9/11/01

I was on my way to my kids' high school to drop off a book. The car radio
told me of the first crash and while I was driving, the second tower was
hit. In shock, I told the school secretary what I had heard, and told her
that she might want to mention it to the history department, because history
was being set in stone at that moment. At the time, I had no idea how right
I was.
Momma

In article ,
"Everyboysmomma" wrote:

I was on my way to my kids' high school to drop off a book. The car radio
told me of the first crash and while I was driving, the second tower was
hit. In shock, I told the school secretary what I had heard, and told her
that she might want to mention it to the history department, because history
was being set in stone at that moment. At the time, I had no idea how right
I was.
Momma

My 9/11 story is travel-related. A friend and I were staying at a Days
Inn near Pittsburgh getting ready to check out and attend an event in
town. We intended to fly home to Philadelphia that afternoon on US Air.
Since this was our first visit to Pittsburgh, we arrived in there on
Sept. 9th to see the area. We rented a car from Avis during our stay.

While I was waiting for my friend to finish his shower, I turned on the
TV to CNN just in time to see the first news of the WTC attack and the
video of the second plane hitting the tower. I was stunned! At first, I
thought the TV was tuned into some movie channel, but I quickly realized
that what I saw was authentic.

My friend got out of the bathroom and we watched a few minutes of the
news coverage. We had to check out by 11:00am to avoid being charged
another night's stay. Before we checked out, I tried to call a friend I
knew who was doing some work in the Wall Street area. I was very
concerned because I could not reach him. A local news blurb said the
event we wanted to attend was postponed, due to the 9/11 happenings. I
tried calling back to my office at work to have one of my colleagues try
to call up to New York to reach my friend. In the meanwhile, we checked
out of the hotel and I arranged with Avis to drop off our rental car at
the Philadelphia airport since that's where my car was anyway.

My friend drove home along the turnpike. We stopped at two or three rest
stops along the way and several people had set up portable TVs in the
cafeteria areas to watch the events in Washington and NYC unfold. We
heard about the flight 93 crash just after we got on the turnpike to
head home. There were automated signs just outside of Pittsburgh warning
people to stay away from New York and the New Jersey Turnpike in that
area.

We arrived at PHL around 4:00 that afternoon. After we returned the
rental car, we decided to walk over to terminal C see what the airport
looked like with no flight activity. We hardly set foot off the
escalator near the security check point when a security guard told us to
leave the building, which we promptly did.

We walked back to where we had parked and drove to our respective homes.
I spent that evening watching news coverage of the events. Quite
frankly, I spent the entire night either listening to public radio or
watching CNN and crying. I was stunned.

I live along a flight path into PHL and I quickly realized how quiet my
neighborhood gets when no flights arrive. In fact, after the air traffic
ban was lifted, the first flight I noticed was around 3:00am that day
and the sound of the jet passing overhead was music to my ears. It meant
that life was starting to return to normal.

We heard the news about the air traffic all being shut down.

The immediate travel impact was felt even obscure locations - I was due
to be on a charter floatplane flight to a tiny Native village on the
British Columbia Coast. Everything was grounded even that low altitude
flip over the mountains in the virtual middle of nowhere.

Let me add that this one Canadian's heart goes out to the American
people both for that 5 years old tragedy and the impotence of the whole
world to really get at, even fully acknowledge, the roots of the matter
- radical Islamics and the more moderate apologetioc ones who let the
evil ones come and go among them.




Everyboysmomma wrote:
I was on my way to my kids' high school to drop off a book. The car radio
told me of the first crash and while I was driving, the second tower was
hit. In shock, I told the school secretary what I had heard, and told her
that she might want to mention it to the history department, because history
was being set in stone at that moment. At the time, I had no idea how right
I was.
Momma

"Everyboysmomma" wrote:
I was on my way to my kids' high school to drop off a book.

On 9/01, ten days earlier, my wife and I had lunch at the WTC
on the lower level shopping arcade. I had been to the top on a
previous visit, but its this brief stop that sticks in my mind. =R=