Remembering September 11, 2001

by UnDisfellowshipped 39 Replies latest social current

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  bebu

  V Sky,

  One very good thing that came was your response.

  bebu
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  Victorian sky

  Thanks Bebu. A few days after the attacks, I heard the cutest thing. A little girl said that New York looks like it's missing its 2 front teeth, out of the mouth of babes.- V Sky
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  willyloman

  My memories are a little different. I will always remember 9-11 as the day I "left the truth." Not physically, but emotionally. I was mesmerized by the visual images like everyone else and watched TV for days and read all the major newspaper accounts and just soaked it all in.

  I was so PROUD of people for the way they rallied around each other for support and comfort. I was so ASHAMED of the way JWs first recoiled at the event, then slowly tried to attach themselves to it as if some of the "glow' might rub off, bragging about how they'd been there at ground zero and opened the doors to the WT building in Brooklyn, exaggerating their role in both instances. I wanted to be in New York providing water bottles, blankets, doing something to help. It was 3,000 miles away, so that wasn't possible. So I sent in a donation and got a FDNY cap and wore it proudly. But on 9-11, I BECAME a New Yorker. I became an American. And I stopped being a JW... a process that is taking some time but is nearly complete.

  I was so struck by the way people acted, full of charity and compassion and genuine love for one another. All the WT false propaganda about worldly people and their alleged lack of love was clearly exposed. Here was a signal opportunity to show immediate and unconditional love for fellow man and JWs were on the sidelines, confused about what to do, then piling with too little, too late when the appropriate course of action was shown them by all those false religionists they say are going to be destroyed by God for not following WT doctrine.

  Yes, 9-11 was a real eye opener for me. The blinders came all the way off. It was the day of my salvation.
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  Aztec

  ".A little girl said that New York looks like it's missing its 2 front teeth"

  V-Sky, that is one of the cutest things I've heard. Thanks for your very touching post!

  ~Aztec
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  Mr. Kim

  Let's just make sure it does NOT happen again!
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  RunningMan

  I was dropping my son off at school on my way in to work, when it was announced on the radio. I phoned home on the cell phone, and told my wife to turn on the TV.

  We were having a fence built that day, and the guys were there with the drilling equipment for the holes. All day, they kept coming in to check on the news.

  I call the fence my "terrorism fence". Not only was it built on Sept 11/01, but it also keeps out terrorists. Not one terrorist has gotten into my yard since the fence was built.
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  Sara Annie

  Two years ago, that morning had been so hectic, I hadn’t even turned on the TV. I remember throwing open the patio door and sticking out a test-arm to determine the weather instead of flipping on the news like I usually did. My husband had left for work an hour earlier, taking our toddler daughter to daycare, so I loaded my 6 year old son into the car, and headed toward school listening distractedly to the "Elmo’s Sing-Along Party" CD that had been left in the player the evening before. I didn’t even turn on the radio until after I watched my son enter the school building. A few blocks from school, I turned into the drive through at my favorite coffee shop, and was counting my exact change while only half-listening until I heard the familiar line "Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States." As I gradually got my mind around what I was hearing, I remember asking Gene at the drive-through window if he knew what was going on, he told me to get out of my car and take a look. So it happens that my first images of the terrible events of that day were viewed with my upper body stuck through the drive through window at "Cappu-Gene-O’s" with a caramel latte in my hand and tears on my cheeks.
  
  After arriving at my office, we all poured into the big conference room watching the coverage and trying to understand what this meant for our world. I watched the pentagon burn and the twin towers fall on a 12 foot projection wall screen. I don’t need to describe my feelings those next few hours and days and weeks, you all know exactly what I was experiencing, we went through it together.
  
  Where I bet our experience differs lies in the fact that we live in Omaha, NE. Strategic Air Command is right in our back-yard. While the rest of the country remarked on the eerie stillness overhead, we would hear and see the skies filled with activity. We all stood on the upper deck of our office building a few hours after the attacks and watched the blue-nosed Air Force One fly by to land out at the airforce base. We watched the eerily quiet stealth bombers soar overhead, always surprised by their sudden appearance in the sky. We were startled awake in the middle of the night by the roar of gigantic C-130 transport planes on their way overseas with troops and supplies. No, the skies weren’t quiet, they hummed with sounds I’d never heard before, sounds of war. I am strangely thankful for the noise. I think the quiet would have been more unbearable.
  
  Two years out, I am almost surprised at how emotional I still am. I can’t foresee a day when my throat won’t tighten, where my eyes won’t well up when I remember those days. I can’t imagine a time that, when I see the film of hundreds of people lined up clutching photocopied pictures of their loved ones begging anyone who has any information to call them, that it won’t break my heart. I don’t think it will ever cease to sadden and surprise me that my 8 year old son knows and fully understands the phrase "terrorist attack", that my daughter won’t ever have any recollection of a time before 9/11. So there it is: Where I was, where I still am. There is something comforting in finally saying all of this, and reading what other people remember. Thank you, everyone, for your stories.
• 

  Bangalore

  Bump.

  Bangalore
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  JimmyPage

  I remember people lining up for gas immediately. Many of the gas stations took advantage and price gouged.

  I had a friend in Bethel and I called him to check on him. He said I was the first person to call him.

  They showed the same news footage repeatedly all day. My elder dad thought they shouldn't have shown it quite so much, hard as it was to watch.

  If anything should have caused the governments to turn on religion it should have been these events. Many thought that there would be more attacks from the Muslim world until the United Nations would have to step in and put a clampdown on religion. The fact that it never happened proved once again how wrong the WT's predictions are.
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  alias

  I was 10 years less of a faded JW and was driving on my way to work when I heard about the second plane hitting, the Pentagon and PA planes, and US flights would be grounded.

  For a split second of panic I wondered if the End was here. I had never felt that way in my life before or since.

  alias