story5011.xml

story5011.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-11

I was home from work because of illness. My husband called and told me to turn on the TV. When I asked why, he just repeated "Turn on the television". I turned it on and then asked him what I was looking at. He said that someone had called their spouse and said a plane had just hit the World Trade Center in NYC. I said "Yes, there's smoke coming from the building but, they must be showing a replay cause there's the plane....wait, why is there smoke coming from the building before the plane hits it?" That was when the second plane hit and I saw the flames and smoke from the second tower. My husband immediately turned to the people he works with to tell them there was another plane. He then said he would call me back. As I stood there staring at the television, my mother came downstairs and instead of looking at the TV, she came over to me to ask what was wrong. I couldn't answer her....I just turned her around and pointed to the TV screen. At that time, we both started to cry. And then, we heard the news of the other flight crashing into the Pentagon. And the last plane went down in a small town in Pennsylvania, not too far from the area where both my husband and my families live and where we both grew up.
In February of 1987, my husband was working in NYC for a few months and my son and I flew up to visit for a long weekend. I have a picture of my son and myself outside on the lower level of the Statue of Liberty with the Twin Towers in the background.....little did we know that day how precious that photo would be.