Lest we forget

[dsteele]

Today is the third anniversary of the tragedies of 9/11/01. Where were you and what did you do when the first plane hit? I'm curious.

 

I'll add my memories down the line.

 

Let us never forget that many people died unexpectedly and unnecessarily. My prayers are with their families, for the people themselves are with God now.

 

Unc.

[encourager]

Hi Uncle,

I was praying this morning at 8:46 for the victims and their families. My memories are ordinary but poignant. My youngest son had just entered first grade. I was speaking to his teacher at school while something told me to watch TV (something I hardly ever do, especially in the morning.) As I discussed my son, the terrible news started coming over the screen. I knelt near the TV, crying that the Lord witness this horror. I called my friend who was pregnant at the time and realized she needed me. Her husband was across the street from the WTC and who knew if she had become a widow with her baby due in a few weeks.

 

Besides the horror, I do remember how everyone helped each other. We cried together, held hands, prayed. I ended up using the therapy offered--I was so upset. Being that I was on Long Island, I couldn't do much. I gave blood and continue to go to blood drives as often as medically suggested. I spiritually adopted one of the fallen firemen and pray for him in a special way on these anniversaries. I support BSA and the military for the same reason. That was the year that both my boys joined BSA, my little guy became a Tiger and my eldest at 14 entered his troop. I have since adopted BSA as a ministry.

 

I have grown a lot--thanks for the invitation to share.

 

YIS, Sylvia

[fotoscout]

As most of you know, I live in New York. Not all that far from Downtown Manhattan, actually not far from Sylvia. On that day I was in Memphis visiting a terminally ill friend. On that day he was still able to comprehend what had happened.

 

The nurses entered the room and told us to turn on the TV. As we did, the second plane hit. My friend had a sense of clarity that he hadnt had in recent days and would not have again. The nurses all looked at me, they knew I was from NY, a bad week just got worse.

 

My wife and son were home in NY. Her store closed, but they kept the kids in school for the day. My wife tried to call me but the lines were all busy. She got home and turned on the TV. Nothing. We had a roof antenna, no cable, no satellite. The broadcast signal came from the transmitter atop the WTC. She was very upset and went to the neighbors.

 

Around dinner time I finally got in touch with her. It wasnt a good conversation.

 

The nurses all wanted to adopt me. It was Tuesday and I was scheduled to go home on Wednesday. We all knew that that was not going to happen. Never have so many women offered to do my wash.

 

Memphis came alive. Almost instantly a radio station set up a collection point not far from the hospital. They didnt know what they were collecting, but if you brought it to them they would get to NYC. They needed to do something, anything. This very big land of ours became very small, very quickly.

 

So there I sat for the next four days, with a dying friend and wall to wall news coverage of this horrific event.

 

On Saturday I finally got a flight out of Memphis. While waiting for the plane to depart I sat with my back to the TV. The trip home was complicated, even for this very experienced traveler. My car was at LaGuardia, but the closest I could get was Newark. As the plane flew into Newark, everyone shifted to the right side of the aircraft, even the flight crew! Smoke was still rising from the site.

 

I took a cab through fortress NY enroute to LaGuardia. It was about three in the morning, nothing was moving except a few Humvees. I had the Long Island Expressway all to myself on the way home.

 

I got home hugged my wife who hadnt slept in days and went to sleep. The phone rang, my friend had died.

 

Everyone here knows people who suffered a loss that day. We lost no family members. In my sons school two of children lost their fathers. One of those children was a Scout in our Pack.

 

[packsaddle]

fotoscout, that is a rivetting story. I think no person is likely ever to forget that day.

I also remember Oklahoma City. At that time I was in a federal building for a meeting. It was interrupted for the announcement. The entire building was quiet for the rest of the day.

Then three years ago, I was again in a federal building for another meeting when my wife called on the cell phone (we have relatives in NYC). She said tearfully, "turn on the radio" and that was all she could say. We found a television and watched silently as the towers collapsed.

We finished the meeting and I called to locate our relatives, then I called my children's school to give them the message that none of the relatives had been in the WTC that day, everyone was OK. One relative is a teacher in NYC (Queens). His school didn't close for days - there were children whose parent didn't arrive to pick them up...and for a few children, never did. The school kept the children in an overnight mode until they could be cared for. Tragic, thoughts of it still bring tears to my eyes.

[dsteele]

Thank you for sharing.

 

My story is quite simple and should be unattached to the tragic events of that day. However, I can't let go of the images. Perhaps I should seek help. Actually, that's what I'm doing with this thread.

 

Very simply, I had a late night on September 10, 2001 and have the luxury of sleeping in the day after a late night. I had just woken to the AM radio news station when the first plane hit. As I lay on the bed, I didn't think it was an accident.

 

I turned on the TV (which I never do in the morning) and saw the first tower in flames. Then, I saw the second plane hit the second tower. I knew we were in deep #$%#@$#@%^%. I shut off the TV. I couldn't watch, but listened to the radio while I smoked a cigarette. A fire was reported at the Pentagon, and I knew we were under attack.

 

I did some math in my head and figured 10,000 people had died in the flames an collapse as I drove to work (in Chicago at the time.) I worried that Chicago would be hit next.

 

I got to the office at about 11:00 AM Central time. Everyone was glued to a TV. I wanted to cry, but couldn't. My anger outweighed my grief.

 

I went home at about 2:00 that afternoon. My wife was there as she's a teacher and school had been called off early. We held each other and cried together over the cataclismic events of the day. Then she allowed me to vent my anger.

 

I have to tell you my office was 5 miles or less away from O'Hare airport. The next 10 days or so with no flights or airplane noise was very strange.

 

 

Unc.

 

 

[Eamonn]

Over the weekend, which was very warm I managed to talk OJ into wearing a Garfield Cat costume, which I had borrowed from Idlewild Park. The head was massive and hardly fit in the car. We had visited all the local elementary schools and taken photos that we were putting in the local newspapers to promote Sign Up Night.

On the morning of September 11, I was in the office of the newspaper. I was sweet talking the girls in the office when one of them said that a small plane had hit one of the towers. Out of no where Tim the owner of the insurance office next door came in. Tim is a super nice guy, active in Rotary and in the local community. We know each other well, mainly from him coming to eat in the restaurant at lunch time where we would trade really bad jokes. He was very upset and agitated. He said that the "Rag Heads" (His words- not mine) had attacked and this was war.

I was shocked, not about what had happened but at Tim. I went home and turned on the TV to NBC. I seen the smoke come out of the Pentagon. I was in total shock, as only weeks before on the way home from the Jamboree, the sister in law of the other Jamboree Scoutmaster who works at the Pentagon had arranged a VIP tour for us.

I drove to my office with the radio on. I didn't get anything done. I had a radio on all day. I wanted to turn it off, maybe if I turned it off it would all go away. We have large screen TV's throughout the building,every time I passed one it was showing re-runs of the terrible footage. Flight 93, had gone down about a half hours drive from where I live. Yet somehow I had this fixation on the Pentagon.

I drove home all the time thinking about the kids in New York, that had lost a parent. At that time the estimated death toll was over 5,000. I couldn't wait to see OJ and just hold him.

The phone at home was busy with friends and family from England and Ireland phoning to see if we were all right. Some of these people had waited hours to get through.

A very close friend who was my ASM at the Jamboree, had returned from the Jamboree and his wife informed him that she had left him. She had moved back home to her parents, who live in Somerset, not far from where the plane had gone down. He had spoken on the phone with his daughter, a first grader. She asked her Dad "Is the school going to shake tomorrow?"

I have met people that have lost family members in New York.

Last year at our Council Recognition Dinner we invited the Lady who had organized the tour of the Pentagon to be the guest speaker. She informed us that two of the young service men who had served as our guides were killed. I couldn't help but remember how OJ had said on September 11, "Dad we were just there, that could have been us."

I wasn't sure what could be done for these two young service men. We had only been with them for a very short time. They were very smart in their uniforms, they had done the tour most of the time walking back-wards so that they could face the group. They had shown and shared their knowledge and their humor. I did have a mass said for them and all those that had suffered. The sad thing is that I for the life of me am unable to remember their names. I had wanted it said in our church, but the calender was full. So the mass was said by a missionary priest working some where in Africa. My donation for the mass will be put to work over there. I hope that maybe these few dollars will help the people there come to the understanding that killing people is just plain wrong, no matter what the cause is.

Eamonn

[KoreaScouter]

I was stationed in Korea at the time, and that time in our time zone was 9:00 p.m. We had just put the kids to bed, and didn't have the TV on. The phone rang, it was the command post, recalling me to work. The next several months were a blur, but I can count the number of days off we had on the fingers of one hand.

 

Fast forward to 2004, and the third anniversary finds me back in Korea, this time just for a month, part of a team revising defense plans at various joint use bases here. Early in the morning on Sept 11th, our team pulled out of the base we were staying at in Pusan to head for our next stop, and I noticed more combat police than usual on post, in the rain, outside our gates. I dismissed it, since they're always out there in some number, and figured there must have been a demonstration scheduled or some similar event.

 

Three hours later through continuous driving rain, as we turned onto the access road to our next location, I noticed the combat police buses from a distance, and scores of combat police posted outside the gate there, too. Soaked to the skin, they stood a silent sentinel while we pulled in the gate. As the senior Korean military guard checked our IDs against the visitor list, I asked him if they were expecting trouble since there were extra combat police on post. He pointed to the calendar on the wall and circled the date with his pen.

 

I was immediately reminded that his country has been a staunch ally of ours for 50 years, including this war on terrorism, that they are no stranger to terrorist attacks themselves, and that our alliance now places a bullseye on their country and its people.

 

It's funny, we Americans collectively have more in common historically and culturally with the countries of western Europe, but when it comes to understanding what 9-11 was all about, the Koreans "get it" in ways our European allies just don't seem to.

 

We expect 9-11 to be etched into the consciousness of Americans, but to think that a pen stroke on a wall calendar, on a rainy Saturday in South Korea, by a 22 year-old Korean military conscript who's probably never been to America, could mean the exact same thing to him and to me, is something I don't think I'll ever forget...

 

KS

[Laurie]

It was a beautiful morning, and I was sitting in the livingroom rocking our daughter and giving her a bottle while watching the news. Just as my husband returned from dropping the boys off at school, the first plane hit. I knew--I don't know how I knew--that this was not an accident. I was stunned and couldn't take my eyes off the tv, waiting to hear and hoping to hear that I was wrong--that somehow it might be an accident. The feelings that began to hit were such a jumble--shock, anger, helplessness, fear--and I began to run names through my head of who I might know that I should get in touch with. As the second plane crashed, I begged my husband not to go to work. He went. It was a high-rise in Center City, Philadelphia, and I was in fear all day. It was already under tight security due to the type of work; it become tougher still--but there was nothing stopping a plane from hitting that building too.

 

I held on to the fear, cried a lot, and became rather angry. I put out the flag more, attached one to the car, and prayed more. My children didn't sleep so well for awhile after this happened. I hated how this rocked their world--how life didn't seem quite so secure and safe any longer. I found that I had trouble helping them to feel secure and safe because I understood what they felt and didn't know how to move beyond it. The questions came: why would someone do this? Will Daddy come home today? Why do people hate? Why do people kill? Will one of those planes hit us (we lived in a flight path)? Why is so quiet (when the flights were stopped)? Will it happen again? Honest answers didn't provide the peace we all were seeking.

 

I knew we weren't completely safe, that we vulnerable and not liked by many in this world, that we had been truly lucky as well as blessed to be so free of terror of this magnitude prior to this day. That didn't lessen the horror of it actually happening. Something inside me changed, something I can't put words to. I admire and respect those who hold 9/11 memorials, who have found ways to grieve and heal and even at times to find good coming out of this, but I can't view anything relating to 9/11 without remembering cruelty, hatred, horror, and the question I asked a lot that day: "where next?" I also felt terribly guilty for having been so untouched by this, for having a family that remained safe and intact, for not having to say good-bye to anyone during that time, and for daring to feel frightened myself when this wasn't about and hadn't touched me and my family.(This message has been edited by Laurie)

[hops_scout]

I've kind of been "laying low" on this one. I'll add my thoughts shortly.

 

I think about it everyday. It hurts when I do think about that day and I'm near tears now as I type this. 3 thousand some people were killed in a matter of hours and days. The men and women of the FDNY and other agencies in the area suffered dearly. 343 workers killed from the FDNY alone! That would be nearly my whole neighborhood!

 

Last night, I went camping at a WOW campout. If you dont know what that is, it stands for Weblos Outdoor Weekend. At the campfire last night, we retired several Old Glories. Before we started retiring Them, we took a moment to reflect on what had happened 3 years earlier. I stood there in the front holding one "Ragged Old Flag" and about came to tears there as well.

 

This subject touches me deeply. I dont know exactly why. I guess that is just how He wanted me to be. I was just in 7th grade when it happened, but I have felt this way eversince. I have made it my one of my goals to become an elite Ranger and fight these $*$*$*(% that did this.

 

I have also wanted to become an EMT, firefighter, law enforcement officer, etc. My room is decorated with a poster from NYC, a poster with the flag on it that says "Support our Troops", and a lot of other stuff.

 

I have written and found many things relating to this topic. If you would like to see any of it, let me know and I'd be happy to pass it along.

 

 

[dsteele]

We all suffered trauma that day. Life changed. Just as it changed after Pearl Harbor.

 

Remember your emotions and harness them. Let your fear turn into anger and your anger turn into a quest for truth. Not action, necessarily, but action if need be. What we can not do is forget.

 

Unc.

 

[9muckraker7]

Great words of wisdom, uncleguinea.

[gsmom]

My family and I were living in lower Manhattan on Sept 11. I was on my way to the WTC to catch the PATH train to my job in Newark. I got out of the Wall St. subway stop after the second plane had hit. I was standing 4 blocks away when the south tower started to collapse. I ran south on Broadway with the crowd ahead of the dust cloud, then into a building just before it caught up with me. After the cloud had passed, ash came down like snow. I waited until that passed, then made my way further south. I could hear the north tower collapse, and had to go into another building to escape the cloud. By the time I got as far south as the ferry terminal, the city had buses lined up to take people "out of the area." I got on a bus, and went uptown to where my daughters were in school.

 

We made it home that night, although it took hours and we had to go through a number of police checkpoints. Our building was in the restricted zone. There was no school the next day, but there was the day after. I decided that the girls had to go to school no matter what. It would be poison to sit around the house all day and think about what happened. It took three hours to get to school.

 

I stayed home the next couple of weeks to take the girls to school past the police barricades. The whole experience was surreal. My younger daughter is getting treatment for post-traumatic stress.

 

I was proud to be a New Yorker during that time. Everyone went out of their way to help each other. There was an incredible bond. I thought it was impressive the way there were buses lined up to take people away, and people lined up to get on the buses, no pushing, etc.

 

GSmom