nmah2664.xml

nmah2664.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-10

I woke up one morning to talk to my fiance on Instant Messenger. I had just started Graduate School in Georgia, my fiance was at work in the DC area. I remember vividly when the first thing he had said to me was, "A plane flew into the World Trade Center." It had just happened, it was a little before 9am. My heart sank and I typed back naively, "I'm sure it was an accident, right?" And just then, the second plane hit the other tower...

We logged off of the computer and I spent the next two hours glued to the TV. The Pentagon, the collapse of the towers...I tried calling everyone I knew in the DC area but couldn't get through to anyone. I called the nearest hospital and asked if I could donate blood - they told me to call Red Cross. I did and the girl I spoke to hadn't heeard, I told her and she said it would take them a few hours to get set but yes, please come in. I left then and waited 6 hours to do the only thing I knew to help. Then I found out it probably would not help, there were so few survivors.

My roommate came home and we sat together on the couch. Her friends called to see if she wanted to go and talk with them, she turned them down. I was grateful that she elected to stay home with me, as I had only arrived a few weeks earlier and had no friends or family in the area. There was very little talking - a lot of silence and a lot of crying. There were no words that could express our grief for the loss of life or our true terror and non-comprehension over the sheer evil behind the plot that was executed that day.

The fellowship. How the first thing people did was forget about themselves to help the people, the strangers around them in any way they could.