the rest room and watched it in turns. I left at about 3 I think to get my youngest ( teenage) son from school, and we went home and kept watching the terrible results of the planes crashing. I remember saying to him that it was history being made.
ReplyDeleteThings have never been quite the same since.
DeleteI was on a Eurotunnel train to a conference in Lille. The television was on at the reception and we thought it was showing a film.
ReplyDeleteps thanks for the directions to your house.
You're welcome for the directions. Come over for a cup of tea and we will have a game of rugger in the garden. Bring the missus too if you wish.
DeleteLike Red I was at home and remember that they rolled the news over and over again. I think what horrified me the most was the figures jumping out of the top stories. Also the courage of people in the towers phoning back home to give last messages. As you say it was like a disaster film movie, the horror was that it was real.
ReplyDeleteOver and over again - those terrible images. Lest We Forget.
DeleteI was at work when one of our team (who was browsing online instead of using his computer for work) told us all that something major was happening. We all stopped to watch on our PC screens, stunned and horrified. Not much work was done that day.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if folk in the Muslim world were also stunned and horrified. I hope so.
DeleteI was at home doing housework and had local radio Suffolk on when all of a sudden the two presenters stopped talking and gasped in horror and then said what they had seen on their TV in their studio.
ReplyDeleteIt was just so surreal and tragic to watch but impossible to stop watching
Yes. You couldn't take your eyes away. The victims were innocents just like you and me.
DeleteI think it was about 10pm here. We were sitting in the lounge room watching tv. The programme we were watching on the ABC blanked out and then the channel moved to a commercial tv coverage of it live, as it happened. We stayed up rather too late. I don't think I was working the next day. For all the horror, over the following days as it the facts became clear, I felt so bad for my Moslem workmates. I think 'don't mention the war' was the way most people at work felt.
ReplyDeleteHundreds of Muslims died too - and I not including the evil perpetrators.
DeleteWe didn't see the news that day. Next morning I walked into a newsagents in town and the newspaper headlines screamed "The World Is At War." What ever had happened?
ReplyDeleteHow strange to get the news a day later.
DeleteI remember that day vividly. I was teaching at a different middle school than the one from where I just recently retired. It was my planning period, first thing in the morning, and I was meeting with my team of teachers. The principal came in and told us a plane had hit one of the towers. He knew nothing else. We all assumed that it was a small plane that had gotten off course. He told us to not turn our classroom TVs on in front of the students because this was a developing story. And as you stated, this was before cell phones, so the day progressed. We began to hear snippets from other teachers who had planning periods, and slowly the horror began to creep in. I remember driving home listening to the news on the radio. And I remember walking my dog that night and there were no sounds of airplanes in the sky as President Bush had closed American airspace.
ReplyDeleteI think we all felt that it was something very, very big from the outset and it made no sense. It was stupid. It was pointless.
DeleteI had an hour before I had to collect my son from school and set the ironing board up in front of the TV. Whatever program I had was interrupted. It was hard to believe what I was seeing.
ReplyDeleteSimple domesticity held up by something so terrible you could not ignore it. Thanks for contributing Braemuirgirl.
DeleteI was speaking at a regional conference on grandparenting in Lexington, Kentucky. Some participants wanted to continue, some wanted to stop, some went home, speakers who had flown in found themselves stranded in town. My office closed for the rest of the week.
ReplyDeleteI guess grandparenting didn't seem too important at that moment in history.
DeleteI had gotten laid off the week before so decided to walk my severance check to the bank to deposit. As I was in the bank, I remember a television on one of the desks blaring away and a few people watching it which was odd. I had never seen a television in the bank before. I walked back home and as I entered the apartment complex, a man came running out shouting about planes flying into buildings. I thought he must have gone mad. Inside my apartment though, something urged me to turn on the television, perhaps to verify that mad man was indeed mad. Seconds after I turned it on, the first building collapsed and it took me a minute or two to comprehend what I was seeing. I collapsed into my chair and spent the rest of the day watching events unfold and realizing the world was fundamentally shifting.
ReplyDeleteSounds like your private life has changed for the better since that dark day.
DeleteMy son's girlfriend came to pick him up for school and I didn't believe her when she told me that a plane had flown into the World Trade Centre. Planes can't hit buildings. I turned on the TV and the nightmare began.
ReplyDeleteMy ex husband was flying and when he landed I told him to drive home. I just wanted my whole family together, I wanted to know that everyone was safe and accounted for. I think everyone just wanted their family safe that day.
By my estimates you son would have been about seventeen that day 23 years ago.
DeleteAs almost everyone says- it was the most beautiful day imaginable. I was out of town to help a dear friend who had just had an appendectomy. Her husband and I got up early to go and pick her up from the hospital and when we walked into her room, she had the TV on and said, "A plane just flew into the World Trade Center."
ReplyDeleteAnd nothing was ever quite the same again.
Bruce Springsteen's album, The Rising, which came out after the event, did an amazing job, I think, of expressing so many emotions about that day.
Thank you for alerting me to the Bruce Springsteen album. I will seek out some tracks via YouTube.
DeleteI was working as a library aide in a local school and was on break in the teachers' lounge where the TV was on. It was awful to see and as more people gathered to watch we all just cried and were so frightened.
ReplyDeleteWe are all just vulnerable humans trying to get by, trying to make the most of things.
DeleteI was pregnant with our youngest son and the midwife was due to call in. I put some biscuits to bake and got mugs ready, but she didn't arrive until well past our appointment time. When she finally knocked, she came in in tears, just said, "Put the telly on..." . Examination forgotten, we both watched, tears streaming, horrified as it all unfolded. A truly awful day. A day when we all hugged those we loved a little tighter ...
ReplyDeleteHello Elizabeth. Thanks for calling by again. I guess your youngest son is now 23 - the same number of years that have now passed by since 9/11.
DeleteI had had a major operation earlier in that year and was still slowly recovering in September. I had had a nap after lunch and was rousing slowly, so switched the bedroom TV on to see the dreadful news literally unfolding after the first plane hit the World Trade Centre. Then I saw the second one hit it live! It was unfathomable what was happening. I do wish we would call it 11/9 though, as we don't do our dates the same as the US and I keep thinking they mean 9th November!
ReplyDeleteI should not laugh ADDY but I applaud your last point even though it seems a bit churlish in the light of what happened.
DeleteWorking in IT, we had internet news feed on a PC in the background when one of the team suddenly shouted out about what was unfolding on screen in front of us. For some time we were just held spellbound by what was happening, trying to take in the enormity of it. It did prompt one or two caustic comments from a Northern Irish member of the team, that now some of the US jerks that had been funding IRA terrorists were getting a taste of their own medicine.
ReplyDeleteWe had just moved from New York, shortly before 9/11. Our next door neighbor in New York was one of the firemen killed that day. His name was Michael Fodor. He was a lovely, lovely man, and he and his wife always looked out for me and my kids. We will never forget him.
ReplyDelete