in the conference room. She said she had heard on the radio that a small plane had hit the World Trade Center.

I went and turned on the TV and saw smoke coming from both towers. I called her back and told her it was worse than that and she came up to see. Before long the entire division was watching the TV. I'll never forget my boss quietly getting up and walking out when the first tower fell.

Then word came across that the Pentagon had been hit and that's when I freaked out.

Later that evening it occurred to me that two childhood friends, who are sisters, were in New York. One was a flight attendant and one was a resident doctor. I called them and the younger sister, the flight attendant, told me she had heard a commotion on the balconies that morning and eventually wondered out to her balcony to see what the commotion was about. She could see the WTC from her apartment and told me she saw people jumping. Her sister said her hospital set up a triage expecting lots of patients, but that there ended up not being very many. At least not as many as they had expected.

I asked my mom that night how 9-11 compared to Pearl Harbor. She told me that when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor that the world was a MUCH larger place and nobody hardly even knew where Pearl Harbor was. 9-11 happened on our TV's to a building we all knew.


[Post edited by CyberHokie at 09/11/2019 08:22AM]