Sunday, September 11, 2011

Where Were You 10 Years Ago September 11?



I will always remember where I was.

On September 11, 2001, about 8:30 AM I took our Labrador Retriever, Christopher T. Labrador, for a walk.  When I returned with Chris, my wife called downstairs to tell me that a plane had hit a building in New York.

I came upstairs to our sitting room to watch the news (at that time we watched CNN) while my wife and daughter left to go to their office in downtown Cincinnati.  Before they arrived, the second plane had hit the second building.  I was amazed that the announcer on CNN said, "You don't think there is any this could be any kind of an accident, no kind of a navigational equipment failure or some sort of a navigational quirk by beacons or whatever? "  As so many others "suspected", I was certain these crashes were not caused by "accidents" and spoke out loud to the TV expressing my thoughts.

I called my wife who was just arriving at her office.  Her office was in the old Federal Reserve Building and there was already extra security on the scene.  In fact, the entire downtown area was suddenly under heavy security.  Federal buildings, banks, and major office buildings were all in high security mode.  My wife and daughter came home and we watched the rest of the tragedy on TV.  Like so many others, we called our local blood bank to donate blood.  It wasn't long before everyone realized blood donations were not needed.

We all know the rest of the story.

Ten days later my wife and I flew from Cincinnati to Venice, Italy, via JFK airport in New York and London.  It was the first time we have been on such empty planes.  I was able to sleep across four seats on the overseas portion of the flight.
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August 28, 2011, my wife and I watched the National Geographic Channel where the September 11, 2001 was relived in a four hour program including a one hour interview with George W. Bush.

May it never happen again.
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Today, September 11, 2011, ten years later, I'm going on board the cruise ship Freedom of the Seas for ten weeks.

4 comments:

Rose said...

I think everyone remembers what they were doing when this attack happened...I agree with you...may it never happen again.

Unknown said...

I was in my office at the Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base, Norfolk, VA where I was a civil service department manager with a mixed crew of civilian and active duty Navy personnel. One of my sailors heard the news on the radio that a plane had hit one of the twin towers. He ran into my office and turned on the TV just as the second tower was hit. Besides the rage running through all of us there were also a lot of tears in the office that day as one of my sailors lost his mother in tower one and 2 other staff members had family in New York.

Reena said...

I enjoyed this post, Kjell. My husband and I flew up to Bangor Maine, four days later. It was a strange and eerie experience at the airports.

Cuby said...

I was at home off work so I remember the radio news first and then dashing to the TV to watch the unbelievable horror. Have a great cruise wherever your heading.