Tuesday, 9.11 - lest we forget

[cpneb]

A little something I posted last year.... Even more poignant for me since my semi-son was hit by an EFP overseas earlier this year, and he's still recovering from it.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3145161/...ver_had_a_Naco

Never forget, always remember.

[Fireand'chutes77]

Standing on the front porch that September afternoon, going over it with neighbors... I wondered then how thi would look six, seven years down the road - the next time September the 11th rolled around to a sunny, cloudless Tuesday morning.

It's pretty much how I envisioned it actually. It still twinges and throbs like a old scar... But fading. We're just going through the motions by now.

If we're on the subject of 9/11 KP fanfics, here's one by Recon228 that I thought was very good.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2518694/...r_Darkest_Hour

[jeriddian]

Standing on the front porch that September afternoon, going over it with neighbors... I wondered then how thi would look six, seven years down the road - the next time September the 11th rolled around to a sunny, cloudless Tuesday morning.

It's pretty much how I envisioned it actually. It still twinges and throbs like a old scar... But fading. We're just going through the motions by now.

If we're on the subject of 9/11 KP fanfics, here's one by Recon228 that I thought was very good.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2518694/...r_Darkest_Hour

Recon's story is in the Main Page database along with all of the other stories form the old KPTome. It can be accessed there as well.

For my part, the last chapter of my "Queen's Gambit Accepted" story is dedicated to the fallen as well, although it was for Memorial Day. I find it should apply as well to the fallen of 9/11, as in a way they also fell in the fight for freedom.

http://www.fanfiction.net/secure/liv...86&chapter=16/

[Mike_Industries]

A little something I posted last year.

Nebster, that story you wrote I read last year, and it brought tears to my eyes. It was a very emotional tribute.

I still remember where I was when I first learned about the attack. I was sitting in my 8th grade geography class and my teacher bursted in to the room yelling "QUIET! SOMETHING SERIOUS JUST HAPPENED IN NEW YORK!" He flipped on the T.V and he went to CNN. We just caught the second tower collapsing... I remember the image of that tower playing over and over in my head falling like it did...

9/11... Never Forgotten

[Rob]

I remember so much about the day that it happened... so clearly, and yet it felt like I was in such a fog.

When I first heard that a plane had crashed into the WTC, there were no details at that point. It wasn't even a news station I was listening to, it was a sports station, doing a bit about Dennis Miller's Monday Night Football stint, and my initial impression was that it was probably some small plane that somehow got off-course. It was after getting into work, and hearing the reaction to the second plane's impact, that it really hit me.

My nephew Sam turned 1 on that day. He's 7 today, and we'll actually be celebrating his birthday this coming weekend... but, still, it's hard to believe that, on that afternoon, I held my baby nephew and wondered about his future... it seems so long ago.

[recon228]

I think anyone who was old enough to comprehend what was going on will always remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news... much like the Kennedy assassination of a few generations before.

As for me, I had just gotten out of the shower and was dressing for work when my wife (Who was, at the time, still only my girlfriend) came in and told me she'd just heard on the radio that a plane had hit the World Trade center. Figuring a Cessna had gotten lost in the fog and strayed off course, I brushed it off and left for work.

Since I drove my patrol car to-and-from work, I didn't have an AM/FM radio in the car, and didn't hear anything more about it 'til I got to the station and passed by the break room and noticed David, one of the officers from the graveyard shift, was still hanging around on the couch watching the news. As soon as I saw the image of the gouge in the side of the first tower, I knew it was something bigger than a Cessna. I stuck around for a minute or two, just long enough to hear the term "commuter plane" thrown around by the newscaster and make a few light-hearted comments about handing out a Darwin Award to the pilot who managed to smack his plane into the side of a giant building in clear weather, then turned to leave.

Just before I left the room, David made a comment about them capturing the first crash on tape. I turned and saw what I thought was a replay of the first tower being hit... it took both of us several seconds to realize the footage we were watching was still live, and that what we'd just seen was the second hijacked airliner hitting the other tower.

[Fireand'chutes77]

...make a few light-hearted comments about handing out a Darwin Award to the pilot who managed to smack his plane into the side of a giant building in clear weather, then turned to leave.

It's funny how things like that can go from lighthearted to sour-tasting in the space of just a few seconds.

...it took both of us several seconds to realize the footage we were watching was still live, and that what we'd just seen was the second hijacked airliner hitting the other tower.

Ow, that really looked like it hur - Wait... wait... the... the other tower's still smoking... Then that - Holy -!

[recon228]

Ow, that really looked like it hur - Wait... wait... the... the other tower's still smoking... Then that - Holy -!

That's actually a pretty accurate description of what I was thinking as I watched it...

[lunchmeat]

I was getting ready to go to class and had turned on the TV to catch the weather for the day and was confronted with the film of the planes hitting the buildings, over and over.
Arriving on campus was a bit surreal, some peole were completely freaked out, others just stunned and many had an air of great determination. I might add that this wasn't confined to th students but extended to the faculty and staff. There were also some odd things, some of which were humorous in retrospect, like tha campus maintenance guys parking a back hoe ate the entrance to the central air conditioning plant but leaving the back service entry open. One of the Bush sisters was attending classes at UT then and security was probably more heightened than at most universities, although expressed in some strange ways. Haphazard searches of backpacks in some buildings but nothing at all in others, odd rushes of traffic control, restriction of some areas for no apparent reason, it took them a couple of days to figure out what to do. Some of the faculty, particularly the emeritii, were combat veterans and for about the next week kept asking when I thought I'd get called up, which really upset the old lady. Since Osama didn't have a Navy or Air Force there wasn't a real need for my services. I suspect though that my willingness to go was a major factor in our parting company. That's the breaks (I still miss my dog, though).
The strangest thing about the following days was the complete absence of airplanes (the fighter patrols were far too high to see or hear). I'm a child of the jet age and the sky just doesn't seem right without the sound of planes, the glint of sun on wings or the sweep of contrails.

[campy]

My day consisted of sitting in front of the TV and reading commentary on the internet. My family was much closer. When I heard from my sister a day or so later, I learned she had been at the WTC around the time the first plane hit. She was on her way to work, changing from the subway to a PATH train to New Jersey and saw police with walkie talkies beginning to react. When she reached her office in Jersey City, she had a panoramic view of Lower Manhattan all day.

My nephew was at school at Stuyvesant High, which is just a couple of blocks away. He eventually walked home to Queens leading some younger kids.

My brother-in-law was on a business trip, and rented a car to drive home since he couldn't fly.

The only security measure I ever saw in town here was a state police cruiser parked under the bridge that carries the Mass Turnpike across the Chicopee River not far from my house. They kept that up for several weeks.