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I was in my senior year of high school. My dad worked for the US Army as a civilian...and he was scheduled to be on a flight to the UK to meet with contractors (he did acquisition/procurement stuff), leaving from Newark, on 9/11. Fortunately, that flight didn't even take off. Left some of his folks stranded in the UK for a few days, but everybody was OK and got home once US airspace reopened and flights resumed. Some of the folks he knew and worked with were at the Pentagon, but fortunately everybody he knew got out OK to my recollection. He worked at Fort Monmouth, a now-closed base...and I remember being scared when in a car that was by the gates. For the first time *ever*, there were armed MPs on gate duty, HMMWV's nearby, and road barriers up, for a while afterwards. Before 9/11 you actually could use Fort Monmouth as a kind of shortcut, it was a pretty open base. After 9/11, no way. The MPs and HMMWVs were a pretty constant thing for at least the next few months. As for me? I was spending half of my day at my "home" high school, and half of my day at an alternative HS for kids with emotional/psych issues. I was getting in the van to take me from one school to the other at about the time the second plane hit the WTC towers. Fortunately, we were near the bus office...So me and the driver said "Screw it, we can be late" and headed there to watch it on a TV. I would eventually get to my other school (the alt one), and be worried as hell all morning, really up until lunch, when a social worker beelined for me. I remember that moment vividly, because I thought my dad was dead for just an instant. Then, of course, she spoke, telling me that my dad had called and said he'd been at the airport when they shut down the airspace, and not to worry. I'm told I didn't show that much emotion until later, once I'd gotten home. (Naturally, mom and dad were both home.) My brother was in Brooklyn at the time, studying at Pratt Institute, and I remember his call that night, saying how there were troops outside the hospitals. How he could see the smoke from the site across the river. I don't recall if he came home (I don't think he did), but it was...rough.
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Sep 30, 2015 15:11
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:I was in a small college in Canada when it happened, and I can mostly remember three overall camps the day it happened. There were people angry, and the prevailing hate was directed towards Palestine for some reason. The average person was a little shook up, but nobody I noticed around the school was crying or anything; it was mostly an overall feeling of unease. On the other side there was an anti Bush sentiment growing assuming he was going to start a bunch of wars and get a bunch of "safety" laws passed. Not that he was ever popular with the college crowd here, but even on the day it happened a lot of people became more vocal against him. I remember the day - I believe the anti-Palestinian sentiment may be because one of the news stations showed Palestinian kids celebrating that it happened.
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Oct 1, 2015 13:56
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