Don't Ever Forget - 9/11 Tribute - 15th Anniversary

nynj, and if I missed anybody else, sorry for your losses man. I don't know anyone personally who was there, fortunately, but will always clearly remember that day.

I was in school too, one state over, and I was actually late on a paper so I was up early scrambling in the library. Came down to the entrance area and all these people were huddled around tv's...some of them crying. I was like wtf, what famous person died. But then I looked at the tv and realized wtf was going on.

I also remember being a young lil' feller, maybe about 5-6ish, and saw this movie about a terrorist hijacking of a cruise ship in the late 70's...not a doco, but historically accurate...and in said movie I remember the jihadis pushing a Jewish guy in a wheelchair off the ship, I was rather shocked. But I remember after that having a distinct feeling that this is something that would be haunting us for a while.

 

The Achille Lauro. They just wanted to kill Jews.

And how many of us remember the Munich Massacre at the 1972 Olympics?

How has the media and mankind forgotten these tragedies so quickly?

We seem to be in some kind of limpwristed phase where we've convinced ourselves that if we make them feel good about themselves they might just eventually turn themselves around and peacefully join the rest of the civilized world.

Willfully ignoring thousands of years of history is not conducive to success.

 

#mis13 the sandman of sexual aggression.

 

this avatar loves you and you love it.

 

Bwahahahaa!

 

NYNJ, I'm sorry to hear about that man. We were lucky and only lost one family friend. My buddy's Dad narrowly escaped with his life that day.

I was skating right there just the week before. Couldn't believe those monoliths were reduced to rubble by the wishes of a few maniacs. Luckily I was safe in suburbia.

Barry, you should feel ashamed for dragging politics into it. Especially seeing as how Clinton, as NY Senator, actually has done a ton of great work for first responders. But you wouldn't know sh*t about that.

Everyone who bas been in the towers, or seen them back in the day- please keep that NY with you. The city was a different place then- for the better, I think. And please keep in mind that then, and now, we live with Muslims as our neighbors; all as New Yorkers, all as Americans.

 

You are a class act Slash

 

I'm very sorry to everyone who lost someone that day.

Was living and working up in Bergen County at the time. Just literally a few miles away. Could hear the first plane hit the tower, but was unaware of what it was at that moment. Sounded like an explosion far and away. Said to my partner I worked with "Did you hear that?" And he did. We were outside the bagel store we went to every morning before we would drive off for to whatever job site we would be working at that day. I think we had actually just pulled up when the first plane hit. Then we went inside and someone was talking about it in the bagel store a few minutes later. We couldn't believe that's what the sound we heard was. We heard the second one hit as we were hanging out outside eating our breakfast. I think after I heard the second one hit, I turned on 1010 wins in the truck on the radio.

As we started driving, we were able to see the smoke rise into the air. We took the turnpike to get to our job that morning, which was in North Bergen. We were able to see the smoke coming from the top of each tower. I believe we got to our job site before either tower had collapsed. But the guys there were following the news on the TV and we were watching it too. Scary day for sure. I'll never forget it.

 

I remember where I was that morning when I first heard it on the car radio.
Then seeing the Trade Center buildings hit and collapse on TV was like watching a fictional movie such as Die Hard or the old Towering Inferno. People jumping out of the buildings rather than be burned alive. That stuff doesn't really happen, right? Not here. Not to us. But it did.
Then the Pentagon getting hit and UA Flight 93 over PA where the passengers fought the highjackers. I still get a bit choked up thinking about that.
And weeks, months later, all the cars covered in dust remaining in NYC parking garages - their owners all dead.
I remember how watching the NYC firemen raise the American flag on an angled makeshift pole from the rubble reminded me of the famous photo of the Marines raising the flag over Mt Sirabachi on Iwo Jima in 1945.

 

Wow. Just wow.

Did you really just try to draw a comparison between millions of racist xenophobic fundamental idealogues who have been responsible for tens of thousands of deaths worldwide because of religious fanaticism, to some clinically insane disgruntled white loner (or "lone wolf", to use the most current vernacular) who killed a handful of people in a centrally-located area of operations?

I'd say "apples to oranges", but your analogy isn't even in the ballpark. In fact, you haven't even left your mom's basement.

 

What Saurus said. And Keed as well.

hannnabonannnna likes to read its own drivel, it finds self-justification there for all its spoutings.

 

hanna is trying to be the colin kapernick of SI

 

Why don't you just go and burn a flag? Its also coveted under "free speech", and seems to be your strongest ambition.

 

Seriously... free speech is great and we all have it. But you and also be a classless douche bag exercising free speech.
One thing EVERYONE can agree on is the 9/11 was horrible. How about keeping you political views and agenda to yourself here. There's plenty of threads (which I also take part in) to talk that kind of sh!t.
If you can't do that and need to pop off with your right/left rhetoric , the you are a classless POS.

 

Just curious, How many of us went to a 9-11 ceremony ?
I'd bet more people went to a 7-11.
btw I did not go to either, I surfed.

 

I surfed today. But it was more like just paddling around. We were surfing on 9/11/2001 and we have paddled out every 9/11 since. Most of those days have been ride-able. It's our way of remembering.

 

I've posted this before. I'll keep this short.

That Tuesday morning was gorgeous here in Arlington. Blue skies, sunny, low humidity. In my Operations Center of my company we get word that a plane hit the WTC. Figured it was some idiot in a Cessna lost his way. Break out an old tv. See the next plane hit. Shock for all.

Drive home (4 blocks), tell then-wife turn on tv. As images of the disaster appear on tv, she falls to ground in shock & grief. We had many friends in NYC. Several in the Towers. I used to work in the Comex in the WTC, back in my previous life as a commodities trader.

I split, gotta get back to company. Back at Ops, start hearing that a truck bomb took out the State Dept in Foggy Bottom. People in DC fleeing through the streets. All my Techs are out there in this chaos, including two guys heading for DIA at the Pentagon.

We lose everything. Power, phones, Internet. Never experienced that. Always the phone lines stayed on no matter what the disaster or the weather. Power comes back up. We hear that AA77 hit the Pentagon. Western wedge. Employees are grim-faced. Western wedge is where DIA is. No one leaves their stations. We can't raise the guys on radios or pagers.

Other Techs start making their way back to base. We finally hear from the guys at the Pentagon. They're heading back. They were on 110 when the plane hit the building. They were a few hundred yards away from the explosion. Both make it back, ashen-faced. Families start showing up looking for their guys. I send everyone home.

Night time arrived. Who could sleep. Fighters, low, overhead, AWACs constantly circling, so many military choppers, the ambulances wailing up & down George Mason Drive towards Arlington Hospital. Finally, 330am, took the then-wife & we drove over to the Pentagon. Parked, walked up to 395 near Pentagon City. Along with hundreds of locals silently standing there watching it burn. Watching the heroic fire department personnel in action.

Told everyone to stay home on Wednesday. Me & my brother in office. I get a phone call. Bobby from DIA. Bobby is from Georgia. Longtime DIA guy. Bobby is weeping. Says they are finding our high security keys but they can't find the owners of said keys. Would we come to help them figure out whose keys they are looking at. Of course. My brother goes, I stay to deal with other stuff going on.

He's down there most of the day. When he walks back into the Ops in the late afternoon, he's very quiet. I say, what happened, how was it. He just looks at me & says, that smell. Jet fuel...and bodies...I can't get that smell off me....and goes quiet again.

It was a horrific period of time here in northern VA.

I will add this: the crash site was not only a terrorist act, it was an air disaster, so NTSB was involved. NTSB took the pieces of AA77 & basically laid them out in the North Lot of the Pentagon. There was enough debris, undercarriages, stuff, from that plane that you could see the outline of it in the North Lot. And every day for months, thousands of locals would drive by there on 110 & see this incredible reminder of a truly heinous crime.

The conspiracy morons who claim it was a cruise missile are just absolute asshats. I know several people who watched from the old Navy Annex as that jet came over 395, clipping light poles, until it smashed into the Pentagon.

It's a sobering day around these parts.