story75.xml

story75.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-02-22

We had been on vacation since the Thursday before the attack. We had rented a beach house on a small island just north of the South Carolina border. We had not watched television for most of our time there. I woke up at 8am as usual. We were out of breakfast stuff and my daughter was hungary. So, I hopped in the car and drove over to the local market. I walked in and the owners were closely watching the TV. I continued walking through the store and listened to the TV. I heard it announced that an airplane had hit the World Trade Center. Not looking at the TV and getting my eggs, I assumed that it had been a private plane dinging one of the antenae. As soon as they said that it was a commercial jet, I just about jumped out my skin and screamed. I quickly bought what I'd already put in my basket and raced back to the house, ran up the stairs and yelled at my husband to turn on the upstairs TV to NBC that a Jet had hit the World Trade Center. He thought I was joking. While I had driven home, the second plane hit the other tower. We watched in amazement. We couldn't believe what happened. I stepped into another room for a minute and my husband shouted at me that the first tower came down. This time, I thought he was joking. How could such a massive structure come down? We continued to watch in utter astonishment for another hour. Finally, we couldn't absorb any more. We decided to get ready and go down to the beach. It was ghostly. There were a few families there, like us, with small children, but most had stayed back. We cancelled most of our tourist activities for the week and felt the sudden urge to stay with our core family and appreciate each other's presence more. I didn't want to let me family out of my site. On Wednesday, we saw the helicopters from Ft. Sumpter head north. Friday, I felt the urgent need to stay at the house until after the national memorial service. Finally, there was beginning to have some sort of closure on the great national loss.