World Trade Center and Pentagon in memoriam

[lord of the mark]

.......

[Japher]

Never Forget.

[Winston]

. . .

[Spec]

....?


Spec.

[Tattila the Hun]

Be happy. Show the buggers that they haven't broken your spirit.

I wan't my funeral to be happy occasion, people laughing at my expence.

[alva]

...

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Tattila the Hun


Be happy. Show the buggers that they haven't broken your spirit.

I wan't my funeral to be happy occasion, people laughing at my expence.

I have had the most joyous times of my life dancing at weddings of children of holocaust survivors (not excluding my own wedding ) There is a time for celebration, and a time for other kinds of remembrance.

[RGBVideo]

World Trade Center and Pentagon in memoriam

Pentagon was destroyed?

[Ninot]

...

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by VJ

Pentagon was destroyed?

Many people were killed there. The remembrance I intended is for the people, not the buildings. I wanted a short thread title though.

[Lorizael]

Computer science teacher late for class. Her frantic excuse, "There's a fire in a building and my friend is in it."

Mambo on the news sites during class laughing, "No I'm serious, it fell over."

Stunned students watching TV in the library, as reporters say, "As many as fifty thousand may be dead..."

Uncomprehending girl in my English class after lunch, repeating, "Whatever. It was their time. Just the way it is."

Fighters screaming over my head as I walk home from school, drowning out my own wild screaming about the coming apocalypse.

Watching the planes hit. Over and over. For hours and hours. Can't turn the TV off.

Waking the next day and seeing the impossible truth on the front page of the Washington Post. We still have that paper.

We will never forget.

[Ninot]

Something I posted on another board, but the thread got locked due to conspiry theorists.

I remember it clearly enough.
I was in grade 11.
I was late for school, and was reading some book on the busride there, so I heard nothing on the radio.

Got into class at about 9:45. First class went by like nothing was happening.

Had french class 2nd period. A classmate of mine told me that the cafeteria in the WTC had caught fire. I thought that was bizzare, if a little funny too.

Then, 10 minutes later, the principal announces over the intercom, through tears, that we should pray for the victims and hope for a good end to all this. We still dont know what the **** is happening, its about 11.

French class ends, everyone runs for the TVs, and all we see is New York blanketed in smoke, and the WTC is gone.

MRE class was next, and the teacher pointed out we weren't going to listen to anything he said, so he brought us back to the TVs, untill a VP shooed us away.

In Economics class, our teacher gave a 10 minute speach about how the world would never be the same, and how it would drastically effect the economy, and then he let us listen to the radio for the rest of the class. This was usually a class room where noone listens to the teacher and everyone chats, but everyone was very quiet that day.

I still remember a couple of days later, when the first planes started taking off from St. Hubert airport (about a 5 minute drive from my HS), every kid around only stared at the plane till it was safely out of sight.

That day started my addiction to watching the news, like CNN.

[Kuciwalker]

...

[lord of the mark]

i was at home that day (long story) and sleeping in.

QOTM had taken POTM to school. At that time she attended a Jewish Day School located in the local JCC. Fourth grade.

I remember hearing a loud noise -later i found it was the sonic boom of fighter planes, NOT the crash at the Pentagon - the time was too late.

I turned on the radio to NPR, and heard that the WTC and the Pentagon had been hit.

Now id followed mideastern stuff, and had followed the US attacks on OBL after the embassy bombings, so I had a mental framework of sorts - and I rememberred discussing the 93 attack on the WTC at some length with a relative who worked nearby - but the magnitude of this was overwhelming.

When QOTM walked in I asked if she knew the Pentagon was hit - she said I was confused, the WTC had been hit twice - I told her no, I know that, the Pentagon was hit too.

The next thing, once we sort of had figured out what was happening was figuring out what to do about POTM. After some discussion we quickly guessed that the school would be closing, and that in any case we should get her.

QOTM must have gotten on the net at some point (we had dialup) cause the school didnt get through to us, but IIRC, left a message to pick her up, that they were closing. I got in the car and drove to the JCC, about 20 minutes away.

I dont remember exactly, but it must have been chaotic there, lots of parents picking up kids. I dont recall if the security situation at the JCC, though that became a big issue of discussion later, and security was tightened.

Anyway, POTM wasnt there - I was told she had gone home with her best friend, whose family is friends with QOTM and me, and who lived a few minutes away. I went over there.

They were all there - the dad is a stockbroker, with the markets closed hed come home. The kids were playing -they had heard something bad had happened, but were immersed in being together. I felt good that our friends had helped, it was a feeling of community.

The stockbroker dad passed on various rumors, including that there had been attacks on a JCC in Denver.

I took POTM home. We all watched TV together, and talked about what had happened.

QOTM called her family in New York. One nephew, a paramedic, was injured slightly at the WTC when he was hit by some falling debris. My mother-in-law said smoke had spread all through Brooklyn. She was pretty shaken - she didnt talk about Auschwitz - she rarely does - but bad memories must have been brought back.

Called some distant relatives, to assure them WE were ok. Told them how far from the Pentagon we actually were (about 5 miles).

About 5 or so that evening, when it was clear things had settled down, kinda, and no more planes were in the air, QOTM decided she wanted to actually SEE what was happening. She used to be a journalist, and has that in her. So we all got in the car and headed up I395, which was practically deserted, and drove past the Pentagon, which was spewing acrid smoke. Youve all seen the pictures, but the smell was pretty bad. Rte 110 of course was closed, and we were on the left lane to get a better view, so we just drove into DC. Never seen it that deserted - almost no one downtown,but national guard and other troops in front of Fed office buildings. We turned around and headed back, passing the Pentagon once more.

That evening a group of folks in the apartment building we lived in went outside for some ecumenical reflections and singing. This in a pretty anonymous high rise. First instinct of everyone was to join together in our various communities, to overcome some of the usual barriers.

[Elok]

Yeah, I'll add what I was doing too. I was asleep in my dorm room (first semester of college), when my roommate got a call from his mother. She said to turn on the TV, there'd been an accident involving a plane and the WTC. We turned it on just in time for the second plane to hit--no, this was not an accident.

It didn't really hit us, the significance of it. I went to breakfast, feeling very out of it. On the way back I heard them saying that a plane had struck the Pentagon. I laughed that off; I couldn't believe a plane could reach the Pentagon without getting shot out of the sky by several missile batteries. If I were in charge of the federal government, I certainly would have fortified that place like the Maginot line and then some, so I always assumed they had. I later learned I was wrong.

I watched the news, still not really "getting it." They talked about how it was probably Osama bin Laden, a name I'd heard before but never cared enough about to investigate. My neighbor kept saying, "what the hell were they thinking? There's a Republican in the White House, somebody's going to get the **** bombed out of them for this!"

He was almost laughing at the stupidity of it; like me, he hadn't lost anyone in the bombings, so he could look at it more or less dispassionately. I wasn't near laughing (I thought he was being more than a little insensitive, to be honest, though I didn't say so because he was a lot bigger than me), but I was even more puzzled. Did they think they could win? After Franz Ferdinand, Pearl Harbor, and who knows how many other historical examples, did they think the world's greatest power would react to a surprise attack with anything but brutal, overwhelming force? Or did they just want to hurt, and didn't care if their people got hurt far worse in return?

It's been five years, and I still don't get it.