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Slide Special user 533 Posts 
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In that tomorrow is the 12th anniversery of 9/11, I thought I'd relate my 9/11 story.
I had a meeting that morning at 9am with a company called BuzzMetrics. I was interviewing them for a weekly technology column I was writing at the time called the Tuesday Stroll. BuzzMetrics, is a big company now, but at that time it was only 2 people and I was their first media interview. Their offices were on Church Street, right across the street from the World Trade Center. After the interview, I was having my first compamy meeting for my first startup, which I had started the summer before. I had just made my first big hires, hiring a VP who was taking the train down from Boston and my head of sales who was flying in from California. Now, I'm not a person who likes to be late. I'm always early, and my usual route into the city was over the George Washington Bridge. For some reason, that morning my wife told me she heard there was a problem on the GW bridge and I should take an alternative route into the city, driving down the Sawmill parkway. As I was driving a huge branch that hung over the road way took that exact moment to fall. It fell directly in my path smashing on the road a quarter of a second before I ran over it. a fraction of a second later, the branch would have hit my windshield and I have no doubt in my mind I would have been dead if that happened. I got on the phone to my wife and told her she almost killed me. The traffice was unually heavy that day and I was running late. I had Howard Stern on the radio and as I was coming down the west side highway, I got to about the 30's when they announced on the Stern show that the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane. I look up and I can see the smoke billowing. I decided to pull over and see what was going on. As I drove into the garage, the second plane hit. I called the folks at Buzzmetrics to tell them there was something going on, which they probably knew more than me, and that I might be late. I left the message on their answering machine. They finally heard the message 6 months later when they could get back in their office. I tried taking the subway down but it was only running uptown, so I took the 1 train up to 72nd where my mother in law lived. I watched to towers come down at her apartment and then went out to have my company meeting. My wife called me on my cell and asked me if I was crazy, and to get back to her mother's apartment immediately and look for a way home. My VP's train never made it to New York, it turned around just outside the city. I walked the 40 blocks to get my car and it was errie. no cars, no traffic, no people. I got my car and drove my mother in law north on the west side highway where there was a caravan of cars leaving the city. No one was driving south. Later the folks at Buzzmetrics said they were on their balcony, thinking about what they were going to say in my interview when they saw people jumping out the windows of the World Trade Center. They immediately left. Other folks I know were covered with dust and debris. The next day I was asked to perform at a memorial event in my town's park on the river. You could see the smoke from Manhattan from the park and I sang This Land is Your Land to 3,000 people who all joined in. The next week I went down again. I was given tickets to attend the David Letterman show but ended up going down to ground zero instead. You couldn't get close but you could get close enough. It looked like the surface of mars, it felt like a strange sci-fi movie set. In my town, we lost many many people. Fireman and Wall street types are both in my town, so there were daily funerals. One firefighter I know who was part of the clean up went to 60 funerals in 30 days. For New Yorkers, 9/11 will always have a special meaning, obviously, but in a way that I don't think you really can understand unless you were there. |
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Vlad_77 Inner circle The Netherlands 5829 Posts
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Not to diminish your story Slide, because yes you are right, but it's also true for those of us from Western Pennsylvania and the people in Washington DC. So, on 11 September, I hope that what divides America will for that day be put aside and remember that ALL of the America suffered.
Best, Vlad |
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Al Angello Eternal Order Collegeville, Pa. USA 11045 Posts
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Slide
What borough do you live in? Crossing the GW you must be from Jersey?
Al Angello The Comic Juggler/Magician
http://www.juggleral.com http://home.comcast.net/~juggleral/ "Footprints on your ceiling are almost gone" |
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mastermindreader 1949 - 2017 Seattle, WA 12586 Posts
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Quote:
On 2013-09-10 14:58, Al Angello wrote: I wondered the same thing. The GW bridge crosses from Ft.Lee, N.J. That's the same route I always took from Jersey when I went to Yankee games. |
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Slide Special user 533 Posts
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Rockland county in New York.
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Cliffg37 Inner circle Long Beach, CA 2491 Posts
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Well, I live in California, and lived in California the day the towers came down. I moved here in 1987. I was raised in New York City about a mile and a half from where the towers were. I watched them being built, and I later worked in tower two briefly as a messenger.
9/11 hit me hard. A Friend was seriously injured in a secondary collapse. I will probably not have a good day tomorrow. I never do on that date. I don't thin shooting Osama Bin Laden solved the problem, but it was on heck of good start.
Magic is like Science,
Both are fun if you do it right! |
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Slide Special user 533 Posts
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"I don't thin shooting Osama Bin Laden solved the problem, but it was on heck of good start."
+1 Cliff. |
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Al Angello Eternal Order Collegeville, Pa. USA 11045 Posts
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I remember riding the elevator to the top of one of the towers, and looking down at the flow of small plane, and helicopter traffic up and down the river.
Al Angello The Comic Juggler/Magician
http://www.juggleral.com http://home.comcast.net/~juggleral/ "Footprints on your ceiling are almost gone" |
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General_Magician Special user United States 707 Posts
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Quote:
On 2013-09-10 14:40, Slide wrote: Thanks for sharing Slide. 9/11 was an attack on America and every American. It will be a day everybody remembers who was alive on the day those attacks happenned. My best wishes and hope you are doing well. If you ever need to talk, you can always just drop me a PM. Take care my friend.
"Never fear shadows. They simply mean there is a light shining somewhere nearby." -unknown
Company Website Facebook Business Page Twitter Business Page |
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arthur stead Inner circle When I played soccer, I hit 1777 Posts
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At the time, my wife Leslie and I were living in an apartment in Brooklyn Heights, near the base of the Brooklyn Bridge (with a great view of the Towers and the Statue of Liberty). While having breakfast, we were watching the news on TV when the first plane hit. Katie Couric and her team were speculating that it was a small plane accident, but I immediately thought it was a terrorist attack.
I had to leave for a recording studio in Manhattan, to record an original jingle for Johnson & Johnson. (I had won the account to write the music, after weeks of competing and beating out 30 other composers). Musicians and singers had been booked, and the advertising agency clients were on their way into NYC from Connecticut. Just before I left home, we saw on TV as the second plane hit, and then our TV died. We also lost phone service. Leslie stayed home (she was due at work in the City a little later) while I took the subway into Manhattan. She was listening on our shortwave radio as the first Tower fell. By her estimation, I would have been right underneath the Towers at that exact time. So she didn't know if I was alive or dead. When I got to my subway stop on 23rd Street, the streets, and the whole sky, was filled with debris. The guys in the recording studio filled me in about the Tower collapsing. Couldn't call Leslie because no one had any phone service. Our clients obviously couldn't attend, because all the bridges and tunnels into NYC had been closed. In the studio (since there was no TV service), we all huddled around a shortwave radio, and listened to the reports as the second Tower collapsed, plus the attack on the Pentagon. At some point, someone suggested that we'd better get some cash, because the banks might close. Sure enough, when I left the building and walked to the nearest cash machine, there was a long line of people waiting. We all saw a procession of at least 15 ambulances make their way down East 23rd Street, and then turning right in the direction of the Trade Towers. A while later, they all came back ... empty, as we later found out. Leslie and I lost contact for 14 hours. Finally, that night, I heard an announcement on the radio that they were opening one of the subway lines. I dashed down the stairs and ran at top speed to that subway stop. Managed to jump on to the last train, and squeeze my way in-between a wall of people, just as the doors were closing. The moment I got off at my stop in Brooklyn, the subway service was halted again. When I got home I saw that our entire apartment was filled with soot. The next day, we took our little dog Zorro right to Ground Zero. (They had not yet closed it off with barricades). It was still not very clear what had happened ... it could have been a nuclear bomb, who knew? On the way, we walked past about 10 blocks of stores and businesses. Even though the doors and windows were sealed and locked, every shop was filled with a layer of grey dust, several inches thick. There was no color ... just grey dust. It looked like a ghost town! At Ground Zero, we silently witnessed the utter devastation from several different angles. And indeed, we could see that fire burning for the next 8 months from our Brooklyn apartment. In fact, we also involuntarily inhaled the smoke for those 8 months, and to this day we can feel the effects in our lungs. 9/11 destroyed our lives because the jingle music business died a horrible death. Advertisers started filming overseas to cut costs, and music production houses started using stock music instead of hiring original music composers. We did our best, but just couldn't survive due to lack of work. And to our everlasting regret, we ended up leaving NYC the following year. Leslie and I had some real traumatic experiences in the aftermath of 9/11. Many tragedies, but also some miracles. If anybody is interested, I'll share some of those stories. Arthur Stead http://www.arthurstead.com |
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General_Magician Special user United States 707 Posts
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Now that these wars are winding down and Bin Laden is dead, you look back on those times like September 11, 2001 and it's "my God, those were some dark and terrible times." Of course we knew it was terrible at the time, but we had no idea after the 9/11 attacks that two wars (at least not the Iraq War) would be launched and now we are still in Afghanistan (but the war is winding down). I would have never dreamed that we would have been in Afghanistan for this long or that Afghanistan would become America's longest war ever.
Nobody would have ever thought. And you look back on those days such as 9/11 and the 3,000 people who died on that day; Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the 6,000 plus and still counting who have died as well as the wounded; the financial meltdown; tough economic times and you think to yourself "those were some dark times" and you don't realize just how dark those times were until you start coming out of those times and then reflect back on them. Many of us are survivors of those dark times. I think the dark times also bought many people together too though that did not happen before those times. I think many people began to understand what was really important in life and treasured life itself more and the small simple things that we used to take for granted. Those tough times taught me the importance of comradarie, family, friends, love, appreciating the simple things like my pet dog and home. You learn the importance of following your dreams because life offers no guarantee of tomorrow and you can't take the money you make with you to the grave. You learn the importance of a life that is worth living and that dreams and following those dreams are more important than being stuck in a job that pays well.
"Never fear shadows. They simply mean there is a light shining somewhere nearby." -unknown
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Andrew Zuber Inner circle Los Angeles, CA 3017 Posts
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I was in school at Montana State University when this all went down. I found out about it in a theater history class in a large lecture hall. I remember a girl from the back of the hall telling us that the second tower had fallen.
Then, as though it were planned, the professor managed to weave the events into our discussion of Hamlet, and he made the two relate to each other. It has been a long time since I read Hamlet but I remember being rather impressed with his ability to do that in a way that made it seem as though the two topics fit. After class I went home and watched Dan Rather for about seven hours on the little 13-inch TV in my bedroom. All I wanted to do was get on a plane to New York to help out. It was an overwhelming feeling that didn't pass for days. I also had close friends in New York, both Brooklyn and at Columbia, so it was a long wait to hear from them. Obviously this was before the days of social networking and cell phones, while in use, weren't nearly as "must have" as they are today, so it took a few days before I heard from friends. My good friend Katie, who was at Columbia at the time, ended up dating a firefighter that was the probie at the center of a documentary being filmed at a firehouse in New York. Cameras just happened to be rolling that day, and it's an incredibly power film by the two French filmmakers. Tony Benetatos, the firefighter, was the last to make it back to the house that night, and everyone in the house made it back alive. It's a moving film and it was an honor to spend some time with Tony a few years later.
"I'm sorry - if you were right, I would agree with you." -Robin Williams, Awakenings
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mastermindreader 1949 - 2017 Seattle, WA 12586 Posts
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Quote:
On 2013-09-10 15:36, Slide wrote: Got it. I was under the impression that you'd lived in Manhattan, hence the confusion. |
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Al Angello Eternal Order Collegeville, Pa. USA 11045 Posts
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Bob
I thought from talking to Slide that he lived in Brooklyn where all the musicians live.
Al Angello The Comic Juggler/Magician
http://www.juggleral.com http://home.comcast.net/~juggleral/ "Footprints on your ceiling are almost gone" |
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mastermindreader 1949 - 2017 Seattle, WA 12586 Posts
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For those who don't know what we're talking about, Rockland County is just north of New Jersey but on the same side of the Hudson River. To get to Manhattan, the quickest way is to go south into Fort Lee, NJ and then take the GW bride to cross over into NYC.
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Bill Hallahan Inner circle New Hampshire 3226 Posts
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Because there were so many flights that crashed that day, and each flights had people who live near either the departure or the arrival city, people all over the country were affected.
A coworker at a company in Nashua, NH, where I live, died on one of the flights. I didn't know him very well, but I had met him. The pilot on one of the planes out of Boston that crashed was also from Nashua, NH. He left a wife and three daughters. Another former coworker from the same company had left earlier to go a new job in New York City. One of his friends worked on the 90th floor of the World Trade Center. She's alive only because she was late for work that day. There are thousands of stories like this, about deaths and close-calls. My heart goes out to all the people who still feel pain remembering the loved ones they lost that day.
Humans make life so interesting. Do you know that in a universe so full of wonders, they have managed to create boredom. Quite astonishing.
- The character of ‘Death’ in the movie "Hogswatch" |
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Slide Special user 533 Posts
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I lived in washington heights and Inwood for many years until my oldest was getting ready to go to kindergarten, and we moved to rockland. Went I went through my divorce over the last few years, I lived in Soho and then the East Village. Back in Rockland now and love every second of it.
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Bob1Dog Inner circle Wife: It's me or this houseful of 1159 Posts
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I won't bore folks with my story. I had responsibility for the facilities management of our corporate offices at 200 Liberty Street, accross the street from the towers in the World Financial Center. All seven of the floors we occupied at 200 Liberty were blown out when the towers collapsed. Fortunately we didn't lose a single life because we evacuated immediately after the first plane hit. Keeping it simple like I promised, it was a day like 11/22/63 when one remembers practically each minute and hour and day of the event and aftermath. And I will forever hold anger in my heart for the enemies of my country who did this to my beloved New York and my country.
Yeah, I remember 9/11 every day, not just once a year.
What if the Hokey Pokey really IS what it's all about?
My neighbor rang my doorbell at 2:30 a.m. this morning, can you believe that, 2:30 a.m.!? Lucky for him I was still up playing my drums. |
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Bob1Dog Inner circle Wife: It's me or this houseful of 1159 Posts
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Quote:
On 2013-09-10 18:03, Andrew Zuber wrote: Off topic Andrew but my wife of 41 years graduated from MSU in 1971 with a BSN. I love Montana. If it wasn't so cold in the winter we would have retired there. But she being born and raised there was happier to retire in the milder mid-atlantic states. I'da' put up with the cold winters just to be able to fly fish the blue ribbon trout rivers in Montana during the seasons. But alas, we cherish our our wives. At least I do anyway.
What if the Hokey Pokey really IS what it's all about?
My neighbor rang my doorbell at 2:30 a.m. this morning, can you believe that, 2:30 a.m.!? Lucky for him I was still up playing my drums. |
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Andrew Zuber Inner circle Los Angeles, CA 3017 Posts
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Bozeman is a beautiful city, and though it's grown substantially you can still buy a house there for a minor fraction of what it would cost in many other places. I've considered moving back someday but I'd need a place somewhere else to escape the cold.
"I'm sorry - if you were right, I would agree with you." -Robin Williams, Awakenings
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Posted: Sep 10, 2013 06:40 pm 
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