nmah339.xml

nmah339.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-08-20

I live in University Place, Washington, on the West Coast so by the time I left home to go to work the towers had already collapsed. When I got in my car to head for work I heard about the attacks on the radio. I got about a mile and turned around and went home. I turned on the T.V. and spent the entire morning watching the coverage. I emailed work and said I was staying home because I was trying to track down my older sister who was to be in the Sears tower that day (speculation on the T.V. was that the tower was an additional target). However I couldn't bear to continue watching alone and I ended up going in to work just to be around other people.
One of my co-workers called and requested that I bring in a set top antenna so we could watch coverage on the T.V. in the conference room that we normally use to watch video presentations on. The entire day people would cycle through to see continuing developments.
The universal feeling common to everyone was the utter feeling of helplesness at being so far removed from the event. Everyone wanted to do something for the affect victoms but we couldn't.

I've let go of a lot of things that in retrospect are very minor compared to the events of 9/11. I am much more aware of my fellow man and especially immediatelly afterward would make eye contact with people at the store I ordinarily would not. I now say hello to people I ordinarily might not have acknowledged before.

The way that people came together after the attacks. How in spite of the terrible things that happenned, Americans and even most of the world cooperated in ways that have not been seen in this generation.

On the day of the attack I stopped by 3 different stores looking for a flag. They had already been sold out. I ended up taking the flag presented to my family at my fathers funeral (retired military) and displaying that flag.
It was, I felt, one of the few things I could do to publically show my support.