6 years ago today.

[cjwilhelmi]

I know its a day late but...

I was a freshman at Harding and had just come back from a test and walked in a friends dorm room. Saw the second plane hit live on CNN. A little while later, just after we heard about the pentagon someone out in the hall started yelling because his dad worked there. I have no idea who it was or what had happened, kinda makes you wish that you had reached out a little bit more.

If you guys have not seen the move 9/11 go rent it, its an absolutely impactful movie. The marine that found the two officers was known to have been there but no one knew who he was or what he looked like. As the movie was being made and the story got out the marine stepped forward. The individual playing him in the movie was white, the marine is african american. It is amazing that with all that was going on that people never looked to see who was helping, but everyone was there to lend a hand. It didn't matter who you were, that day we truly were all Americans. The story about the marine continues and he fell on some hard times. He is married and has 3 children (if I remember right) and fell on some real hard times financially. ABC's Extreme Makeover Home Addition did a special project at his home in a tribute to "a true American Hero". Several companies of marines came, none who knew him, to work on the house. It aired earlier this year in a two hour special. If you can get your hands on it it really is moving. The interview the two officers that he saved and a bunch of other rescurers from that day.

[Campbell]

I was in the office that morning in Kansas City getting ready to hit the road for field work in Arkansas. I remember my friend printing a picture of the tower after the first plane hit and showing it to me. Shortly after that he came in and said another plane had hit. We had several people from our office in the air that morning so we were all concerned. A bunch of us crowded around a little television with bad reception in one of the conference rooms. I remember losing it when I saw the first tower fall.

On the road later that day there was a mad rush to the gas pumps at every gas station between KC and Fayetteville as well as serious price gouging. Fortunately, I didnt need any gas as the lines at the pumps were sometimes over a 100 cars long. The rest of the two weeks in the field there our crew was basically glued to the TV every night. I also remember a couple of days after that the USDA and Corps of Engineers made us all get ID cards and sign in every morning since we were working on the reservoir down there.

[Has No Left]

I was at an industry conference in Quebec City, Canada. The conference was cancelled at 12:00 Noon and many rented cars to drive back to the US until the rental cars companies stopped renting at about 3:00PM.

I decided to stay and was stuck in Canada for 6 days. I eventually flew home through Gandor, Newfoundland where many of the international flights were diverted. I will say that the Canadians were very supportive and helpful to all the stranded Americans.

[Jana]

I was rowing with my team that morning, got back to the boathouse around 7:00am. The first thing I noticed was that while we were carrying the Eight back in, the athletes on the ergs had the radio going full blast with news on. That was weird, usually the rule is to keep the volume down, and they play music to give them some rhythm on the erg.

But I was busy listening for my coxswain's commands, to put the boat onto the racks. My coach, on the other hand, listened closely and then told us what had happened. I remember commenting to my crewmate that the radio sounded more like "War of the Worlds" than something real.

I drove home to shower, turned on the TV, and watched both towers fall. We cancelled work that day, there was a fear that bridges could be bombed in cities that depended heavily on them, so the National Guard was mobilizing to guard them.

The husband of my best friend had clients in both towers that he visited often, but September 11 is his birthday, so he had taken the day off from work. They cancelled all the birthday hoopla, and now he shares his birthday with a tragic day of mass murder.

Later that day, when I sickened of watching the news, I stood on my balcony, comtemplating the fragility of life, and realized how quiet it seemed. Without any traffic (everyone was home watching TV), but more importantly, without ANY planes, the city seemed eerily quiet.

MSNBC replayed their coverage on Tuesday morning, at the exact same time. What struck me was how fast the towers came down. I have become so accustomed to seeing the Slo-Mo version on TV and youtube, that I had forgotten just how jaw-droppingly fast the towers fell, the people jumping out of towers to get away from the fuel fires, and how little time there really was from the crash point to the collapse point.

I remember about 10 years ago when Seattle lost 6 firefighters in an arson fire, how much the city grieved. I cannot fathom a city losing 341 FDNY members, 2 paramedics, 23 NYPD officers, and 37 Port Authority officers in the flash of a second. A few days after 9/11, I remember firefighters around the world - from Thailand to Bulgaria - all stood at attention and ran their sirens - in memorial to those aid workers.

If you can, check out the documentary "Metal of Honor: The Ironworkers of 9/11" - very engrossing. Those guys were amazing.

All the victim stories are sad - but this one really broke my heart: Maj. Kip P. Taylor, 38, died in the Pentagon attack. He left behind a wife and two little boys. Sadly, his wife Nancy was diagnosed with breast cancer and died in November 2003. So the kids only had both parents for a very short time in their lives.

[laxfan25]

Tuesday night there was a very good show on the History Channel called "The Man Who Predicted 9/11". His name was Rick Rescorla, and he was the security chief for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, with over 2,400 employees in the two towers.
He had forecasted the '93 truck bombing, realizing that anyone could paint ABC Office Supply on a truck, load it with explosives and drive it into the basement and park it by the support beams, which is what happened.
After that attack he felt strongly that there would be another, and he had a group of friends that he used to brainstrom with. He felt that after the vehicle attack that they had secured that portion, but he and his friends felt that an aerial attack was a strong possibility. They even used Flight Simulator to fly planes into the WTC, Statue of Liberty and other attractions, and felt it was a real threat.
Since it was hard to defend against such an eventuality, he concentrated on evacuation planning, and had quarterly drills. After a while people felt that this was a little much, but he was insistent. This involved having everyone leave by the stairwells, which meant climbing down 70 flights of stairs in some cases.
When the first plane hit he knew it was a terrorist attack and started putting his plans into action. The net result? Only six employees out of over 2,400 perished in the collapse! Unfortunately he stayed behind to make sure everyone had gotten out, and was never found.

[KnoxVegas]

I was in Portland, OR for work and was awakened by my mother calling me saying "They are putting planes into buildings." I grew up in Arlington, VA and while I was on the phone with my mother, I could hear in the background what sounded like jet engines low and loud. She does live within a mile of the Pentagon and just off Four Mile Run. The rev’ing sound was followed shortly by a loud explosion.

This we now believe was the American Airlines flight making its final turn towards the western wall of the Pentagon. It was an odd feeling to be on the other side of the country about to go to work and then turning on the television and seeing the WTC on flames as well as the Pentagon. I had been up the WTC tower many times growing up and it was just surreal. I learned to drive in the parking lot of the Pentagon.

The country club, Columbia Marine CC, we had our tournament at that week sits at the end of the runway to PDX. All day, we watched the planes land overhead and then park, one after another along the taxi ways and then finally one of the runways. F-16s were scrambled from the National Guard base at the airport and I remember one commercial plane being escorted for landing. We still went about our jobs, getting the course ready to televise the tournament on Friday. Of course, many of us on the crew tried to give blood that night but were turned away at the Red Cross. We just wanted to do something.

I had a friend of mine that I played with at Tennessee who worked in the towers and was not yet accounted for. He was to be married the next spring. The worry and the sadness that my fellow alumni felt for his lose was relieved three days later when he turned up at his family's house in Kentucky. He saw the first tower hit and immediately called his fiance, met up with her, then took the ferry to Staten Island and drove out.

I remember the next few days, until that Friday as being eerie. As someone who grew up in the airlines, planes have always been a big deal. But for the first time since December of 1903, there was not a plane in the sky overheard. I remember going outside in Portland and just listening to the silence. It was just so quiet.

I remember the images of the PGA Tour players hitting balls on the range in St. Louis, with the images of the NYC playing in the back on the Jumbotron. Would the NFL play? How would Tennessee fair at Gainesville that weekend? The LPGA event I was working that week was the last professional sporting event to cancel. The players voted not to play but the sponsor wanted to go forward. That Thursday afternoon, I drove (since flights were unavailable) from Portland to Boise for the next show. That is a drive I will always remember, not just for the beauty but also for the solitude. Every so often, there were American flags draped on the overpasses. Drivers would pass and wave. NPR was on the whole way was the only consistent news source I had and I was riveted to it the whole way.

I was stuck out on the west coast for the next seven weeks for work. Flying back between shows didn’t seem that important. I think I what I remember most about that period in time is how nice everyone was to each other. How united we were. I feel that I experience, if for a few days, the feeling the country had during WWII, which until then had only been something I had read about or seen in movies.

It still does rub me the wrong way that a Canadian sang God Belss America during the telethon that week.