9/11 - Never forgetting the tradgedy that day

[Sloe Gin]

9 years ago we suffered the worst terrorist attack in our country's short history. Nearly 3,000 people lost their lives in the WTC collapse, the Pentagon, and on United Flight 93.

Today, 9/11 is being used as a cheap political excuse, whether it be Muslims protesting in New York City over the mosque debate or a radical pastor in Gainesville who wants to torch a pile of Qurans. Regardless of what is happening on this day in the outside world, it's important to remember that this day was a day to remember, for both the horrible things that happened, but the good that came out of it too. We were one country on 9/11. The President's approval rating soared. American flags flew with pride and people hugged one another. As Americans, our way of life was attacked, but we bounced back and made sure our lives were not going to change because of these terrorist cowards.

Traditionally, everyone mentions where they were on 9/11 and what was going through their minds. I always read back in the 9/11 thread that was started on that day, because for me, it shows that college hockey fans from across the country can be united and turn to each other in times of need. It's haunting to read what was being discussed that day, all the rumors and how little we actually knew about this event.

http://board.uscho.com/showthread.php?t=1617

As for me...on that day, I was a freshman at North Dakota, scheduled to do a flight later that day. I woke up to our dorm phone ringing. It went to voicemail, and it was my mom, telling me to turn on the TV, that she was in NYC at JFK airport and she saw the World Trade Center collapsing.. I groggily got out of bed and was greeted to the 2nd tower collapsing. I woke my roommate up and we both just sat there. My mom called back and she told me she was she was ok, that she would be fine.

I was communicating with my cousin on AIM that day, who worked in the Sears Tower in Chicago, when suddenly he said the building was being evacuated and I didn't hear from him again until that night.

I know classes were canceled at UND that day, and in the afternoon, I attended a forum for all the aviation students, where one of the department bigwigs reassured us that we were in a good place. I'm pretty sure MNS attended the same thing.

It's a day that will forever haunt us; our generations Pearl Harbor. Many people have pushed 9/11 to the back of their minds; like it never happened or it was just a bad day. It changed history. It changed us. Please do not forget.

 

[huskyfan]

Re: 9/11 - Never forgetting the tradgedy that day

Never Forget!

 

[Priceless]

Re: 9/11 - Never forgetting the tradgedy that day

The college hockey world suffered its own loss on 9/11/01.

Boston University's Mark Bavis was on United Flight 175 when it was flown into the World Trade Center. He was working as a scout for the LA Kings after a career at BU as a player; Brown and Harvard as a coach.

His family is the only holdout from a settlement from the 9/11 fund. You can read more about it here.

Edit: There's a horse named for him, and fellow scout Ace Bailey, which will run today at Belmont. Aces Mark faces 6-1 odds in the 8th race today. Post time is 4:43 ET.

 

[Jeff_Jackson_for_Pres.]

Re: 9/11 - Never forgetting the tradgedy that day

I don't think I ever posted this post-9/11 account. Mr. JJfP and I take big vacations with a theme around the country (history, kitsch, nature, sports...). In June of 2002, we went east, walked the Freedom Trail, visited Plimouth Plantation, etc. We also took our first jaunt to NYC. I wanted to see the Statue of Liberty and everything, but I mostly wanted to go to Ground Zero. The only images I had in my head were of the footage after 9/11. Debris, smashed cars, demolished buildings. When we went to the tip of Manhattan, I was amazed at how clean it was. No real indication of what the streets looked like a mere 9 months before.

We didn't know where to walk to get to Ground Zero, but simply headed in the direction that lots of people were headed. Silently. And there it was. The cross of steel girders. The massive hollow area. The flags. The mementos. The people. If I hadn't known what had happened 9 months prior, I would've thought, "Huh, I wonder what skyscraper they're building here? Who will work there?" I leaned against the fence to take pictures and was surprised to find myself crying while I looked through the lens. And the silence. In the middle of NYC. We stayed for about 15 minutes and walked on.

We've since become kinda friends with a pub band from the Bronx I discovered because I love Irish music made up of 2 firefighters, a cop, a teacher and a carpenter. When we go to NYC, we go with the intention of seeing them at one of the ultra-packed pubs in Manhattan, Bay Ridge, Yonkers, wherever. They mostly write their own songs, one of which is a mainstay at their shows, "Christmas in NY." I'm not the only one in the crowd who cries at the lyrics as people sway arm in arm while singing along. The people who pack the pubs, with the exception of Mr. JJfP and me, are their friends and coworkers. We never have to pay for drinks.

Because we'd never been to NYC before 9/11, we don't know what New Yorkers were like on September 10th. But after 9/11, our experiences have always been moving, magical, memorable.

 

[hockeyplayer1015]

Re: 9/11 - Never forgetting the tradgedy that day

The college hockey world suffered its own loss on 9/11/01.

Boston University's Mark Bavis was on United Flight 175 when it was flown into the World Trade Center. He was working as a scout for the LA Kings after a career at BU as a player; Brown and Harvard as a coach.

SLU also lost 2 hockey alums who were working in the towers... Rich Stewart and Mike Pelletier.

As for me, I was in my 7th grade hallway going from one class to another when word started spreading through the hallways via student and teacher. The rest of the day was more or less spent discussing the impact this would have on the rest of our lives and watching the news coverage.

 

[gounhwildcats]

Re: 9/11 - Never forgetting the tradgedy that day

I was a typical moronic Canadian prior to the events of September 11, 2001. That was a turning point for me though. Prior to that day I thought like most Canadians did that Americans were all arrogant, power hungry jerks that were constantly trying to impose their will on everyone. As I sat at work watching the Twin Towers burn and eventually crumble to the earth all that changed. I actually got really angry at the people that had done that. I truly realized how much the United States meant to this world and the symbol of freedom that they represent. For the first time I saw the incredible sacrifice that many Americans make so that others throughout this world can have what you have, freedom. Thousands of people risk their lives every year trying to reach the shores of America just to try and enjoy the liberties that you enjoy everyday. I realized in those hours what those attacks meant. They were an attempt to destroy what we in North America have. My love of the United States and it's amazing, self sacrificing, freedom loving people began that day. I try to pray regularly for your nation, for your government and armed forces personnel. May God bless you today and always. I also want to thank you for what you mean to this world, even if this world is mostly ungrateful for the sacrifice that you make.

 

[Old Pio]

Re: 9/11 - Never forgetting the tradgedy that day

I was anchoring the morning news in Richmond when the first plane hit. Immediately there was all sorts of seculation that it was like the 1945 incident when a B-25 hit the Empire State building. That didn't seem likely to me, given the advances in navigation and radar and the fact that it was broad daylight. But a local station has to rely on its network in these situations, so that was the initial narrative, until the second plane hit. We were fortunate that by coincidence we had a reporter in NYC on vacation, and we were soon getting "livers" from her, which greatly enhanced our coverage.

As the day unfolded, the scope of the attacks became clear, as did the fact that we had dodged a bullet, given that their plans were to hit the White House and Capitol Hill. Despite the horror and tragedy and senseless death, it could have been worse.

Like most Americans the attacks opened my eyes to the blind hatred of us and our way of life by people who can't manufacture a bathtub stopper. And my reaction was (and still is) anger. I wanted them all dead, and still do. How do you "reason" with mindless savages who fervently believe in their perverted ideology? You don't. You kill them and keep on killing them 'til there aren't any of them left or until they get the message.

On this anniversary I think of the loss. I think of those poor wretches we saw falling from the towers. I think of the heroic first responders, firefighters and police officers, who lost their lives. I think of the passengers on flight 93, "let's roll." I think of Americans rallying to the cause of ridding the world of these malignant terrorists. Sadly, I also remember that within days, some Americans (Susan Sontag & Ward Churchill among them) began to blame US for the attacks. To me, that made a horrible outrage that much worse.

We have learned to live with the possibility that they might strike us again. God knows they've tried. And in the case of one traitorous dog at Fort Hood, succeeded all too well. And we have come to realize that if they can strike us with weapons of mass destruction, they will. So we live, not in fear, but with the knowledge that what happened nine years ago today could happen again--and could be much worse. And one hopes we never lose our resolve to do everything in our power to make sure it doesn't.

 

[Puck Swami]

Re: 9/11 - Never forgetting the tradgedy that day

I was working that gorgeous September Tuesday in Midtown Manhattan, about 4 uptown miles from the WTC. The workday that morning devolved quickly, as my co-workers and hunted for news, which was not easy, as communications went haywire that day in Manhattan, as landline, TV and cell phones stopped working due to line overloads and the lost transmission facilities on top of the WTC. The weirdest thing for me is that most US major news web sites were overloaded as well, so I logged into a BBC web site live feed to see the second tower fall. So weird to be watching an UK web site to see what was happening in my own city - makes you realize how globalized we really are. When the second tower has been hit, everyone knew it was war, and not only that, but a war happening in our own city. It felt like a sledgehammer hitting me in the stomach. At work by mid-day, they then told us to go home, be safe and not come back to work for two days.

I walked the 20 blocks home to my Manhattan apartment, with a large cloud of grey smoke visible over lower manhattan. The streets of NY had come to a standstill to allow emergency vehicles and army troops into the city, and most people just started walking home to be with loved ones. There were hundreds of thousands of people in the streets walking, most quietly, home, with only the sounds of sirens, fighter jets and helicopters overhead.

I got home to find my wife packing our little apt. with emergency supplies from the grocery store nearby, as we didn't know what would happen next.
We wanted to help, but they would not let volunteers down there, and they wouldn't let us give blood either, they were so overwhelmed. So we wrote a big check to the relief fund, and like everyone else, we watched on TV (once it was restored), but unlike everyone else, we couldn't just go for a walk and escape it. A few blocks away, the NY armory was established as a clearing house for families looking for loved ones -thousands of fliers were pasted onto all the neighborhood buildings - "Have you seen my Dad/Wife/Sister," etc. TV trucks were everywhere, and the 24 drone of their equipment also reminded us that we were living in middle of of a war zone. We lived not far from the tunnel in to Manahattan, and the constant proccession of army vehicles was really unsettling, to say the least. Most unsettling was the thin film of dust on our windows, 15 stories above the street. We knew there was more than just ash on our windows, and since most NY high rise windows don't open, we had a horrible real reminder of the loss of life for a few weeks until the window washers came.

The firehouse next to my work lost 26 of 31 men that day, among the 3,000 people who lost their lives. Heartbreaking.

That day had huge ramifications for our family. Like a lot of people in New York, Sept 11 forced a deep conversations about what we wanted out of life and where we wanted to live...

Within 16 months, we had moved to Denver...

 

[huskyfan]

Re: 9/11 - Never forgetting the tradgedy that day

so eloquent!! I can't even begin to match any of this. I was in the Copper Country in the car traveling listening to NPR. they interrupted for the first plane hit. then the second plane. I called my husband who was at the TV station. he was raging mad. I was so frustrated that none (NONE!!) (can you believe it??) of our local radio stations went to news. even the public station kept with music. God Bless our Canadian friends in Thunder Bay who were feeding the ABC TV news audio. they (erronously) reported the White House had been hit. I pulled to the side of the road and broke down. calls to family. I couldn't get the towers collapsing. on the phone with my daughter. they fell down? what? fell over? the top of them tipped over? I couldn't get it they FELL down. she finally said "pancaked". god awful. I didn't get home until late that afternoon - that was the first time I saw video. We watched the History Channel special on Thursday night and it amazed me how much of the footage I had never seen. God Bless America! and those brave ones who defend her!

 

[thebrain]

Re: 9/11 - Never forgetting the tradgedy that day

http://www.radiotapes.com/specialpostings.html

If you scroll down, almost to the bottom, you'll find radio airchecks of Twin Cities' radio stations. Some are just the ABC and CBS radio national feeds. Check out the KQRS morning show, they're broadcast while watching everything. http://www.radiotapes.com/user/KQRS 9-11-01 audio.mp3

I was up in Bemidji at the time, living in Tamarack Hall. I had a 10 AM Advanced Video Production class. I didn't find out until I went to class as I never turned the TV on. Some guy in the bathroom while I was getting ready said something about it, I thought, "What the heck is this guy talking about?" Then I spent the rest of the day glued to the TV, watching the local news from the Twin Cities, Fargo-Grand Forks(watching what was going on at the Grand Forks Air Force base), and the CBC.

 

[Priceless]

Re: 9/11 - Never forgetting the tradgedy that day

I volunteered at the Red Cross in Portland. I had intended to give blood, but the line to give was overwhelming so I offered to answer the phones. They had set up a room with about 20 phones to handle all the calls they were getting. People calling to donate money, clothes, food etc. The worst was when we'd get calls from people who had relatives in NYC and were hoping we'd heard something. Of course we hadn't; people just wanted to hear someone tell them it was going to be OK. The hardest part was the fact that they had brought in about eight TV sets so we'd have all the latest info to give callers. By the time I left that night I had seen the planes hit and the towers fall well over 100 times. That was a huge mistake. I had nightmares for weeks.

A year later I was working as a sales rep for Genuity, making "warm" calls to corporate bigwigs. I called one number and didn't get an answer. I checked the company...eSpeed. I knew the name but didn't know why. I did a search and realized the number I was calling was on the 105th floor of WTC#1 and the person I was supposed to be calling was dead. eSpeed was a subsidiary of Cantor-Fitzgerald, the British trading firm that took such heavy losses that day.

 

[nmupiccdiva]

Re: 9/11 - Never forgetting the tradgedy that day

I was between my American Lit class and my Physics class. I accused my friend who told me of making things up, but I got to Physics and saw it was true. We spent the whole hour watching coverage.

And, say what you will about Twitter, but I love that the #SuckItAlQaeda hashtag is being tweeted constantly, with the things that people are continuing to do in spite of what those extremists wanted to accomplish that day.

 

[collegehcky2]

Re: 9/11 - Never forgetting the tradgedy that day

I was going from Social Studies to Gym Class when someone said something about it, but no one really knew what was going on. The principle of the school went around to every teacher and told them not to let the kids know what was going on/watch the news. This caused a lot of problems and eventually most teachers let kids watch during lunch and most of the afternoon. I still really didn't know what was going on until my dad picked me up in his company car while I was walking home from school which he never did. He just told me to remember how good I have it in my town and to be thankful that there are people out there that drop everything and help others while risking their own life.

The next three days when I wasn't in school I was watching CNN. I don't think there was more than a 5 minute span when I wasn't watching the news.

 

[SteveP]

Re: 9/11 - Never forgetting the tradgedy that day

I was anchoring the morning news in Richmond when the first plane hit.

I had wrapped up my sports reports for the Radio PA Network when my colleague alerted me to what was going on in NYC. We spent the next couple of hours trying to get my sports stringers in New York for any updates.

When Flight 93 went down in Shanksville, I was sent to the area and spent the next two days reporting from where the war on terror began.

Like most Americans the attacks opened my eyes to the blind hatred of us and our way of life by people who can't manufacture a bathtub stopper. And my reaction was (and still is) anger. I wanted them all dead, and still do.

It's politically incorrect, but I'm 100% in agreement. As the Marines say -- "Shoot 'em all and let God sort out the mess."

On this anniversary I think of the loss. I think of those poor wretches we saw falling from the towers. I think of the heroic first responders, firefighters and police officers, who lost their lives.

As a former cop from a family of cops, I have a pretty good idea of what those first responders were thinking as they trudged up the stairs. While trying to focus on saving lives, they no doubt were thinking about loved ones they may (and in fact did) never see again.

That day had huge ramifications for our family. Like a lot of people in New York, Sept 11 forced a deep conversations about what we wanted out of life and where we wanted to live...

Within 16 months, we had moved to Denver...

While not on the scale of your decision post-9/11, smaller issues in our lives were why my wife and I decided to leave Toronto and head back to her home state of Colorado.

I was a typical moronic Canadian prior to the events of September 11, 2001. That was a turning point for me though.

How typically self-effacing of we Canadians, but you're absolutely right 'Cat. Having lived in the US since 1994, and having traveled to all parts of the country since the early 70s, I realize that both countries enjoy unparalleled freedoms that are under attack by these Islamist ba$tard$.

I'll never forget weeping with pride when I saw the reports of thousands of Canadian families opening their homes and facilities to the air travelers that were diverted north of the border that day and the days that followed.

 

[The Rube]

Re: 9/11 - Never forgetting the tradgedy that day

Dear Al-Qaeda:

We're still here, you *ers. So go eat a big sh*burger.

Brenthoven

 

[BadgerAlum@WMU]

Re: 9/11 - Never forgetting the tradgedy that day

I was at Western, a doctoral student, teaching American history for the first time. I had a schedule that allowed me to sleep 9-10 hours a night and have plenty of day for research/teaching prep. My husband was up, but I was not, and he didn't have the TV on. I got up just about 9am, and went out to the living room, and was looking over his shoulder at the computer when I saw a blurb about a plane hitting the WTC. I figured it was some wayward Cessna or something small like that, but we ended up turning on the television, figuring the morning news shows based in NY would be covering it. We got the Today show on just after the second plane hit and just as Jim Miklaszewski reported he felt the Pentagon shake and heard what sounded like a blast.

I spent the day watching the news, since every channel on our cable had it on, except TV Asia, which was near Ground Zero and went off the air. I watched coverage in French, German, Russian, Spanish, and English. I called my mother. A friend in Chicago's husband was in the air when it happened, going west. His plane landed in Omaha and he and three others rented a car to drive back to Chicago. She could not get through to his parents in Florida to tell them he was OK, so I made the call for her. Class was canceled. I think we ended up going out to get food because we wanted to get away from the coverage for a little while.

We were supposed to play Michigan at the Big House that weekend, but everything got canceled and moved a week. I will never forget the moment of silence before the game; it was the definition of a deafening silence, when you have 111,000+ people not making a sound in a bowl that, I believe, is partially in the ground, especially when it had been made a no-fly zone. Then the halftime show, which added God Bless America played by both The Sound of Western and the Michigan marching band, made me cry.

The incident made me think more seriously about my life, I will be honest, and what I was doing with it and how I was looking at others in the process. I now embrace love more, try to reach out more, and realize that certain things just aren't important in the grand scheme of life. I also became more aware of myself, more accepting of my true talents and gifts, and realized that what I was doing was just not right for who I was.

 

[Jimjamesak]

Re: 9/11 - Never forgetting the tradgedy that day

Well to be honest, I slept through the important events. Time zones are weird like that. I was a junior in high school and school started at 7:30am, so I usually didn't wake up until 6:30am. In Alaska the first plane hit at 4:46am, second at 5:03am, the north tower collapsed at 6:28am. Most of us here woke up to the news, never saw anything as it happened like most of you. I woke up at 6:30 like usual and after a shower and such turned on SportsCenter like usual and saw the blurb about the attacks in the corner of the screen and thought "My God, did we get nuked?" I changed the channel and saw we didn't get nuked but it wasn't much better. That day of school was just a waste, whole day spent watching TV, the teachers couldn't think of anything else to do.

My one vivid memory of that day is when I went out for lunch. I was walking in the parking lot of a local supermarket and I looked up. Now, for those who've never been to Anchorage, in Anchorage at any point in a day you can look up and see some kind of plane, a tiny Cessna, a 737, an F-15 (or nowadays an F-22), a C-5, a 747 cargo plane, whatever. I looked up that day and only saw two F-15's flying in close formation with tiny objects hanging off of their wings.

 

[IrishHockeyFan]

Re: 9/11 - Never forgetting the tradgedy that day

While the events unfolded I thought of everything that had led to that point, and wondered about how different the world would be from that day forward.

Then my daughter called me from school (she was not quite 15) and simply wanted to touch base with both me and her mother, just to feel something in the way of normalcy for just a second I suppose.

When she got home later on that afternoon, the first thing she wondered was "are we really at war now dad?" Then the inevitable "what if they make you go?" She was much younger the last time we had been separated by any military commitment of mine, and while she recognized and remembered her dad was away and her world was different, she really had no clear understanding then of just why. Now she would have and at that second most of my thoughts turned very selfish and I was quite thankful I was long passed any active service and no one was going to make me go anywhere this time.

We watched with horror the rest of that day and much of the next few as the scope of the tragedy became apparent, and just how horrific and evil the people who planned and carried out these attacks were. I tried to assure my daughter that these people, while claiming to act with the blessing of their God, were in reality bastardizing the Islamic faith, hiding behind their horribly wrong interpretation of the beliefs of a billion people, most of them only concerned with the same things we were, how to raise a family, put food on the table, enjoy their lives with friends and family. Just like how anyone claiming to act in the name of a Christian God while burning a cross on the lawn of a black family is full of sh!7, so too were these people who thought they were acting in the name of God, when all they were really doing was acting in the name of evil.

Shortly thereafter, I began to notice a change in my daughter. Where for quite some time I was the (often) frustrated parent of a (in my eyes) selfish teenage girl, she was beginning to shed those characteristics and began to look for ways to make things better around her. It started small. She did homework with little prompting. She stopped being sooooo materialistic. She took a liking to volunteering at one of the local public libraries (from time to time I doubted she knew what a book was). She even worked on a Habitat For Humanity house with the church group of a friend of hers.

When she was 17, she told her mother and I she wanted to join the military. We were a little surprised. And more than a little scared. Neither of us had come from families that were particularly steeped in military tradition. Many who served did so at a time when the draft was still a reality, and amongst her immediate relatives, I was the only one with any sort of a long time commitment, and she was only 7 when my active time was over. Of course one of her first arguments was “If it was OK for you, why isn’t it just as OK for me?” Now here I am, being selfish again. Most kids who pull that line out on mom or dad do so after getting caught smoking, or drinking, or wrecking the family car, or getting pregnant when they are 16. But I joined the Marines because I didn’t like going to college, I told her. And because I thought I was a lot tougher than I probably was. And by the time I had my first stripe sewn on my sleeves, they weren’t sending us 1000s of miles away to be shot at (that would come later). She was considering this at a time when people who joined the military were being sent to places where they were shooting at you.

She told us she wanted to serve. “Look at those first responders at the World Trade Center,” she said. “They knew -- they HAD to know -- that the chances of them saving a lot of people had to be next to zero. How could anyone have survived in those planes? In those offices? Yet 100s and 100s of firefighters and police officers and paramedics rushed up those stairs, and into that smoke, and into all that sadness, because maybe they could help someone.” She spoke so plainly. So definitively. "Maybe I can help someone."

9-11 made my daughter want to help someone. Her mom and I tried to tell her she could serve her community, her country, the world, here at home, if that’s what she chose to do. There are people in your neighborhood and in mine doing it everyday. It could be that firefighter. It could be that nurse. It could be that teacher in the worst inner-city school you know of who got through to that kid last week that education may be all you really need to give yourself a chance.

She understood all that, but wanted us to understand that she felt that everyone must give in their own way. This was to be her way. 9-11 made my daughter want to help, but it made me selfish. I didn’t want to share her, didn’t want her half a world away, didn’t want to spend weeks and months worrying every day about her well being, knowing I had no control whatsoever over whether or not harm would come her way.

Now sometimes I get angry when I see a picture of my daughter in uniform. Angry at how people can spread so much evil throughout the world, undoing all the good that so many try to do. Angry that after all these 100s of thousands of years, we still have not learned how to truly live in peace amongst ourselves. But there’s my little girl out there. And so many more sons and daughters just like her. Trying. 9-11 made my daughter want to help.

To all those out there, whether they be down the block, or an ocean away wearing the uniform of the United States of America, who are serving with selflessness, decency, and compassion, God bless you. May the memory of all those who suffered on September 11, 2001 make us all want to help. And then, perhaps out of that horror, the world may finally know something like peace.

God bless the United States Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and of course, Air Force, and all those who serve. Come home to us soon.

 

[XYZ]

Re: 9/11 - Never forgetting the tradgedy that day

As I don't think it's been mentioned here yet, the USCHO Hall of Shame does indeed have at least one worthy entry.

Chilling.

 

[SteveP]

Re: 9/11 - Never forgetting the tradgedy that day

Irish that's the most powerful post I've read in all my time at this forum. Thank you for raising a true hero.