I got up at 6:50am, after I had snoozed my alarm… TWICE… and went about my normal morning routine: showered, dressed, grabbed a quick breakfast and hopped in the car to head downtown for work.
“Ugh… I hope I’m not late again!”
Turned the key to the ignition… car roared to life… and morning talk radio blasted my ears.
“Man… I must have been listening to my music WAY too loud last night.”
As I turned the volume down, I thought to myself, “Wait… I wasn’t listening to talk radio last night!”
I tuned in:
“A 747 has flown into the World Trade Center in New York City!”
This can’t be happening. This has to be a joke!
I drove all the way downtown to the radio station (KUPL fm - where I worked at the time) trying not to panic. Everyone else looked completely calm in their vehicles. “Am I the only one hearing this? Why is everyone else totally unfazed?”
Upon arrival, I saw all the staff members gathered in the conference room where the television was. This really happened. This isn’t a joke. This is FOR REAL?
That’s where we sat… numb… for the next few hours.
I will NEVER forget where I was the morning of 9/11. I will never forget what was lost.
On September 11, 2001 … I was a junior in high school. That morning I had stayed home sick… along with my mom. Instead of sleeping in, we both stayed up and decided to eat breakfast. My mom turned on the small TV on in the kitchen, getting ready to make pancakes when we watched a plane crash into the 2nd twin tower, live on The Today Show. We both looked at each other in confusion, wondering what movie this was promoting. To our horror, we both realized that we were both seeing was for real. For the rest of the day our eyes stayed glued on the television, and in prayer for our nation as more planes went down at the Pentagon and in the field in Pennsylvania.
I was in the 6th grade, and my mom got a call from Grandma at about 6:45 in the morning telling us to turn on the news. We never ever turned on the tv before school, so I knew that whatever was happening was a big deal. I saw the second plane crash on live tv.
We went to school anyway, and my teacher looked like the world was going to end. We spent the whole day listening to talk radio and watching the news, and writing how we felt and what we heard on a giant piece of butcher paper that my teacher had taped on one of the walls.
The next morning, my mom and dad had us go buy 9 copies of the newspaper, at 5am so that it wouldn’t be sold out when we got there. I’ll never forget that feeling I got when all the strong adults in my life were crumbling, as we watched people jumping from 90 stories up in the air, as we watched buildings crumble, helpless to do anything but pray.
Eight years later, I still feel helpless to do anything but pray for the families that will be mourning harder than I can know tomorrow. Eight years later, I can begin to truly appreciate how much the world changed that day.