story3160.xml

story3160.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-11

I remember driving up 287N on the morning of Septemeber 11th at about 7:15 am. I was going into work early because I had to interview someone at 9:00 am and I wanted to review their resume prior to the interview. I had the radio on and my sun roof open. I remember looking through the sun roof at the blue sky and thinking what a beautiful day...

My morning was like any other. Filled with emails and early morning calls, coffee and wishful thoughts of a vacation...

At about 8:45, I recieved a call from Annette in our HR wanting to talk to me about an issue that I cannot recall now. Five minutes into the call, I received a call on my cell phone. As usual, it was my mother. I remember thinking what does she want now?

After my usual greeting, she told me that a plane had hit the WTC. I smirked and said "What is a plane doing flying over Manhattan?" I immediately thought that it was some type of commuter plane that had accidently flown into the building. Nothing serious. I asked if she was okay and then told her that I would call her back later.

I resumed my conversation with Annette, telling her what my mother had told me. She replied in the same way I did. "What is a plane doing flying over Manhattan?" I could tell that she either thought I was making it up or that my mother was mistaken. We concluded our conversation and I began making my way to our lobby in oder to begin my interview. As I passed our Area President's office, I noticed that they were turning on his Television system. It occurred to me that they had also heard of the plane hitting the WTC. I continued on without thought. After greeting and inviting in the interviewee, I began telling him about the "accident". Again as we passed the President's office, I looked in to see if I could catch a glimpse of what was going on. At that point they were showing the WTC and you could see smoke coming from the building. I thought 'Wow! That's a lot of smoke!' I motion to the employee to wait, that I wanted to watch some of this. At this point people are steadily coming into the President's conference room to watch themselves. No one in the room had any idea of what was really happening.

WE witnessed the second plane hitting the second building. We thought it was a replay of the first hit. Someone remarked how they had actually been able to capture it on film. But we could all see the "live" in the top left corner of the TV Screen and we all began to realize that this was a second plane.

I thought we were under attack.

It was like every thing began to happen at once. People began rushing from the room, looking for phones to call loved ones. People began to panic, people began to cry.

I reached for my own phone to call my mother, my sister, my son's school. At the same time I was trying to remember who worked in the city, at the WTC. Was there someone that I need to get to? I was rooted to the floor I couldn't move. I was staring at the TV, thinking 'This is not happening. This is a bad movie plot'.

I couldn't get a call out. Every line was busy. Too many trying to make calls.

Moments later, the news began communicating about the Pentatgon and the flight in Pennsylvania. Everyone was terrified. We didn't know how many more planes were going to be involved. This was a nigtmare. We had no idea