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I got a call while I was getting ready for work from my mom. I remembered thinking that the tone of her voice was the same one she uses when she calls to tell me that one of my relatives has passed away. I knew it was bad. She just said to turn on the TV. I just missed the second plane hitting. I worked for a mouse in Orange County, CA at the time and I called in to work to see if I should go in. No answer. So I drove to work listing to it all on the radio not knowing what was going on at work. When I got there a manager of mine was there turning everyone away. Told us to just go home and that we’d be paid for the day. A buddy of mine was one of the small handful of people who stayed that day. Said it was the weirdest day he’d had at work driving through the park in daylight where there should be guests packed in. After hearing reports of the park being found on a video in a terrorist apartment in Spain a few days/weeks (don’t remember) later I spend the next couple of months wondering if a suitcase nuke or dirty bomb would go off while I was at work much like Allah described.

Then there was the fake anthrax scare that two workers perpetrated. Never hit the news. FBI, HazMat, National Guard, biohazard suits. And not one news story. That whole end of ’01 was nerve-wracking.

And then I found out another hit.

The rest of that day… I think I just shut down except for one thing. I knew (but my mother did not) that my twin brother was scheduled to fly on a plane from Florida to California that morning. I spent the time frantically trying to contact my brother and to ensure my mother that he was okay.

I myself was scheduled to go to Seattle for a conference on… I guess it was that Friday or Saturday. I remember making the conscious decision to go anyway. There was this student reporter at the airport asking people why they were going. My answer was short and very very matter-of-fact.

“If I don’t, then they’ve won.”

We will never forget.
We will never surrender.
To any enemy, foreign and domestic.

It may seem strange, but my most vivid memory of September 11, 2001 is the blue sky and the crisp, cool air. It really was a perfect day on the East Coast. I was a graduate student at the time,……

ñòðàõîâîé áðîêåð êàçàíü…

Never forget.

Watching the news from thousands of miles away in SoCal, we felt like we were being attacked — that we would never feel safe or complacent again. Regrettably, many forgot too readily and some don’t wish to be reminded. Living with the aftermath must keep the memory fresher and rawer.

Even here in Orange County, I know someone who survived 9/11. He had a short-term reassignment from his Newport Beach office to help his company’s headquarters in the first tower and started his workday at sunrise. Around 8:30am, he went down to one of the lower floors for a quick breakfast that saved his life.

I live near the John Wayne Airport and South Coast Plaza, reportedly a terrorist target. I still half-expect an attack every time I hear planes buzzing overhead or any explosive sound. I do think another attack on our soil is inevitable and progressively more likely as forgetfulness invades our institutions of power.

The phone rang and it was a friend of ours that lived in Brooklyn. She was hysterical after seeing the results of the first plane. I don’t remember if her TV reception had dropped or if she just didn’t have one. But she was wanting to know if we knew what was going on.

I ran to turn on the TV and it was almost right as the 2nd plane hit. I was sure we were being attacked. I just didn’t know by who was doing it. It felt as though I’d been punched in the chest.

We didn’t have FoxNews at the time so were watching Today. I saw the first tower collapse. Someone on their crew commented that they weren’t sure what had just happened. I started screaming at the TV that the building had just vanished.

We watched until after the 2nd tower was gone. My head hurt from the thought of what I’d just seen. Having not been gone from the Navy too long, I was sure I’d be called back to active duty.

We finally turned off the TV and called our folks and kids.

My family and I were staying on Long Beach Island, NJ that week. I remember after we couldn’t take the television coverage any more, we went and sat on the beach, watching the long unbroken stream of black smoke flow from north to south for the rest of the afternoon.

I recently had to explain 9/11 to my oldest two children. My son had just turned 1 in 2001 and my daughter wasn’t even born. For the first few years I deliberately shielded them from video of 9/11. Why does a 4 year old have to know about that? But then my 8 year old son asked me some questions about Patriot Day on the calendar and about the war in Iraq. So we found some news footage online and I explained what happened as best I could. I told him that his aunt’s father had died in the WTC (his cousin’s grandfather). He watched and his sister watched, and they looked at me with big wide eyes and asked me if it was accident. Did the people in the plane fly into the building on accident? No, I had to tell them, they did it on purpose. Why would anyone do that? Didn’t the people on the plane die? Yes, they did. Did they know that the buildings would fall down? Was that an accident? No, I told them. It was a success beyond their wildest dreams. This is why we are at war. I’m not sure they understood – goodness, I’m not sure I want them to understand evil like that. And then they went on with their day in the way that children will. It was difficult to explain it to them so long after the fact. To them, it was eons ago, ancient history. To me, it is fresh and horrible every year. But I have to tell them about it, so that we will never forget. But I wish I could let them stay innocent and ignorant of this evil forever. My 4 year old still knows nothing about it.

A friend from HS worked at Merrill Lynch, 1 block from WTC. I spent 2 harrowing days trying to find out if she was okay, with her calling me back on THU to let me know she’d moved from Bensonhurst to SoHo on 9/10 to a 4th floor walkup and called in sick. Lucky for her, I thought.

My massage therapist and friend, who was from Brooklyn, would spend 3 days in DC then 4 days in NYC providing outpatient social work services for her family, friends, and their colleagues…all of them NYPD or FDNY.

Although I was in DC, trying to get out of the northern flight pattern of Dulles, I only knew a few who experienced this trauma personally until after 9/11…when I changed careers, I gathered more friends and colleagues who experienced 9/11 personally in NYC or DC.

Because I spent a lot of time in the company of those on the first line in both DC and NYC, as well as throughout the country, I’ve heard so many stories of where people were on 9/11…as well as the OKC bombing and international attacks. Too much pain amongst those folks for most of us to fully grasp. Makes them special people to do what they do.