Happy Birthday to you and your son.
Where were you? 15 years ago
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Neesy
#1 fan (Annie Wilkes cousin) 1st cousin Mom's side
Happy Birthday Brooks and son. (My oldest missed his daddy's birthday by one day.)
Happy Birthday Brooks and son. It was my Dads too. I had been figuring up how old he would be that day had he not died 3 years earlier and thinking how we hadn't gotten to ring in the next century together.
I was about to leave on my route going to body shops around north Ms. when I heard. We collected money to give to red cross and some were talking about giving blood. I couldn't because I was in England when they had the mad cow outbreak and they will never take mine again. I still left for my route but listened to my radio all day and all the speculation and bits of information and grew increasingly angry. I've never been so angry in all my life. I just kept thinking THE BASTARDS over and over.
The next day I went to a recruiting center to see about signing up. Somehow I got a good one who advised me to go home and see if what my pay would be would cover my bills and to talk it over with my family. He told me I was a bit old and had other obligations. Thinking on it later I was glad he did. I always feel a bit guilty that others took my place but I'm glad I was there for my daughters junior and high school years. Still I know I could have gone and didn't. I was a medic in my service years and I could have done some good. There will always be guilt.
It's sad that this event will be the one to mark so many as the grand occurrence of their lives. I grew up a science fiction nerd and for me it was one of joy, of the height of mans achievement, on July 20th 1969 man set foot on the moon. No matter what horror happens I will always have that as the hallmark moment of my life.
I was about to leave on my route going to body shops around north Ms. when I heard. We collected money to give to red cross and some were talking about giving blood. I couldn't because I was in England when they had the mad cow outbreak and they will never take mine again. I still left for my route but listened to my radio all day and all the speculation and bits of information and grew increasingly angry. I've never been so angry in all my life. I just kept thinking THE BASTARDS over and over.
The next day I went to a recruiting center to see about signing up. Somehow I got a good one who advised me to go home and see if what my pay would be would cover my bills and to talk it over with my family. He told me I was a bit old and had other obligations. Thinking on it later I was glad he did. I always feel a bit guilty that others took my place but I'm glad I was there for my daughters junior and high school years. Still I know I could have gone and didn't. I was a medic in my service years and I could have done some good. There will always be guilt.
It's sad that this event will be the one to mark so many as the grand occurrence of their lives. I grew up a science fiction nerd and for me it was one of joy, of the height of mans achievement, on July 20th 1969 man set foot on the moon. No matter what horror happens I will always have that as the hallmark moment of my life.
My dad, who was disabled following three strokes, in 1991, 1997, and 1998, had nurses who arrived each morning about 8:00 a.m. to get him up. They had the same routine every day, set him in the armchair with CNN on. This was before I got a white noise machine so the TV would sometimes partly wake me up. First thing I heard was about a plane, and bodies. Oh, I thought, a plane crash, that's terrible, and went back to sleep. Next I heard two planes, lots of bodies. I thought, two passenger planes must have collided, that's terrible, how could they let such a thing happen? I was asleep or partly asleep when I heard the anchor say about the towers of the World Trade Center, "they are no longer there."
It was the third time in my life I came awake that fast. The first was when my sister got a phone call that John Lennon had been shot, the second was when the same sister turned on CNN and I heard that debris of John F. Kennedy Jr.'s plane had been found, but no bodies. On September 11 I went from almost sound asleep to wide awake running for the TV. Due to his strokes and medications, Dad had some difficulties speaking and was struggling to say, rather faintly and breathlessly, that we had suffered a terrible disaster.
Of course we had to call relatives back east, particularly in New York. At last we received a call back from my cousin that her older brother was at home and did not realize anything was happening until he looked out a window and saw one of the towers collapse. He grabbed his son, who was about a year old, and he and his wife had to hike out of town across a bridge packing a baby. They later moved to a place where they were much happier.
Four days later was the local historical festival at the restored train depot, a very subdued gathering with people huddled in little knots speaking softly. Owners of the Abraham Lincoln, a Pullman car which belonged to Abraham Lincoln's son Robert Todd Lincoln, had brought it. A local pastor who did historical reenactments stood on the car's platform and gave the Gettysburg Address. You could have heard a pin drop. I took pictures which I posted on the wall next to Dad's bed. Dad is now gone along with my friends Steve Edwards, George McCoy, and others with whom I spoke at the festival, but the pictures are there to this day.
It was the third time in my life I came awake that fast. The first was when my sister got a phone call that John Lennon had been shot, the second was when the same sister turned on CNN and I heard that debris of John F. Kennedy Jr.'s plane had been found, but no bodies. On September 11 I went from almost sound asleep to wide awake running for the TV. Due to his strokes and medications, Dad had some difficulties speaking and was struggling to say, rather faintly and breathlessly, that we had suffered a terrible disaster.
Of course we had to call relatives back east, particularly in New York. At last we received a call back from my cousin that her older brother was at home and did not realize anything was happening until he looked out a window and saw one of the towers collapse. He grabbed his son, who was about a year old, and he and his wife had to hike out of town across a bridge packing a baby. They later moved to a place where they were much happier.
Four days later was the local historical festival at the restored train depot, a very subdued gathering with people huddled in little knots speaking softly. Owners of the Abraham Lincoln, a Pullman car which belonged to Abraham Lincoln's son Robert Todd Lincoln, had brought it. A local pastor who did historical reenactments stood on the car's platform and gave the Gettysburg Address. You could have heard a pin drop. I took pictures which I posted on the wall next to Dad's bed. Dad is now gone along with my friends Steve Edwards, George McCoy, and others with whom I spoke at the festival, but the pictures are there to this day.
What's a 'white noise machine'? Is that like in the movie where Michael Keaton hears his dead wife's voice coming out of the white static of the television? Fifteen years ago, and the first time I heard about the catastrophe, I was working at Newtown High School of the Performing Arts, in Sydney, as a History/Geography teacher. We had a television in the classroom so I turned it on. They were showing the planes going into the buildings, and one of the students started to cry. I had to turn it off as some of the other students started to get saddened. I got saddened and couldn't really believe it at first. There must have been a lot more people die as a result of all that dust that was floating around when the buildings collapsed.
This is long but interesting.
‘We’re the Only Plane in the Sky’ - POLITICO Magazine
‘We’re the Only Plane in the Sky’ - POLITICO Magazine
Happy belated birthday wishes to Brooks and son!!
Thank you for the birthday wishes. I appreciate it from nice people on a great forum! I'm glad I found this place.
This is almost too hard to watch.
Haunting Footage Of First Responders Walking Into Twin Towers Moments Before Collapse
Haunting Footage Of First Responders Walking Into Twin Towers Moments Before Collapse
Thanks, Staro. That hurt my heart. Heroes indeed. It was hard to watch. But we can't forget.
That brought it all back. They had to keep saying on TV, 'this is not a movie, this is real'. Reporters sticking mics in faces of folks just covered with ash and trying to get away. Live on TV. Unreal. The bridge.
And the cheering of all the responders every day, when things settled down a bit.
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I saw it on tv, replays, and had this surreal feeling. I was working very hard at an archeaological Survey at the time and did not watch much news and was told by a coworker what had happened. Then I saw it on tv, many hours after it actually happened.
My dad had been retired from the military for 13 years, after almost 30 years of service and 2 tours of Vietnam, when this happened. That day he was on the phone, volunteering to join back up if they needed him. He said that, if nothing else, he could be one of the old guys who keep things going. He got a nice, "We'll keep that in mind", of course, but his willingness to jump back in to the fray at what ever level he might be needed (he retired as a big bug in his unit) was humbling to me. He was a good man.
Some of that footage came from a documentary that I saw.
There were (I think) two guys filming a documentary about NYFD. They were hanging at the station house, going out on trucks, etc. They happened to be out on the street with a clear view to the towers, filming when the first plane hit.
I did eventually see the documentary. It starts well before the 11th. There's a rookie at the station (which might have been who they were shadowing). There was a lot of joking around, as they are all waiting for the rookies first fire. They say the longer it takes, the bigger that first fire is. No real fire calls come in. A small fire in a garbage can...but nobody thinks that one counts. Some of the guys seem kind of nervous because it's taking to long for the rookies first fire. Rookies first real fire call turned out to be the WTC on the 11th.
Photo #4 is Trinity Church. The photo was taken right next to the spot where Alexander Hamilton is buried.
Photo #11 is Fulton Street, next to the Transit Center. The tall building on the left is 195 Broadway where our office was for about 10 years until we relocated to Times Square (I worked there 2008-2015).
Photo #15 is Park Row next to Pace University (my wife's alma mater). 195 Broadway is the shorter building center left.
Photo #21 is Fulton Street right in front of 111 where our office used to be back then.
Photo #40, black building on the left is 1 Liberty Plaza - our data center used to be there.
Photo #46, 160 Broadway - my physician's office is in that building. You can also see 195 Broadway top left.
Photo #58 is St. Paul's Chapel - across the street from WTC and 195 Broadway. Oldest surviving church in Manhattan, completed in 1766.