I saw ground zero a few years ago, under re-construction. Even more heart-wrenching was going to a pub where NYC cops and firemen went, and seeing all their pictures on the wall.
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Yeah, I made a point of going to ground zero when I was in New York a few years ago. They had basically cleaned it out and it looked like any other construction site out there.
But it was quiet, you couldn't hear any traffic.
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It was rare in that I actually drove to work that day. I was on Deerfoot headed for downtown when I heard on the radio that a plane had hit the WTC. We all thought it was a terrible acccident (I was under the impression that it was a cessna at first). Got to work, went to the boardroom for a meeting and watched the 2nd plane hit live.
I accomplished nothing the rest of the day. I stood outside the office, chainsmoking, the words to Soundgarden's "Blow Up The Outside World" in my head. I kept looking towards the sky, wondering if something similar was going to happen to us.
Went home early and saw all the planes on the runway. Should have taken a picture of that. It was like parrallel parking for planes. The skies were eerily quiet.
Think this was the first week of my grade 12 year.
We had just gotten TV's in all of the classrooms, and the entire school watched everything unfold pretty much for the entire morning. Definitely a surreal day.
Ditto, Grade 12 @ St. Mary's, we went from class to class all day just watching the news on TV.
I remember it well, I distinctly recall the first thing I thought when I saw it all go down....
"Oh man, Cool!!! Wait, this is really happening?"
The only way to describe it is: Surreal.
It took a while to really sink in, but then its one of those moments when you get a rare glimpse at some of the real evil that exists in our world. The real, unfiltered, uncensored crazy.
And then someone inevitably says: The government did it....
Well there, I got it out of the way.
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Ditto, Grade 12 @ St. Mary's, we went from class to class all day just watching the news on TV.
I remember it well, I distinctly recall the first thing I thought when I saw it all go down....
"Oh man, Cool!!! Wait, this is really happening?"
The only way to describe it is: Surreal.
It took a while to really sink in, but then its one of those moments when you get a rare glimpse at some of the real evil that exists in our world. The real, unfiltered, uncensored crazy.
And then someone inevitably says: The government did it....
Well there, I got it out of the way.
I was at St. Mary's too. Maybe we were in the same class
Wow - I can't believe it's been that long. I was a student at the U of C, and when I arrived that morning, they had wheeled out dozens of TVs, especially in Mac Hall. The place was full of students, glued to the TVs, in stunned silence. It was surreal. One of my profs said it was pointless to have a class, because we were all going off to war the next day.
RIP to all who lost their lives.
And I don't want to quote the image that Dion posted, but watching people jump from those buildings was one of the most horrifying things I've ever seen.
I was in grade six, and was on the bus when the first one hit...I don't remember exactly what was said, but I remember wondering why someone would do that kind of thing. When we got to school, principal came on for morning announcements and said something along the lines of the world's gonna be different now and all that...One thing that remains vivid in my mind is going to my grandparents in town after school and watching all the stuff on CNN.
As a bit of an aside, I have a great-uncle who set a post card from there on the 10th...if he'd have been a day later, he could've been dead.
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I was walking up the steps of my parents house, as my room was in the basement. I had my kakhis on... my Blockbuster blue shirt... and one sock on. I was fiddling with the other trying to open the hole to fit it around my other bare foot.
I looked through the banister that seperated the stairs and the living room at the TV... the first tower hit was in the middle of a cloud of smoke.
I looked at my Mom, she was silent... almost that whole jaw dropped look on her face.
"What happened?" I asked.
"A plane just hit the World Trade Center". At that moment, I looked back at the TV for the replay... it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen on TV.
My girlfriend, who became my wife years later, picked me up... I listened to the Peak 107.3 and Roger Rhodes talk about the events, and the second plane hitting, and all the details surrounding everything they had at the time. No music... No commercials.
I still remember vividly that they talked about a 5th plane (2-WTC, 1-Pentagon, 1-Grounded). And it wasn't a one off comment, there was a lot of talk about a 5th plane.
It was the slowest day I ever worked at Blockbuster... No one was renting movies, everyone wanted to watch CNN, including me.
I remember it delayed the release of A Knights Tale due to the Spiderman trailor where he strings up a helicopter between the two towers was featured before the film.
I still wear my NYR dark 3rd jersey on September 11... it's one of the ways I mark the day.
I envy those who have been to Ground Zero since...
I bought the magazines, the papers, books... I even set up my VCR and recorded as I went to sleep... All so that when I had children, I could show them all this information, so that they could better understand the event.
My son is now 18 months old. I still have that box.
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I never watch tv in the morning just listen to the radio and back when I actually used to listen to CJAY 92 it was Forbes and friends that I was tuned into and they reported it initially as an accident then reported it as an attack. I decided to turn my tv off and was absolutely stunned with what I was watching. It's one of those "where were you when..." moments for sure.
What makes 9/11 unique is the spectacle surrounded with it.
There are about 20 different events per year where 3000+ people die but so very rarely are they killed in such extraordinary fashion.
For me 9/11 will always be a sore spot because the neeldess deaths of 3000 people became one of the most blatantly politicized events in history and was used as an excuse to invade a sovereign nation and caused the deaths of thousands more US citizens (around 4k now IIRC) and over 100k Iraqi civilians.
It also bothers me that such an terrible event makes me angry because then I feel bad for not being more sympathetic to the actual event. Stupid f***ing GWB and his BS regime. Fox News too. Way to trivialize the deaths of 3k of your own citizens for political gain.
Oh, and the 9/11 memorial site is pretty uninspiring to me. It could've been any spot in Manhattan and it wouldn't have mattered.
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I was in grade 5 at the time..hard to believe this was 8 years ago..I remember my moms friend calling her that morning and telling her to turn the TV on..I remember at first I though it was Calgary but then I realized it wasnt. I remember at school teachers were watching it on TV in the library..I think it was that day or maybe the next running home at lunch and printing off all the info I could get on it.
Last edited by FoxMulder91; 09-11-2009 at 12:26 PM.
I was in third year of Uni, just about to head out to class when my Dad called me and told me to turn on the TV. Our TV was a hunk of junk (grainy, black and white with colour fading in and out occasionally), and when I turned it on it looked to me like New York was burning (one, if not both towers were down at that point).
I remember just watching in awe for about half an hour. Then phoned a friend who hadn't heard about what had happened yet - told him our generation's JFK moment had just happened. Spent the rest of the day watching footage with him (on a better TV) talking about how this was going to change the world significantly, and not for the better.
I think the sheer dramatic spectacle of the event wasn't subsumed by emotional impact until they showed images of people falling from the towers. As I recall, the first time they showed that footage the reporters didn't seem to realize what they were showing - as though it was just debris falling through the air.
The most amazing, horrible, and powerful event I expect to see in my lifetime. Well, hopefully.
When I first heard of the attack, I assumed that it was the Russians who did it. It was kind of hard to imagine that America was successfully crippled by rag-tag group of extremists than an enemy nation at the time.
Last edited by lambeburger; 09-11-2009 at 12:20 PM.
It was kind of hard to imagine that America was successfully crippled by rag-tag group of extremists than an enemy nation at the time.
