September 11th - what are your stories about that day?

sringwal

sringwal

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I was talking with a group of students yesterday about coming of age moments that occur as individuals, and as a society. I spoke about how, for me, a personal coming of age moment was the first primary that I voted in. I was 17 at the time, my birthday was two days before the fall election. Being allowed to be a part of the political process was paramount. I walked out of that booth proud.

September 11th is a day of mixed emotions for me. It is without a doubt the worst American tragedy of my lifetime, and a defining moment in this country's history. At the same time, it was a day where many admirable people acted heroically.

I was in college at the time. As someone who has never been good at art, but needed an art elective to graduate, I had Jazz Appreciation that morning, and found out about the first building being hit on the way to class.

Our professor didn't know about the attack and we had a quiz that morning. None of us had the energy to explain to him what was going on, so we took it quietly. By the time class was over, the second tower had fallen.

Classes were canceled for a week.

The next time we met, our professor apologized, told us he was cancelling the scores for the quiz unless it helped our grade, and played A Love Supreme by John Coltrane before letting us go. It was the first time, since the attack, that I felt like things were going to be ok. Listening to that album, in that moment, was about as close to God as I have ever been. As a matter of fact, I am listening to it right now, to honor the memories of the dead.

What are your stories?

 
One of my coworkers alerted us to the news. After a few minutes of us trying to determine what was happening, my manager told us to get back to work.
 
I had just started middle school. I distinctly remember walking across campus during a class change between periods and one of my friends went running by and said something like “we’ve been bombed!” without any context or elaboration. A couple of minutes later, when I walked into my next classroom, our teacher had the television on. It was hard to really wrap my 11-year-old mind around what was happening.
 
I was a "guy from Raleigh " at a NC DHHS site in Butner-to undertake a long scheduled performance audit.
Instead of that happening we all ended up watching a little tv all day . A nightmare to watch
 
I lived in Plano TX / worked in Dallas at the time. Flipped on NPR for my morning commute and they seemed to be arguing about whether someone had attacked the Pentagon. And eventually flipped back to someone had definitely attacked the Twin Towers.

I pulled over at a gas station and called my husband on a pay phone (I left earlier than he) and didn’t even say hi, just turn on the TV. He was confused but then told me what was being reported.

I went on to work and watched coverage with colleagues in our break room there.

Went home early. Painted this over the course of a few hours as an emotional outlet:

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CFordUNC said:
I had just started middle school. I distinctly remember walking across campus during a class change between periods and one of my friends went running by and said something like “we’ve been bombed!” without any context or elaboration. A couple of minutes later, when I walked into my next classroom, our teacher had the television on. It was hard to really wrap my 11-year-old mind around what was happening.
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I cannot imagine experiencing that attack through the eyes of an 11 year old. Experiencing it as a 22 year old was hard enough.

My second year teaching at Walter Williams High School, on the fifth anniversary of the event, each second block class was required (rightly so) to spend some time talking about the event and asking students to process it. Mine was asked by the principal not to, as one of my students' mother had been in the second tower when it fell, and died. As she was a junior in 2006, she likely would have been about your age.
 
I was a freshman in college. Had an 8 AM class, nobody knew what happened during class because that was a little bit pre everyone carrying cell phones. Got back to my room and one of my friends from high school messaged me on MSN Messenger to turn on the news.
 
It was my first year of law school. It was about the third week in, and those first three weeks had been a bit overwhelming. I walked from whatever my first class of the day was, intending to go to the library and review for the next class, which was Civ Pro and which had an old school professor who struck fear in all our hearts.

As I walked though the hall, the Dean of Students stood outside of the assembly room telling us there had been a plane crash and it might be terrorism, and that the TV was on in there if we wanted to watch the news about it. I didn’t get the full context at that point (that is, the circumstances of the crash she mentioned, where it happened, etc.), so I initially thought to myself, “That’s awful,” and was prepared to continue going on to the library to study. But right after that, someone else near me in the hallway looked into the assembly room, and said in a very shocked tone, “Is that the Pentagon?” I took a peek at the TV and saw the Pentagon with flames and smoke coming out. I knew then that this was something very big and different. Then the news jumped back to the World Trade Center, and I was mortified. I sat down and watched the news until my next class. I saw the buildings crumble. I was numb and afraid and worried about what was going to happen next.

I still went to my next class. The professor took it easy on us that day. I then went back to my apartment, called my parents, and watched the news for the rest of the day. I felt such a sinking feeling.
 
Following nycfan's lead here and reposting on this thread...

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We’ve all got our recollections of 9/11…I was teaching at East Carolina #OTD 24 years ago and was driving there, listening to the radio, when I heard. A few months before this date in 2001, WUNC had gone from a format weighted heavily toward classical music to one of all news and human interest via National Public Radio. It was a telling, almost prescient adjustment. As I drove toward Greenville from Chapel Hill I was listening to the standard fare and somewhere just before the traffic mess that was the approach to Wilson in those days I grew bored and in search of outrage switched over to loudmouth Don Imus. I was ‘there’ when the news hit. At the 1:42 mark of this YouTube the news comes in:



This very broadcast starkly highlights a Before and During narrative as by telephone a friend of Imus’ recounts what he’s seeing from his bedroom window 7 blocks from the World Trade Towers. It is revelatory. To hear it again is chilling to the bone.

Of course I was stunned - then I dialed back to WUNC and the reporting. At a stoplight in Wilson a pick-up pulled beside me - we were both listening to the radio. I looked over at the baseball-capped, mustached driver. He looked back and gave me a huge shoulder shrug. The light turned green. I’m a Historian so as I drove I turned to trying to suss out the significance of the day — September 11.

I study Latin America and while I’m not by any means a stickler for dates, I remembered that 9-11-73 marked the death of Salvador Allende, the president of Chile. My love of Eduardo Galeano’s ‘The Open Veins of Latin America’ had seared those events into my brain. Allende had crossed the USA and Nixon and Kissinger by being a socialist in “our backyard” during the Cold War as well as insisting on market prices for copper (Deemed an essential at the time by the US Military Industrial Complex because of The Vietnam War). Despite his legitimate election in a nation with, at that time at least, a strong tradition of Constitutional Democratic Republicanism and fair elections, our CIA and State Department turned toward Allende’s overthrow. On September 11, 1973 that effort succeeded and a pro-USA military dictatorship was installed and Allende died in what has been ‘ruled’ a suicide. Chile suffered a terrorist government at the hands of “our son of a bitch” (one of many generated by Cold War anti-communism) General Augusto Pinochet for the next 16 years.

So that shot through my mind but was quickly slid to the back as the news pointed more and more conclusively to the Middle East. Just the same I can’t say that I didn’t also reflect on 1995 and Timothy McVeigh’s terrorist bombing in Oklahoma City. He had proven to anyone that was open to broader thinking that we had citizens and citizen movements within the nation who were capable and sufficiently motivated to murder wantonly to bring down our own Republic in the name of their deranged rightist worldview. But it turned out, as we all know, that a different brand of conservative thinking lay behind 9/11, this one rooted in a zealous, fundamentalist misinterpretation of a different sacred text, ‘The Koran.’

So now we’ve come back around. April 19, 1995 to January 6, 2021. That’s 26 years. It’s 51 years since Chile, 1973. I realize we are all pondering a 23 year span of time today…I guess the historian in me has to stretch it out and seek both farther back, and afield, for antecedents and causation. Many more than the 3,000 innocents, in the towers, and engaged in rescue efforts, perished on September 11 and in the long, long aftermath…many, many.

And now, in 2025, it seems that yet another tragic and violent shadow has been thrown over this fateful day. As with almost any day in these times at a school in Evergreen, Colorado a student opened fire with a pistol on his classmates, wounding two, and then turned the gun on himself, ending his life. In Utah a social media influencer was shot and killed by a sniper — at a school — while speaking to a crowd.

I can’t help but think, given Chile 9/11/73, Oklahoma City 4/19/95, and Washington DC 1/6/21, and the ever-present and daily gunning down of innocents that there’s a Big Picture we’re missing. I can’t put my finger on it, I can’t do more than try and piece together a larger understanding. I figure this essay — on this day of all days — will probably not be a popular one among the homages rightfully written and delivered for the dead, plenty of them so heroic in their demise. It won’t go noticed to be sure. I’ve always struggled with the larger story into which 9/11 lies though. Clearly I still am. Looking at where things stand today there is one thing I believe I can project. Were Timothy McVeigh and Osama Bin Laden alive today the events of January 6, 2021 would have made them both smile Putinesquely.
 
I was in tenth grade. And had PE for first period. I remember changing back into my regular clothes in the locker room after PE and a classmate passing around a printed screenshot of CNN’s lead article about it. Like it was some piece of secret contraband.
 
Inwas living with my in-laws while we had a new house built. I vividly remember walking down the hallway into the living room and seeing my MiL sitting in the middle of the couch, facing the TV, with both hands over her mouth in the typical way older women do when they are concerned or shocked.
 
Actually, seems like longer than 24 years to me.
I was putting out that day's newspaper when a lady from composing came to my desk and said a plane had hit one of the towers. Truthfully, I assume it was a small plane and did not even think terror attack and figured AP would send story soon that I could bury on a back page. Soon after, she returned and said a second plane had hit the other tower, and I knew. I went to watch TV coverage briefly, tore up the front page, and rebuilt it with what was coming in from AP. The final product looked as it was, rushed and scattered. In my defense, we had about an hour total to get the paper to press after I tore up the page.
The rest of my day was spent the same way as most Americans, I presume, watching TV and wondering how much different life would be going forward. I was scared for this nation, and found great comfort seeing people rally together.
That probably explains why it seems like more than 24 years ago.
 
I was 19. In college and living at home. I'll never forget my mom running into my bedroom to wake me... I got up just in time to watch the second plane hit. A truly indescribable feeling of helplessness and fear gripped me.
 
I was getting my two girls ready for grammar school when my sister in law from NY called and told me to turn on the tv. Debated with myself whether to send them or not but ultimately did. I’m one of those people who couldn’t take my eyes off the tv for weeks. Absolutely shocking.
 
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