Ten Years Later

9/11/01

Where were you on that fateful morning?

I can remember it exactly. It was a few minutes to nine. I was sitting in my living room watching Good Morning America. They were getting ready to close the show for the day, when Diane Sawyer interrupted the broadcast with a news item about the WTC having an apparent fire. She continued with another update of a possible explosion at the WTC. Then the background pic changed to a live shot of the Center, where you could see smoke coming from one of the buildings. As they speculated on the causes and effects of such a fire... someone mentioned that people were saying it was a small plane that hit the building. They continued filling in as they tried to get more information. Suddenly Diane’s attention was back on something on the screen. Another plane was heading in and then hit the other tower. She yelled out something like “Oh My God, The other tower’s been hit!”

That was at eleven minutes after nine. I continued to watch as I called my friend Cory to tell him to get the news on NOW! He began to freak out as he was watching things develop. We stayed on the phone for several hours as the events of the day unfolded.

I was a bit surprised when they showed the president in Sarasota. There had been no publicity about him being there. Usually when he’d plan a trip to Florida, there would be tons of publicity and his brother, the governor, would show up and make it a big TV event. When the news finally showed him giving a speech from there, I had already seen Air Force One fly over. This was noticeable since at that time all planes had been ordered out of the air. I can remember that timing well as Cory and I were talking about the problems of clearing all the planes out of the air. Where I lived was not in any flight paths, even tho I lived only a few miles north of Mac Dill AFB. So when a very large and loud plane with several smaller jets around it flew over, it got my attention. They were so low that they could be heard coming up from the south. I went out on my balcony and saw them fly over. Several minutes later, they showed Bush on TV giving his speech from Sarasota.

During this time I sent a message to my friend in Kentucky who was an EMT to tell him to watch the news. He had just woke up and had just turned his TV on. We were chatting on our computers about the events and had our cams up. About this time Bush was speaking from ‘somewhere in Louisiana’. As this was going on, my friend’s EMT alert signal went off. He said he had to go ... all EMT’s were being called in to a nearby airport. I mentioned that I thought it was strange since all planes were grounded a bit earlier. He said quickly as he went off line ...’Not this one’. Several hours later he called me, all excited, to tell me that he had to be there for Air Force One landing and the president being driven off. And then later was brought back and they took off. I asked him if he was sure if it was AF1 and he said he was very familiar with that plane.

Over the next few days, we heard of the thousands of rumors and tons of mis-information that had been spread. Some were for security reasons but most were just gossip. One item that I heard and was never confirmed either way was that Flight 93 never crashed but was seen landing in Cleveland and then moved to a private hanger where it was repainted. Lots of questions were raised about many of the discrepancies and all were brushed aside,

09/11/11

Ten Years Later...

I’m sure every network worth anything will have some sort of special or ‘documentary’ on what happened. They will have the gory films and any sensational stuff they can dig up. It will jar a lot of memories and probably cause many tears to be shed...

Many of the questions from that day tho, will still remain unanswered and probably will never be answered.

Questions like ... Why was the military on high alert days before 9/11 but no actions were taken … Why were the various US intel agencies unable to share their information ... Why was the President not in Washington at exactly the time it happened ... Why did he take so long to react ... Why did military jets wait so long to scramble ... Why is it that when they did take off … they went the wrong way ... Why did we spend billions and kill thousands in the wrong country ...

The person on watch when this happened was unable to find the person who claimed to be responsible, because he was too busy avenging his daddy’s name. It took some Navy Seals under the current presidents orders to catch and eliminate him.

There is a monument being constructed, altho several years delayed. There have been many controversies. Some as expected about design and others about who is invited to memorial services. One I agree with is that Politicians and Preachers should not be allowed to speak ... keep politics and religions out of it. Not Prayers, but religious bigotry and hate. They have no place there. It is not a forum to promote causes but to celebrate the lives lost.

It does not matter now who or what really was the cause of it ... it matters that we remember those who were lost and why.