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9-11-2001-What were YOU doing when the news broke (spin-off of JFK topic)

I was living in Nashville, Tennessee, trying to eke out a living doing an occupation I'd rather not mention. I lived in a duplex within a very old house, a rather small one-room deal where I had to use my electrical outlet for several things. I recall that I had set up my ironing board in front of the drawer where I kept my TV set. Since I did not watch much at the time, I had used the outlet for the iron the day before. I was also not very much in the habit of watching the morning shows, but this day, I decided, for no particular reason, to plug in the tube and turn it on to the CBS Early Show (local affiliate WTVF). It was there that I saw the reports of the first strike; I had only turned the set on maybe minutes before the attack.

I do not remember how long I watched; at first, I thought, "Oh, well, a major accident has occurred. Maybe nothing more will come of it." Sadly, I was proved wrong. However, I took a shower and got ready for the day and turned the set off in the middle of the coverage, in order to go out and run errands. Still, I stayed tuned to the radio while driving around northern Nashville, and it was there where I heard the news of the collapse of the twin towers. I nearly put the brakes on in the middle of the road. I immediately halted what I was doing and went to my church to converse with my pastor (and best friend at the time); he had the TV on in his study and another member of the church was with him, watching. No one of us could really comprehend the magnitude of the event. While the thick smoke was bellowing on the ground, we eventually turned it off and began praying.

Afterward, I knew instinctively what the best thing was to do. I spent the rest of the day in a massive line to donate blood; my boss at work had cancelled our shift for the day because of the sensitive situation. I called my mother in Alabama just before bedtime and she more or less said that things ground to a halt at her workplace (a bank), as was the case in many public places on that day and some days thereafter.

Bottom line: I did not stay glued to the tube like some Americans, but if it had not been for my chance decision to watch the CBS morning show, I would have found out about it second-hand and might well have been scared by people's reactions due to ignorance. That's my 9-11 story.
 
On the date of the attacks, I was awakened by my mother who told me to turn on the TV. Having just woken up, I seemed to be a little mystified. Usually when my mother woke me up on weekdays around that time, it was either a school day (I was attending community college at the time) or a work day (I worked as a stockman at a Wal-Mart in west St. Louis county,though I am no longer employed as of now). That day was a Tuesday so I'd be going to work on that day. When I turned on the TV I saw the WTC on fire after a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers.

I did go to work that day, but the store TV sets continued to play coverage of the unfolding events throughout the day. By the next day, when I went to school I felt like the whole world had changed drastically for me.

Ironically, in February 1993 when the first WTC attack occurred, I was up late watching the late movies on an unknown cable channel. I flipped to the local NBC affiliate Channel 5 in St. Louis and saw network coverage of the WTC bombing.

BTW, in another irony for me, two years ago I went to New York for the first time and, while taking a boat tour of the Hudson River and Lower Manhattan, saw the site of what was once the World Trade Center. It was somewhat unsettling to pass by that place, even on the Hudson River.
 
I'm sure you're all just clamoring to know where I was, so here goes. I was working in the accounting office at collections firm in Chicago and was running a little late that morning. I arrived there at around 8:40 and hadn't heard a word about the events unfolding 2000 mi. away.
So one of the partners calls me into his office, and I'm thinking, "Oh, (bleep), he's gonna get on me for being late." He said that two planes crashed into the WTC, and it looks like a terrorist attack. I actually replied, "Are you kidding me?" He said no, and I exclaimed, "If you don't mind my saying so, HOLY S**T!" The set in the break room was on, and I saw the smoke billowing from the massive, gaping holes in the towers. After about a minute i said, "That's f****d up." No one seemed to mind.
Then a plane hit the Pentagon. Our building was only a few blocks from the then-Sears Tower, and I couldn't help thinking what if anything they had in store for that place.
The day was not w/o comic relief, however The attorneys ACTUALLY WENT TO COURT THAT MORNING EVEN AFTER THE SOUTH TOWER FELL! They were back before long. I know they're lawyers and all, but, how steely-eyed can you be?
By 10 the other tower also was reduced to rubble and they sent everyone home. I suppose it would be insensitive to say that I wish I hadn't wasted a trip that day.
 
Had just dropped my son off at school and has gotten home about 9:00. I turned the Tv on to WHDH-TV channel to watch the opening moments of Live with Regis and Kelley and instead saw the NBC coverage of the first plabne striking the WTC. I instantly switched to ABC (which I then watched for news) and not two minutes later watched the second plane hit the other tower. It was just like November 22, 1963 in that I could barely pull myself away from the TV for the next several days. IMHO, it was Peter Jennings' finest hours on the air. It was so sad to hear of his passing less then four years later. He said he began smoking again because of 9/11, which may have hastened his lung cancer.
 
I was 9 years old on 9/11, in the 4th grade. We were having math class at the time. I asked to go to the bathroom, because I had to go. I was walking down the hallway (about 45 minutes after it happened) and saw one of the other teacher's classrooms, and they had the ABC coverage on of the attacks. I was dumbfounded, why was there smoke coming out of the World Trade Center?

About 15 minutes after that, we heard an announcement over the PA about it. We had an early release that day and lunch, and nobody knew what to do, and people were crying in the lunch room. Driving home, several hours later, we heard every station in our area air coverage.

Clear Channel had their own coverage, along with Citadel simulcasting WTMA, and the others did some of their own or simulcast with one of the networks.

WTMA was covering a teacher that was getting fried chicken that fell through a manhole when the attacks were announced.

Here is some of their coverage:

http://drop.io/wtma911
 
I was awoke from dreaming about aliens chasing me by the answering machine. I remember to this day what her message said, "Turn on the t.v, there's some really bad stuff going on". I think both towers had already been hit by then. I went in to work early that day to the station which had already gone wall to wall coverage on the entire cluster. On the way in I remember gas stations with lines out into the street.
 
I had just moved into my new place in Fort Worth TX. I was aranging furniture that morning and trying to position my stereo in the correct place to pick up KLBJ-AM from Austin. As I was flipping through the AM dial I came across KRLD and they were talking about a plane that had hit the WTC. Like previous posters, I thought it was a small aircraft lost in the fog much like happened at the Empire State Building years before.

Turned on the tv to CNN. Clear skies so obviously not a lost aircraft in the fog. Then thought it must be a private plane and the pilot must have had a heart attack or stroke and veered off course. It is amazing when the mind tries to come up with rational explonations for the unthinkable.

Unfortunatly I was watching when UA175 hit the south tower. I had worked in the airline industry for years and knew several flight attendents as close friends. No one I knew personally was killed on that day, but it hit me in the gut.

I had often heard from my parents and older relatives where they were when JFK was killed and the sadness and horror that followed. I understand.
 
I was on my way home from the station where I was working overnights at the time, when I heard Hollywood Hendrix (the then-morning man at the then-Star 97 here in Nashville) announce that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers. This announcement came maybe about half an hour or so after that first plane had struck the tower. I am guessing that this would have been about 8:15 a.m. CDT. I didn't think much about it at the time, went on home and went to bed. (I can't even remember if the announcement of the second plane hitting the other tower had been made by the time I got home.) It wasn't until I awoke at probably about 2:30 that afternoon and turned on the TV that the full reality of what had happened earlier that day finally hit me.

My now-former stations are Christian talk (paid programming), so our programming didn't really change. I did voiceover announcements for our Christian calendar, and only one announcement that I had previously done (for an air show scheduled for that next weekend) was for an event that later got cancelled because of 9/11.

(Some of you may remember Hollywood Hendrix as the host of Retro Rewind, an '80s music-themed show that was briefly produced back in 1998, similar to Backtrax USA now.)
 
Regarding the JFK assassination: I was a 4th grader and, like every boy in the class, had a crush on our model-beautiful, well-built teacher's aide. She looked like she stepped out of a '60s girl group, she was so well dressed and made-up!

Anyway, you could only imagine our horror when, on that Friday afternoon, about 1:50 PM (ET), when all us kids were thinking about were the weekend and Thaksgiving the following week, our teachers' aide entered the classroon with an utterly ruined look on her face, running, tear-stained makeup and mascara, sobbing on the shoulder of our main teacher, who was usually very composed but was teary-eyed and ashen as well. The main teacher told us stunned students that in five minutes, we were to hear an "all-call" PA annoncement and prepare for dismissal.

A few minutes later, our obviously shaken-sounding principal told us the news from Dallas, and then dismissed us to home. it didn't really hit me until I arrived home and my dad, who also worked nearby, came home early...what's Daddy doing home at 2 pm on a weekday? He was chain-smoking Luckies with both TV's and radio blaring. That's how I remember...
 
I just woke up right around the time the second plane crashed into the second tower. I usually have my clock radio set to the radio as an alarm, so I had the local Sporting News Radio station on (now since converted into a Korean-language station) as I was getting prepared for work. I had my walkman with me as I was traveling to work via the train and bus, and I flipped around the radio trying to get a straight explanation of what happened. It wasn't until I got to work, and got on the internet to find out what really happened, and was obviously shocked and amazed about what transpired that day.

It was pretty emotional at work that day, as we have a very culturally-diverse working environment around here (many of them of the Muslim faith). My then-supervisor gave me a ride home from work, and I spent the remainder of that evening just watching the news, from CNN, the broadcast networks, and even New York 1 (our local Time Warner franchise had it piped on our system for the next month afterward). Of course, if anyone remembers, the broadcast networks simulcasted their coverage on to their cable siblings for the most part, and the C-SPAN networks were carrying local coverage from the Washington, D.C. stations (I remember WUSA being prominently featured).
 
Sleeping for the first plane (7:48 CDT), awakened by a call from my news director a few minutes later, and turning on the TV in time for the second plane.
 
I was in 8th grade, I went into my Vocational Agriculture class. (I lived in South Alabama) our teacher, Mr. Davis had the TV turned on to the coverage. He soon turned the TV off and we discussed fruit sales.

Flash forward to the end of the day, my grandmother came to pick me up, I turned the radio on to listen to some music. I was scanning the dial looking for some music and all there was was news. My grandmother told me: "That's all you are going to get today." When we got home we watched the news on my Directv and saw what was going on and everything. That night, my mom and I went to my aunt's house and on the way over there she told me that it was in the same category as Pearl Harbor. Quite ironic, that the movie Pearl Harbor came out the same year. When we got to my aunt's house we watched the coverage. I watched as much as my attention span could hold up. I remember mt mom and I were at my other aunt's house before going to my Aunt Rhonda's and the TV was on and President Bush was speaking and my mom was cheering on him for his words he was saying. (OK people, let's not fight.)
 
I was a couple weeks into my senior year as an EHS Plainsman.

As for when the news itself broke? I was barely waking up. As I remember, as KOPB-FM were announcing the plane's impact, I was hitting the snoozer bar on my alarm clock-radio thing for the second time. Like hell that anything, let alone the most major news event of the day, would arouse a 16-year old boy up and out of bed at 6:45 in the morning!

Mysteriously, not much, if anything, was even spoken about it in school that day. But I was also attending a nearby career instruction school for part of the day (*scoff* lot of good that place did me, but that's another story) and the classroom had a television set playing KGW's admittedly lousy coverage of it. That, of course, being before I switched it over to CNN which, although not *significantly* better, was still somewhat of an improvement no less.
 
I was in the 10th grade that year, getting up for school, when we got a call from a friend of my brother's and my mom told me to turn on the TV. I turned it on to KCAL 9. It was 7:46 AM PDT, just two hours after one of the towers was hit. Meteorologically, it was a beautiful, bright, sunny morning, both here in L.A. and in NYC. Emotionally, it was the darkest day in the history of our nation. :'(

Now, every 9/11 anniversary, when I watch footage on the news of commemorations, I cry. In fact, as I type this, I feel my eyes start welling up with tears (I'm sure this happened to many of you who replied to this thread as you were sharing your memories of that tragic day; if so, my heart goes out to you).

Even to this day, it is hard for me to talk or read about 9/11 with a straight face. :'(
 
I had worked the overnight shift so I was sound sleep while everything happened. I didn't know about it until the afternoon. I remember turning on the TV just as they were recapping the events of the day. I couldn't believe what I was seeing!
 
I'd voted in the state primary in Milton and got on the T. As I arrived at my bus stop in Burlington, I walked over to the canteen truck at a place called Goodway Graphics when I first heard on WBZ Newsradio 1030 of the attacks. CBS Radio was broadcasting the news when Gary Lapierre broke in with an interview from someone in a nearby building in New York.
When I got to work, I found out that everyone was trying to get news on the tragedy, but all the news websites were down. It didn't hit me until about 10:30 a.m. when Jay MacQuade who was on WBZ at the time was welcoming the listeners to their 4 FM sister stations. And then I knew that a hard tragedy had hit. As I went home that afternoon(we were let go around 4), I saw that the Burlington Mall was closed and the traffic was non-existent.
I purchased the special editions of the newspapers and headed home. Once there, I was switching channels and seeing the news of the tragedy everywhere. What was most startling and poignant was HGTV and Food TV showing a slide that said "In light of today's tragic events, our regular programming has been suspended. Our hearts go out to the victims of today's tragedy." And they were playing a melancholy piece of music on that evening.
I went to a church service that evening and joined the congregation in mourning for what had happened that day. And you know what? The starkest sound I heard was the silence that was in the skies that day, since all the planes had been grounded and all air traffic had been stopped.
 
I was on a road trip vacation, leaving the Quad Cities and heading up 67 to Dubuque. I was listening to the morning program on WOC, and right before 8, the announcer teased the network news with "We're getting word of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center". I thought to myself, "I hope it's not one of ours" (as in Metro Traffic, where I work). After the network news, I flipped the dial to WBBM and stayed there the rest of the day till I got to my overnight stop in Rockford.

It took a while for me to realize that it wasn't a small plane.

I didn't see any pictures of what happened until I got to Madison and saw the front page of the Wisconsin State Journal.
 
I was watch Nickelodeon and finished watching a program and after checking the weather I was flipping and saw the fire coming out of the WTC. Saw the second plane crash live on ABC feed.
 
I was in 10th grade and the first plane would've hit while I was in first period class. Didn't hear anything until I arrived in my second period class - ironically a history class. One of the other students came into the class and mentioned that a plane had hit the WTC. Although we had cable TV in the classroom the teacher refused to turn it on and he taught a normal class. Lunch was next around 10:20, but I went to eat first. I went to the library around 10:50 where a crowd of students were watching a TV that had been set up, and by then both towers were down.

There were no P.A. announcements, and my afternoon classes went on as normal. My teacher in the final period class refused to allow us to watch the TV or even discuss the events of that day.

Overall I don't think the school handled the event very well at all, at least on the Tuesday itself. They pretended nothing was happening.
 
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