I posted on what I did on September 11, 2004 and how 2001 didn’t really impact me until just a few days ago. Amazing experiences, very spiritual as well.

My church at the time had a Mothers-Day-Out ministry. I took the money, greeted the moms, put the lunches away, etc. We begin the day at 9 a.m. CST. I had just finished taking the lunches down the hall and settling a new mom into the schedule, when one of my friends said she heard something about the World Trade Centers being bombed, on fire or something. I wasn’t sure what to think about it, so went on about my errands. When I got into the car, I turned the dial to my local NPR station. As I recall, they were trying to get the details straight. I began to pray with desperation for the people in the WWTT. I turned my van around and went back to the church and pulled the each teacher out to tell them news. Several mothers were coming in to retrieve their children. Not wanting for the children (under 5) to be frightened, we posted a sign asking moms and dads to please not discuss or mention the happenings and thus allow the children who were remaining to do so in peace.

I decided to let my children finish the day so as not to alarm them. But as I was driving home, a journalist announced that one of the towers had just collapsed. I pulled into my driveway and wept. After a minute, I went inside and turned on the television and watched the second one come down. Then I called my husband at work (a corporate hog farm company) and told him what happened. He hadn’t heard anything yet, so it was quite disturbing and upsetting. He gently passed the news along to his employees.

I picked up my girls and my husband came home and we watched the news together and then we prayed as a family. I wept as I watched the news, but I remember be greatly comforted by the obvious resolve and strength that President Bush exhibited. We prayed together with our girls that night, as we do everynight, but this one seemed more sober and humble than any we had spoken to the Lord before.

Thanks for sharing, LaShawn, and thanks for asking your readers to share, too.

The next day when I went back to BAMC nearly every civilian patient/retiree or charity emergency indigent patient had been transferred to civilian hospitals there in San Antonio in anticipation of victims from other attacks which praise God never materialized. I remember that we had a few head trauma civilian patients who had been there for several weeks with no likely discharge date in sight.
They were all gone on 9/12/01.

On September 10th, my middle child (4yo) fell on a makeup brush and stabbed her thigh requiring stitches, and was home from preschool the next day. My husband called me to tell me a plane had hit the WTC, to turn on the tv. I said no, we were playing, and I’d see it on the news later. I thought it was some small private plane. My dad called soon after to tell me I really needed to turn on the tv. I turned it on in time to see the second plane hit, then the tv stayed on for a long time thereafter. My oldest child, then 8, was in a small private school that they both attend now. I called the school and they recommended leaving the children in school to finish out the day, to keep their lives as normal as possible. She came home on the bus later and sat with a girl whose mother was out of town, and the girl’s birthday was that day, Sept. 11th. The poor girl cried the whole way home on the bus. If I had known then what I know now, my car would have had rockets coming out of the back as I raced to the school to pick up my daughter. We were all in such a state of shock.

I remember thinking, Bush is here in Florida, and our local news cut to him in the Sarasota school and I watched his initial statement live. My daughters both had dance class that night, and their teacher, a New Yorker, called to tell me class was cancelled. I stayed on the phone with her for almost two hours; she was trying to reach her brother who was an EMT for NYC on her cell phone. He worked about a 36 hour shift that day, and is okay.

My husband was teaching high school at the time, and he had them turn on coverage in the school library tv. One of his students cried because he had just returned from NY, and had eaten at the Top of World two days prior, on Sept. 9th. Late that night, as we fell asleep, my husband (from New Jersey) murmured about all of the different kiosks and shops that were under the WTC, and how one of them had the greatest coffee.

What a day.

I teach individual music lessons, and when I went in the room at the school to teach, my co-workers told me there was an explosion at the WTC. I made a statement that I’ll never forget.

“It’s been attacked again? They should just knock those things down they are such a target.” Little did I know…

Two hours later, I emerged from the lessons and left for home to have lunch. On the way, I got the gist of what was going on from the radio. WTC AND Pentagon attacked? What was is this?

I got home, saw the images on tv of the strikes and the towers falling, and was distraught and very very angry. I tried calling my friend who lives in DC and whose husband worked in the Pentagon from time to time. He was in Russia at the time, but I could not get through to her for a day or so. My mother called me crying. My husband was trying to keep kids at his school calm all day long

My friend in DC said she did not have the tv on all morning that day, but when she got into her car to go to work, she saw the smoke coming from the Pentagon. Then, she promptly turned her car around, went home and hide inside. During the anthrax scares, her mail was microwaved. She lives on base in DC.

My local firehouse responded, Squad 1 from Union Street in Brooklyn. Twelve firefighters crossed the Brooklyn Bridge and disappeared forever: James Amato, Brian Bilcher, Gary Box, Thomas Butler, Pete Carroll, Robert Cordice, Eddie D’Atri, Michael Esposito, Dave Fontana, Matthew Garvey, Michael Russo and Steve Siller.

May God keep their souls, and watch over the wives, children, and loved ones they left behind.

I passed people in cars listening to their radios, and switched my Walkman to WABC. It was only a few moments after the second plane hit. I wandered idly into the local supermarket, where nobody had heard about the second plane.

Everyone understood: one is an accident, two is war.

When I returned home, my TV showed only static because the broadcast antennas were on the WTC. I climbed the fire escape to the roof of my building where I could see the towers burning.

Smoke extended southward, past the Statue of Liberty. The smell was mostly chemical but not entirely. I looked down at my shoes and saw metallic particles melting on them. I thought, it can’t be good to be breathing this, so I climbed back down.

My upstairs neighbor had cable TV. We watched the towers collapse. She said, ‘The worst part is, we’ve got that f**king moron as president.’ I went back downstairs, thinking, ‘Thank God for George Bush.’

Never Forget

Never Forgive

Never Again

As I was watching and crying I got a phone call. At the time I was editor of a small village/suburb monthly magazine. Some guy, who refused to identify himself, called to complain about the photo of the boy scouts in the July 4th parade. I was trying to figure out what the problem might be…were the kids misidentified in the caption, or what? No, he said, didn’t I know that the Boy Scouts discriminated against gays? How could I contribute to that bigotry by running that photo? What? I was just super confused. Could this really be happening?

I said,look if you want to send me a signed letter to the editor, I’ll run it. Otherwise I’ll not be intimidated. And by the way, we’ve just been attacked. We are witnessing World War III, so I need to hang up now…

After sitting for hours in front of the TV, I went to the cleaners to pick up a military uniform (I had surmised that I?d be needing it soon.) The proprietor of the cleaners?black–has a TV mounted on the wall. Obviously a fellow news-junkie, he keeps it tuned to either FoxNews or CNN and, of course, all the events of that day were still being broadcast. As the owner and I were doing our business and making ?can you believe this? talk, another man walked in, older, black. As we continued talking about what happened, this ignoramus put in these two cents: ?That?s what them white folks get!?

Appalled, I whirled on him furiously:

?What? You think only white people worked in the World Trade Center? Only White people worked in the Pentagon? Only white people fly on planes?? He was stunned into silence, as, apparently, this hadn?t even occurred him.

I didn?t even bother to address the extreme callousness or the disgusting racism of his statements. Feeling temper begin to come off its leash, I paid the owner and got the heck out of there.

As someone who has struggled long with some racist feeling toward Arabs (seeded well before 9/11), I do understand from where this man?s feelings may come, but I certainly do not wish them all horrible deaths. Not even now.