I was pulling into the parking garage at work and they had just reported the Pentagon had been hit. From what I was hearing on the radio it sounded like the world might be coming to an end or at least other locations might be targeted...places like...Dallas. I came very close to putting my car in reverse, speeding out of there and signaling my children and husband home. But I looked around at all the other cars in the garage, and knowing that a lot of people I worked with were from New York, I went inside. Everyone was gathered around the few TVs we had on our floor. Shortly after that I saw the first building fall...and then the second...I had eaten at Windows on the World in 1988 and in an instant the top of the trade center was in a heap on the ground...unfathomable.
4 years ago a firetruck from New Orleans was given to New York to help with the Twin Towers disaster. 4 years later to the day some NY firemen returned the truck to New Orleans...unbelievable.
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My wife and I were returning home from here annual mammogram... the jocks on the radio were talking about a plane hitting the World Trade center... we thought it was some sort of sick 'comedy skit'... when we got home and flipped on Fox News... the reality was all too real.
I'd had meetings, friends and clients in those towers over the years.
It's a day I doubt I'll ever forget.
I was in school and a social studies class was sending out feelings of immense suffering. It's nothing different for the TV to be on in this room, but it felt different that day.
I stopped, didn't knock, and walked in. No one looked up.
I watched for 30 seconds and ran to my room, hooked up my tv (which is rarely used) and watched.
Students filed into my room. We watched in silence, then I began discussing the news: how much was fact, how much was opinion, how much was repetition, did we "need" to continue watching.
With 10 minutes left in the day, I began. "There are fathers who will never see their wives again, children who will never again see their fathers. You never know.
"So tonight, go home and tell the people you love that you love them, because we don't ever know."
Kids cried, hugged one another and left. And parents later said "I don't know what you said in there, but thank you."
I still feel guilty that, when I heard a parent tell me that, I smiled.
I was already at work and was one of the last in our department to find out. I couldn't believe my eyes as I watched the second plane fly into the tower.
I was getting ready to go to work, In fact I was still sipping a cup of coffee. My wife who had the radio on in another room - rushed in and said a plane had hit the WTC.
Thinking it was a horrible accident, I turned on the TV in time to see the second plane striking the second tower.
Then there was word of an exposion at the Pentagon!
All I could think: "We are about to go to war!"
I too had been to the WTC for meetings. The whole thing was surreal, terrifying and sad.
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