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9-11 Memories

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Turkeytop
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9-11 Memories

Post by Turkeytop » Fri Sep 11, 2020 7:09 pm

Someone already started a thread on this, but it quickly morphed into the "I hate Muslims" thread. So I'm starting this new one for anyone who has memories to share.

My own personal memory has nothing to do with religion or hate.

It was a brilliant, late summer morning, much like today. I had arrived home late the previous night, from an out of town meeting. So I was late driving to the office. During my commute, they broke in on the radio with a news bulletin. A plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.

My first thought was, “isn’t the World Trade Center that place they bombed back in the 90s?” Now, it appeared that some pilot had run out of luck and crashed his plane into the building “The Building’” you’ll notice. I didn’t know at the time that the World Trade Center was actually a complex of buildings.

Just as I was arriving at the office and driving into the parking lot, another bulletin came on with a reporter on the scene, saying a second plane had crashed into the WTC. There was near panic in his voice and the network anchor asked him to calm down.
Inside the office, everyone somehow knew about it already. The air was abuzz with the insectile sound of cheap, portable radios. Later that morning, someone produced a TV from somewhere. There wasn’t much work done in the office that day.

By the time I arrived home, after work, the weather had turned rainy. So we sat and watched those horrible images on TV, over and over again. The rest of the week went pretty much that same way.

On Saturday the sun came out again. That morning I went out back to put the finishing touches on a deck I had been building. The local airport reopened for the first time that morning. The first plane into the air was a very fast, very loud military aircraft. I watched it with my hand above my brow to shade my eyes from the sun. As I looked around the neighbourhood, it seemed that everyone else was doing the same thing. Would that be our reaction from now on, when we hear a jet plane?

By noon. The deck was finished up and it was time for the Christening. I had a beer and my wife had a cup of tea. As we sat there we watched a group of Goldfinches at the bird feeder. Among them were some newly fledged chicks, wobbling to maintain balance on the perches. Both of us remarked at once, how much nicer that was than what we had been watching on TV all week.

The next day, Sunday, was also a bright day. But I had to leave home to attend a week-long meeting, about 150 miles away. I hated leaving my wife alone at a time like that but this meeting had been arranged weeks in advance and attendance was mandatory.

I arrived there in the late afternoon. Just at the entry door of the hotel there was a dead bird on the concrete. (Looked like a starling.) It seemed pretty clear what had happened. The poor brute had flown into the plate glass and broken its neck. I pushed it away with the toe of my shoe and went inside. As I entered I recall thinking “A bird wouldn’t knowingly fly into a building, intent on mayhem. Only humans are capable of such evil


I started out with nothing and I still have most of it.

MotorCityRadioFreak
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Location: Warren, MI

Re: 9-11 Memories

Post by MotorCityRadioFreak » Fri Sep 11, 2020 8:07 pm

I wrote this 4 years ago back when I had hope for our country. My reflection back to a much more innocent time:

As I am sitting here at my desk, I hear a plane overhead and my mind flashes back to the night of September 11, 2001. I remember the eerie quiet of that night. All planes grounded for days and days. Yet the fear remained that if I did hear a plane, we were in deep trouble.

It's amazing how my mind replays that day over and over again and rewinds much like a VCR popular in that time period. Many of the details still crystal clear. Let's rewind some more to the beginning of that day in my life.

That morning, as a senior in high school, I sat in Mr. Whiteaker's 1st hour Bible. He was talking about how God uses suffering for his will and purpose. Around 9:00 AM give or take a minute, Mr. John Orner came in our room and said, "A terrible accident has happened. A plane has hit the World Trade Center, and it is burning. Pray." I went to 2nd hour speech class concerned but hadn't seen the pictures yet or anything, so it wasn't a life changing event. Then at about 9:30 when I was in Mrs. Monette's speech class with Joseph Wasil and Nora Darby, Mr. Orner walked in and said another plane had hit the WTC. I knew right then we were in the throes of a terrorist attack. Third hour came just after 10:00 AM, and I didn't have to move because my English class was in the same room with this same teacher. She was insistent that we take a stupid literature quiz. That was the last thing on my mind...."What happens next?" I thought as all of the MCS TV's were being wheeled in to each class room from ye old MCS' library. Needless to say, I didn't do very well on that quiz as I was petrified watching the replay of the towers falling and the Pentagon being hit. We were all in shock. My thoughts were..."What country is doing this? What do they want? Is Boston next? Is Philly next? What about us? We aren't that far from the east coast. Are we next?"

Before the noon hour, several parents came in and got their small children as well as some middle schoolers. Being in a small K-12 school allowed me to see how everyone reacted. Many of the little kids were not told specifics of the attacks and didn't understand what was happening. I didn't want to go home that day though. I needed to be with others so we could all be supportive of each other.

That's what I remember most about 9-11. We were so united; there was no Republican vs. Democrats as we see today some 15 years ago, there wasn't partisan banter. Instead, the vast majority of us were praying that George W Bush would have the strength to hold our nation together and rebuild our resolve as well as our cities.

If America could get back to "united we stand, divided we fall", our nation would be the better for it. But alas, we are left hearing political debates mired in divisiveness, that it seems more like animals fighting in a zoo.


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