My dad tells a lot of stories. Some of those stories he tells more often than others, but that's ok, I remember those better than the others. One remembrance he shared was the day President Kennedy died. He was in school, in a classroom and someone came from the office to tell the teacher that the president had been shot. He remembered the teacher and some of his classmates crying.
I remember thinking I didn't have a memory like that - one that you forever can remember where you were when it happened...until September 11, 2001.
A radio reporter this morning said that here in South Florida we are split 50/50 - half want to forget about September 11th and half want to keep it fresh in our minds. I am a little split too. I never want to forget what happened. I never want to forget that day or act like the fact that it did happen is a burden on my life - I didn't lose anyone I loved that day, I really don't even know anyone who lost someone in the attacks - and at the same time I want all the talk about it to stop, not the memorial sort of talk, but the blaming, the movies, the commissions. And then time erodes memories. They become fuzzy and distant. I don't want to see pictures of the towers falling, but it irks me that they might not be shown lest someone benefit politically. It's like pictures of the holocaust - they are horrifing, but you must see them, you must not act like it did not happen. But that is for the future generations, when you experience a day like 9/11, you can't really forget.
I remember that it was a beautiful morning - even here 1000 miles away from ground zero. I was working for Call FM at the time and I went to the post office to get the mail for the station. We were still working the kinks out and I did most of my work at home. On the way home I passed by a Borders Bookstore on US 1 and for some reason felt compelled to stop and go in and browse. The store was almost empty and very quiet - but that didn't seem odd, it was a bookstore. I didn't buy anything, just enjoyed looking at the books, went out, got in my car and drove home - not 5 mintues away. When I walked in our apartment Rob was sitting on the couch watching the TV. The first tower had already fallen, he filled me in on what had happened as best as he knew and we sat and watched television all the rest of the day. Inside I felt a fear I had never known. For several days, maybe weeks, it felt like it could all happen again any minute, anywhere. Even now I dare to think, maybe it could...
I ran errands and then was at home that unspeakable day. I am curious to know, where were you?
I posted my whereabouts at my blog, Writers Wanderings this morning.
ReplyDeleteThis was 10 days before Tyler was born, so I was still working. I was sitting at my desk at work when a coworker ran over & told me to turn on my radio. No more work got done that day. We all gathered around our radios and just listened. Occasionally the phones would ring but no one answered them unless it was a loved one. At lunch time I picked Ron up. We went through a drive through and sat together in the car, silently eating our lunches and listening to the tragedy unfold. Once I got back to work, it was just more of the same. Everyone was clinging to the radio and looking for news on the internet, too shocked to know what to say.
ReplyDeleteGreg had broken his arm and was scheduled to have surgery early in the morning on Sept 11, 2001. At 4:00 a.m. (we were in Hawaii) my mom called, frantically telling me to turn on the news. Over and over I saw footage of the same plane crashing into the first tower. I had no idea what was going on. Then Greg said, "We've got to get to the hospital before everything shuts down." Even that early in the morning, we barely made it to the hospital (on a military base) before all the bases went to high alert and lines of cars--miles long--backed traffic up all over the island for days. So, on Sept 11, I sat in the waiting room of Tripler Army Medical Center and prayed for Greg's surgery while watching everything else unfold about both towers, the Pentagon (where Greg's dad worked at the time), and the Pennsylvania crash. All the while, I listened to fighter jets take off behind the hospital. In hindsight, we know that they were responding to false alarms of planes taken hostage by terrorists over the Pacific, headed for L.A.
ReplyDeleteI was in Holly Pond, Alabama that day. I was working at a blue jeans factory then in between semesters when I was waiting to finish my masters in the spring. I woke up and mom was sitting in the kitchen glued to the TV. All she said was "look at this Meredith". We both were amazed and horrified. I will never ever forget it. I think I became a nervous flyer on that day.
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