Where were you on 9/11?


Guest MormonGator
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45 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

We were both in college at the time? Aww man, I thought you were like a decade older than me! 

What?! I am sure you have seen my profile picture, there is NO WAY you look so young (*cough* - and good) ;)

Edited by Anddenex
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31 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

I'm still not over the fact that @Anddenex and I are the same age.

It's @SpiritDragon who surprised me the most. Probably because he seems to be the closest in age to me besides @Chilean who has posted on here, and when talking about school years, people younger than you barely count. 😝

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Guest MormonGator
Just now, Anddenex said:

What?! I am sure you have seen my profile picture, there is NO WAY you look so young (*cough* - and good) ;)

Hey pal, I have three covers of GQ in my portfolio. Top THAT!

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I worked for Continental Airlines at the time at their Salt Lake reservations office near the airport. My shift didn’t start until 3 pm, so I was home that morning. I continually flipped through the channels trying to desperately get more information. I was in a state of shock. I was heart-broken for my “brother and sister” airline employees who lost their lives that day. The aircraft that crashed into the Twin Towers, The Pentagon, and crashed in a field were United and American Airlines. They were our competitors. But, any thought of them being our competitors vanished. We were family. I lost part of my airline family that day. I still mourn their loss.

Returning to work that day was a nightmare. And it was awful for the next several weeks. Many employees would suddenly burst into tears after a particularly rough phone call. I talked to hundreds and hundreds of people rescheduling flights, canceling reservations for people who were too afraid to fly, and family members who lost loved ones from the plane crashes. Many people who called were traumatized and in tears. It was an emotionally traumatic time. Continental allowed us extra breaks because of the emotional trauma. We were also working overtime because of the influx of calls. It was nerve-wracking and difficult, which is an understatement. I can’t truly describe the chaos and devastation we all felt.

The airline industry took a major hit. No one wanted to fly. There were lay-offs within the whole industry. It has taken years to recover.

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2 hours ago, zil said:

If it weren't for the fact that we all know @Traveler is older than Moses, I'd feel really old right around now.  Please excuse me while I finish knitting myself a shawl for winter.

Now if you think that's bad, imagine staffing a team where 9/11 happened before they can remember, so it's just a history lesson to them - It made me feel old real fast.

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2 hours ago, SilentOne said:

It's @SpiritDragon who surprised me the most. Probably because he seems to be the closest in age to me besides @Chilean who has posted on here, and when talking about school years, people younger than you barely count. 😝

Out of curiosity, was the surprise that I come across as much older or younger - or just the plain amusement of being close in age?

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3 minutes ago, SpiritDragon said:

Now if you think that's bad, imagine staffing a team where 9/11 happened before they can remember, so it's just a history lesson to them - It made me feel old real fast.

On a somewhat related note, this morning when I looked out the window I was surprised to see all the flags, because we already had labor day and that's the last flag holiday until... oh, yeah. September 11 is a holiday now (Patriot's Day? Is that what they're calling it?).

1 minute ago, SpiritDragon said:

Out of curiosity, was the surprise that I come across as much older or younger - or just the plain amusement of being close in age?

I think I had some previous surprises on here that people are old enough to have grown children, so I started assuming everyone's at least a decade older unless they state their age or it is otherwise obvious they are young.

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My wife was a seminary teacher, despite being the homeschooling mother of four, including a nursing infant. By the time I got up, she said that seminary had been cancelled because of something or other going on at the WTC towers in New York. We are nothing like a big TV family, so it didn't really occur to us to turn on the news. We subscribed to the newspaper at that time, and it was the primary source of our news, so that wasn't any help the day it happened. Online news was our source, but online news wasn't as developed and ubiquitous as it is today. It actually took us a little while to realize what was going on and that it was a very big deal. I think I had figured that out by the time I left for work. I don't really remember the day very well at all, but I do remember finding out from my wife that morning that something was going on.

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Senior year of high school. 

Back in my freshman year, the head principal had the idea for something called "mentoring". Every Tuesday morning, the first class of the day would end early, and we'd all shuffle off to our respective designated area while "Lean on Me" played in an endless loop over the intercomm. A group of us students, seemingly assembled at random, would meet with a designated staff member, who would lead us in a discussion on a specified topic. The general consensus among us students, and some of the staff, was that it was largely a waste of time. 

We'd just gotten into that week's mentoring session when word got around that something had happened, so those staff members who had televisions in their designated areas did what they could to raise whatever local TV channel they could in order to get the news broadcasts. 

Mentoring was nothing more than everyone watching everything happen, including the second plane hit the towers. 

The bells kept ringing for the rest of us to do classes, but almost no one actually taught their planned lesson that day. 

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8 hours ago, MormonGator said:

We were both in college at the time? Aww man, I thought you were like a decade older than me! 

Would it surprise you that I was also at a college (university at least) at that same time. 

I wasn't a student there at the time though.

At the time of the event I was sitting at my desk when I got a message from some of the staff that something had just happened in New York.  I flipped on the TV.  I think it was just mere minutes after the first plane hit.  I saw the rest happen on TV.  I think it shocked me and the rest of the US.  I cancelled all my classes (for the day) if that's any consolation for those who still had to go to class.  I, on the otherhand, did NOT get excused from work.  However, we had TVs and we had it tuned to the News for the rest of the day.

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I was a freshman in High School. I always had breakfast at the high school after seminary because I lived in a different town. I remember walking in and seeing the smoking towers on the tv. Me not knowing what the towers were, I, I guess arrogantly, remarked "What's that all about, we bomb somebody?" someone at the table said "No, someone bombed us". I still remember my surprise, like, was it possible for anyone to bomb us!?

I remember being disappointed in the wake of it all, with peoples hostile reactions to Arabian's (I think I'm using that wrong, Arabs? people of Arabic descent? Middle Eastern? idk)/Muslims in the following weeks.

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On my way to work. The radio had already been talking about it. But since I caught the middle of the conversation, I didn't quite understand what they were talking about.

When I got to work four others were there before me and had set up the TV in the lunchroom. That filled me in.

My wife was attending a wedding out of state with a two year old and an infant.

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