9-11-01 Where Were You?

[Delta Kits]

Where were you when you heard about 9/11?

It would be interesting to hear stories from people.

I was working ground crew for an airline that day, and we heard unconfirmed "rumors" (which you wouldn't believe the rumors we hear that turn out to be false) from pilots of a plane hitting the WTC. Of course we didn't believe them, but about 20 minutes later, ATC closed down all airspace and any aircraft in our area was forced to land at our airport.

This was a small airport here in Eugene, so we're not used to seeing 747's and Airbus 320's landing here, and it took us an hour to figure out how to unload passengers from the larger aircraft.

In the space of an hour, we had about 30 commercial planes in the space that 8 normally fit, so being a marshaller got kind of dicey, getting wings about six inches from tails of other planes.

Once everyone was deplaned, we finally went in and plugged in our 13inch tv to watch it in disbelief. Everyone was just walking around dazed.

Anyway, I know it's a windshield repair forum, but I thought it might be interesting on the 5th anniversary to hear other stories.

Pray for the families of those lost, and lost since.

[screenman]

Repairing screens in a bus company, the wife called me to say something was going off and it took 45 minutes before we got anything on radio or tv. I phoned my brother to ask him to check CNN and confirm. The people around me were in disbelieve.

It was also my sons 12 birthday and he did not want to celebrate that night and still finds it hard to celebrate it now.

Our thoughts go out to all those affected.

[Layne]

I was in the Pro shop at my country club. The news and the videos were unbelievable. No golf tha day either...went home to follow it all on TV. It was really weird the next few days to see the sky void of vapor trails.

[mafsu]

I was repairing windshields for a rental company just off Reagan/National Airport. That's about a mile, maybe a mile and a half from the Pentagon. Scariest day of my life. I won't go into details. I've posted about it on this forum in the past.

[StarQuest]

Monday, Sept 11th, 2006 marked my company 5th year anniversary!
Believe it or not, 9/11/01 was the day I started in this business.

Very first repair was on a Ryder International 4700 (verticle flat shield) started at around 8:00am that morning. I was a little nervous about this repair because it was a 8 legged 2" star break which was giving me problems. Took me 45 minutes to complete and cure that first repair! Repair turned out fine but was somewhat disapointed in myself that it took so long. First repair and first great lesson in practicing patience!

Wrote up my invoice and walked back into Ryder garage around 8:50 looking for manager to inspect work and issue me a P.O. Well guess what? Couldn't locate manager or anybody else! Shop was completely empty!!! Still not knowing what had just happened, I'm like....this is really strange. Where is everybody? Meeting or something? Everybody was there but in the front office glued to TV set. After seeing what happened I found it difficult to ask manager for P.O. or inspect, so I just handed to him and said I'll pick it up next week.

Needless to say, it was a very strange week for me starting out and also many months that followed. Very rocky start in repair but 5 years later I can honestly tell you things are going well. Hope we never have to experience something like that again in our lifetime!

Bless all those who lost their lives that day.

[Glasseye]

Just on this subject of " Where were you?" the over my lifetime the ones I remember vividly where I was, are:-
* JFK assassinated
* John Lennon assassinated
* the death of Elvis Presley
* the death of Princess Diana
* 9/11

When 9/11 was happing my wife phoned me at work and told me something terrible was happing in New York. I then heard my daughter cry out in the background as the second plane went into the Towers.

[Mike Allen]

I was at work in Cheyenne Mountain, aka NORAD.

[Fullhog]

I was on vacation on the Greek island of Rhodes.We had just came down to the hotel bar where eveyone was watching what we thought was a movie.
If only it was!

[code3wsr]

I was a firefighter working in Killeen TX mowing the grass at station 7. It was yard day. My Lt. came outside and yelled for me to come in, I thought we had a call. I walked in and we just sat and watched, It was a horrible day knowing what had just happened to 343 of my brothers.

[AutoglassDirectory.NET]

I was working! I left my job and went to my home. I watched the news channel for hours. It is a historic event that I will never forget.