September 11, 2006
5 years ago on September 11th, 2001
This day always brings back memories. I recall waking up that day that day to two things:
1. My clock radio was yammering about a plane crashing into a building. In my semi-concious state, I thought “Oh that’s ok, planes have crashed into buildings before with no problem.” (See the 1945 Empire State Building accident.)
2. A friend of mine in Berekely called my cell phone and then hung up – not leaving a message.
After a while I decided to turn on the TV and it was just a picture of a big cloud of smoke – I couldn’t understand what was going on. All the news websites were hosed too – so I asked a college friend of mine in Connecticut what was going on via IM, and he simply said: The world is coming to an end.
A bit of an statement in retrospect, but rather appropriate at the time.
I’m fortunate in not directly knowing anyone who perished that day – I think I knew one person at Cantor, and a lot of other people who worked in that area. Not everyone I know is as fortunate.
I’ll always have my memories of the World Trade Center. I look forwards to visiting the completed rebuilt site in a few years.
One Comment to “5 years ago on September 11th, 2001”
September 30th, 2006 at 10:55 am
Hey Dennis,
I stumbled upon your blog and noticed this posting…and the link to last year’s post. It’s ironic that you posted about having no signal when you got home from school the day of the ‘93 WTC bombing. I was cutting school that day (big surprise…it’s a miracle I ended up successful) and was watching the whole thing unfold all day (good ole Cablevision).
I was here, in Chicago, in 2001, having left both Silicon Valley and Atlanta for good and being comfortably ensconsed in an R&D role at Motorola. I got up that morning to telecommute, and sat down in from of the computer to a flurry of IMs about the world ending, the WTC being attacked, etc., and didn’t believe it until I saw the plaintext of cnn.com and turned on CNN and saw what was happening.
I ended up making the 800 mile drive in my little convertible with my dog, a cooler, and a suitcase wedged into every available square inch. My brother-in-law had been coming out of the subway station under the WTC when the second plane hit, and knew the woman who was crushed by the landing gear that day…she sat a few cubes over from him. One thing that struck me was that, in Chicago, there were a ton of American flags on fences (we have a lot of wrought iron fences in the city of Chicago…something like 50% of multi-unit buildings on the north side have them), yet there were people who just didn’t get it, or were completely detached from it, “It didn’t happen here…it’s in New York.”
I guess it just goes to show you how something so profound can fall into the category of “30% of Americans don’t remember which year” for something in recent memory. I often ask myself questions along the lines of, “What if I’d taken that job in the WTC, and had never moved to Chicago?” and so on.
Sad memories aside, how’s life in the valley? Do you even remember me from middle/high school? Sometimes I miss it, but don’t you miss thunderstorms? The lack of thunderstorms was why I said no to a job at SGI and left the valley.
-Jon
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