Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "September 11: Bearing Witness to History" Stories Submitted Online Description An account of the resource Visitors to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History's, "Bearing Witness to History" online exhibition submitted these reflections beginning in 2002. NMAH Story NMAH Story: Story How did you witness history on September 11th? Share your experience. I live in Nashville, Tennessee, so I witnessed the events of September 11, 2001 from a distance, via TV and other media, like most Americans. This is what I remember most vividly from that day and the few days that followed: It was a brilliant late-summer day; the unrelenting heat that marks a Nashville summer had begun to die off, and the morning was crisp and clear. My wife was away on a business trip, and I remember standing in our driveway at 7:30 Central time, and saying to no one in particular, "Man, what a nice day it's going to be," and then feeling somewhat silly for talking to myself about the weather. I listen to NPR news every morning on the way in to work, and I can recall the exact spot along my route where I was sitting in my car as I heard the first news report of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center. The reports were sketchy at first, and my first thought was of the crash of a B-25 into the Empire State Building decades earlier. I can still remember some of the events that featured prominently in the news that day, before everything shifted into disaster-coverage mode--the President was in Florida at a school, in an appearance designed to highlight his education policy. The announcers continued gamely to present the news they had scripted for that morning, but by the time I got to work, a little after 8:00 Central, their focus had shifted completely to the crash, and I seem to remember that there were already reports of other planes unaccounted for. (I could look up the chronology of the other three crashes, but I am trying to recount what I experienced.) I turned on the radio in my office, and heard the reports of a fire at the Pentagon, a second crash at the WTC, and then what was initally mentioned as possibly a "normal" plane crash in Pennsylvania. Someone hauled a TV into my wife's office and we gathered around to watch the news coverage--permanently set to CBS, because this was the only station we could get. The news web sites stayed clogged with traffic much of the day. I remember seeing the live shot of both towers burning, and commenting that the towers were engineered to stand a thousand years, and that this would probably render them unusable, but that they would stand. Seconds later, the south tower collapsed, and I initially refused to believe it, thinking it was the facade of the building. I went back to my desk and tried to reach my wife, who was not in any danger on her trip; she was at a business meeting in a large auditorium, and when I reached her cell phone, the organizers had scrapped their video presentation and put a network news feed on their big screen onstage. The attendees, some of whom were from the New York area, watched the collapse of the towers live in the auditorium, on a screen perhaps 12 feet high. The opening presentation was abandoned, and many of the attendees left immediately to try to find a way home--most using their rental cars, since air traffic had been grounded. I remember driving home in a stupor that afternoon; traffic seemed more sedate and solemn, with everyone intent on getting home but too depressed to drive with their usual aggression. There were no contrails in the sky, but I remember looking up and seeing a solitary plane, flying very high and very fast in an eastward direction--almost certainly a military aircraft. The next few days, before my wife and her colleagues returned home on a chartered bus, are a blur. I slept about three hours a night, spending most of my time in front of the TV, right next to my computer, when I was at home, trying not to miss any piece of information. I went to work, but not much got done. We had moved back to Nashville from Winthrop, Massachusetts, about a year before. If you have flown into Boston's Logan airport, you have seen Winthrop--it is a small town just north of Boston, on a peninsula between Boston Harbor and the ocean. One side of Winthrop, the street I lived on, in fact, faces directly across a narrow stretch of water to one of Logan's runways. In the time I lived there, I had becone accustomed to the noise and activity of the airport; in fact, when I moved, it had to get used to sleeping in a quiet room without jet engines nearby. When I heard that the two planes that hit the WTC had come from Boston, several thoughts raced through my mind: 1) Had I not moved, I would have been standing at my kitchen window, drinking coffee, getting prepared for work, and watched the two planes take off. 2) I would have had the eerie experience of living right across from the airport and seeing the rows of silent airplanes sitting there for days on end, the first non-weather-related shutdown of Logan in its history, probably. 3) The passengers were mostly ordinary Bostonians, much like I had been a year earlier. I could have been heading out west on a late-summer vacation that day, on one of those planes. NMAH Story: Life Changed Has your life changed because of September 11, 2001? If so, tell us how. NMAH Story: Remembered What do you think should be remembered about September 11th? NMAH Story: Flag Did you fly an American flag after the events of September 11th? Have your feelings about the American flag changed as a result of September 11th? Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource nmah453.xml 911DA Item Elements describing a September 11 Digital Archive item. Status The process status of this item. approved Consent Whether September 11 Digital Archive has permission to possess this item. full Posting Whether the contributor gave permission to post this item. yes Copyright Whether the contributor holds copyright to this item. yes Source The source of this item. born-digital Media Type The media type of this item. story Created by Author Whether the author created this item. yes Described by Author Whether the description of this item was submitted by the author. no Date Entered The date this item was entered into the archive. 2002-08-27 IP Address The IP address of the device used to submit the item. 160.129.70.68