story3361.xml

story3361.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-11

I work at the George Foster Peabody Awards at the University of Georgia, and one of my co-worker's daughter lives in New York. She called him and told him that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center, so we turned on the TV in the office. There was a small group of us watching the TV, and for some reason I started thinking about what I had seen on the BBC America station a couple of nights before--that the leader of the Northern Alliance had been assassinated. Of course, I didn't really know anything about the Northern Alliance or the Taliban at the time, but I remembered the name of Osama Bin Laden from the news, and I told everybody in the room that I bet it was a terrorist attack, backed by Osama Bin Laden. Somebody said, "you don't know that," but it's like I just did. I remember calling my mom and telling her about the plane, and while I was talking to her the second plane hit the second tower. I said, "Oh, My God," and it was apparent that something was definitely wrong. My mom said something about feeling sorry for the people on the plane, too, and at the time, from looking at the TV, it looked like a prop plane, and I told her that I didn't think it was that kind of plane (jet). We were supposed to have a meeting that morning, and one of the participants came in and started talking like it was business as usual. We had turned the volume down and my back was to the TV, but 20 minutes or so later, my boss, who was facing the TV said, "a plane has hit the Pentagon. This meeting is over." We sat through the day and watched the TV in stunned disbelief and when the towers fell, it seemed like they fell in slow motion. It seemed like a scene from a movie, I guess it was the shock of it all. When we heard that a plane had crashed in Pennsylvania, I immediately thought that the passengers must have tried to take over the plane from the hijackers and then had lost control. This later turned out to be true. It was so strange that day. It's like I had a sixth sense about what was happening. I was just stunned that anyone could conceive of such a horrible act, and I remember wondering what might happen next. September 11, 2001, is THE day I will remember all my life.