9/11: Where were you? Readers share their stories

I was a week from beginning my senior year at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. I was the Senior Midshipman for my Naval ROTC unit and was in the middle of welcoming one of our new freshman, his mother, and grandfather to the University and to the Naval ROTC Program.

One of the sophomores walked by me and stated that an airplane had hit one of the World Trade Center Towers. Within the hour we knew we were under attack. My mother was coming to the Freshman Orientation we were holding to welcome the new freshman. I will never forget the look on her face and the tears in her eyes as she walked through the door. She knew we were at war.

I write this submission from Afghanistan where I am on my second tour into Helmand Province. I am a Captain in the Marines, an Infantry Officer with First Battalion, Fifth Marines from Camp Pendleton.

Since that fateful day I have served twice in Iraq and twice in Afghanistan. I thought I knew that day how my life was going to change. I had no idea of the bravery, the heartache, and the courage I was to encounter in the journey I was about to embark upon. Looking back, it has been a remarkable 10 years, yet there is still work to be done.

I was in my bedroom having gone through several medical problems when my son called me from Newport (a Providence fireman and brother to a NY fireman who was on ground zero when the planes hit). He told me to turn on the TV a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. I did and just a couple of minutes later I saw the second plane coming in to hit the second trade center.

I initially thought of the 1930's show and how it had an effect on the people and I thought it was the same type of incident. I was on the phone with my wife when the first building collapsed. I knew my son had to be in the building and I just screamed and threw the phone across the room. About an hour later my son in Providence called me and informed me that his brother in NYC called and his first words were I'm alive everyone else is dead.

On September 11, 2001 I was in kindergarten. I remember our principal taking us out into the hallway and I was sitting next to my best friend and we were just giggling about something. Then our principal said that something bad had happened to our country. He told us people had taken planes and flew them into buildings and people had died. The hallway went really quiet.

The teachers, I later learned, had known since the first reports came out but us kids hadn't heard anything and I remember thinking "Why would anyone want to do something bad to our country?" Our principal then told us that we should pray for the people in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington D.C. and for the victims' families.

I remember going home and seeing, briefly, videos of the Twin Towers falling before my mom turned the TV off. She later said that she didn't want my sisters and I to see these terrible things. I'm 15 now and I have seen these videos and pictures. They are horrific and disturbing. I have heard stories of bravery and heroic people when these attacks happened. They have moved me and made me realize how fortunate I am. As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approaches we should pray for the families affected by these events and as a country we should pray for peace in the world.

I as a US Air Force aviator, flying one of the USAF's newest command and control aircraft. We had taken off from our home station, and just finished with the tanker. We were inbound to the orbit point and got a call from the Washington Center controller. 'XXXXX 33, contact your home station and follow strict instructions.' A training mission had turned into a real world scenario and had forever change our lives.

The crew I was with, performed amazing tasks that day, and I will never forget the mission, rage, excitement, nervousness, and even tears. The lonely silence on the radios after the second aircraft hit the towers, the no non-sense tone of the controllers, our home station telling us to plan for a 'VERY' long day. The US needed our aircraft to provide support for a terrible tragedy. I thought I knew pain before this day, but on that day, someone scared my wife and children, I will never forget it!

Back at home, my wife was at work, frantic of the news of the aircraft, knowing I was near the area. My children, locked at school, safe, but scared. My commander was able to get words to my wife, tell her we were safe, but doing what Uncle Sam had trained us to do.

Upon landing, there were a few of us who walked in the commanders office, and asked one question, 'When are we leaving?' He told me that he spoke to my wife, I thanked him and told him to give me an hour to pack and kiss that family, I want to be on the first jet headed East!

Off we go into the Wild Blue Yonder!

I was on the 79th floor of the South Tower.

The week before 9/11 my family had come to visit my office. Madison and Nolan, were so happy to see their artwork and photos proudly displayed in their dads office. We had lunch and strolled around the neighborhood. Everyone had a good time. My wife Lori needed a regular dose of NYC. The streets packed with people and plenty to see and do. Early September is usually a great time to be in NYC.

On 9/11/2011 I was having a national sales meeting in our offices at the World Trade Center. We had a visitors from Chicago, California, and New Orleans. Everyone was looking forward to getting together to recharge.

At 8:30 am people started arriving and getting ready for the days presentations and discussions. My secretary, 9 months pregnant at the time, left me a message that she would not be in. I was on my own making sure that there was food and that all of the AV equipment worked. Thankfully she had taken care of everything on Friday.

At 8:45 am while standing in our boardroom looking at the statue of Liberty in the south harbor, all hell was about to break loose. We heard a pop then a swoosh. A stream of debris crossed the sky. It looked like a ticker tape parade but only a few thousand feet higher.

In an instant, I knew what was happening, in my minds eye an image of a terrorist walking onto my floor with a bomb vest flashed. I could see my lobby vaporized and in flames.

Get the F@#$ Out Now! Down the stairs, this way out I screamed. Not everyone reacted the same way, unfortunately. I yelled and grabbed people off the phones as we headed out. We had seconds to react. In the staircase people moved quickly but without panic. Immediately cells phones were out and people were talking about a small plane hitting the North Tower.

A security guard opened a door to one of the floors and was directing us back in and told us to go back upstairs on the local elevators. An announcement came across the PA. A plane has hit the North Tower. Emergency crews are at the scene. Return to your floors. You are safe, "apparently". That was code for Get the F#$% Out. A second later screams of terror as people were running from one side of the tower to the opposite side. Time to go! I jumped into the staircase and could hear Jet engines overhead. The building moved sideways and I was thrown down the staircase. I could hear the sound of metal being crushed. Remember the Titanic movie when the ship sinks in the North Atlantic and you can hear the sound of the ship being crushed, that was it exactly. I asked myself if I should crawl up and get ready to die. I said no. I grabbed the hand rail and it was a ships hand rail, bright white and of the same diameter. The ship was sinking. I knew that I need to keep moving. I reached the bottom and two of my co-workers were there. Two firemen were arguing about which tower they should climb. They headed up my staircase. We headed into the underground retail area it was a deserted. There were a handful of security guards directing people away from the street exit and to the east end of the complex. We headed into the E train subway passage. We could stay underground longer and get further away. We came up the stairs on the corner of Park Place. A sole policeman was holding back the crowd of observers. We looked up for a second and saw a huge gash on the side of the towers filled with flames and melted steel. We headed to China Town, no government buildings or banks.

Later that night my ferry arrived and I got hosed down by the local fire department in case I might be covered with hazardous debris. They gave me a smoky blanket and sent me on my way. I arrived home, my wife hugged me on the lawn. I went in and took a shower. The next day my 6 year old daughter asked what had happened. We explained that some bad people blew up dad's building. She looked up and broke into tears, My art work! The next day I drove Madison and Nolan to school. I was so thankful to be able to do that especially knowing that so many other dads and moms were not coming home.

I was living in Dallas. I was starting my day, getting ready for work, taking care of my menagerie, trying to get going. I had the TVs on, tuned to channel 4 (here in Los Angeles -- thank goodness for DirecTV!), and I was waiting for a segment they were going to do about starting your own business. Then they had breaking news about a fire at the World Trade Center in NY ... and the rest is history.

Of course they never went back to regular programming. I started switching back and forth between the NY NBC feed and CNN. I called my daughter in San Francisco and we were both watching when the second plane hit, and we knew instantly that it was terrorism.

My drive to work was surreal. I passed two sides of Love Field airport as I neared my office -- and there was absolutely no air traffic as it had been halted by that time, and that was something I'd never seen before ... an empty sky.

Once at work I kept up with what was happening by staying tuned to TV, radio, and the Internet. At one point we heard a big BOOM! and my car alarm went off and everybody freaked out. (A garbage truck accidentally dropped a dumpster.)

When I got home I was just glued to TV ... the images of the Twin Towers on fire, being hit, and collapsing are burned into my memory, as is the reality that people chose to jump to their deaths rather than be burned alive. Such a tragic day.

I was in Ft. Lauderdale, FL on vacation with my family. I had awakened early that morning to start breakfast before everyone else got up. As I started the coffee, I went to flip on the television, a mere 5 minutes lapsed ... and "Breaking News" came across of the first plane hitting the Tower. My first thought was, "that wasn't an accident." I started crying and ran to get my (then husband) out of bed. As we came back into the living room and I was explaining what happened, the 2nd plane hit.

I was hysterical and by this time, all our family was out of bed and glued to the tv. We knew it was terrorists ... even before the news would "confirm" to that. We had only been in Florida two days and we were supposed to stay for a week, but I no longer wanted to be there. Many shops in Ft. Lauderdale closed that morning ... as a lot of the people who ran tourist shops were foreigners and were scared of retaliation. I just wanted to be close to home, family ... and prepare. Prepare for what? I really don't know ... but for the first time in my life I wanted a gun. I wanted to hide. I didn't want my daughter to go to school.

It was terrifying and I watched the tv/news coverage that entire week like an insomniac. I couldn't pull myself away. I felt sick and couldn't sleep. My heart was broken for all those families who lost so much. Just kept thinking & praying, "GOD save us."

I was in Austin Texas with friends. I was just leaving to travel on an 11am flight to JFK to meet my husband. My friend watching TV said I wouldn't be flying to New York that day. We all sat glued to the TV with different ideas of what had happened. I thought a plane had engine trouble and hit the WTC. My friend immediately said "terrorists." I drove my rental car with two friends the next day for L.A. Most motels were filled with the thousands of others traveling by car. Every where we went people were in shock or crying. We were never the same after that day.

I was getting ready to head off to work at the Getty Center Museum that morning when I turned on the local news and saw what was going on. After turning on the computer and checking all the e-mail and all the various sites, I realized right away that I wasn't going to work that day. Obviously,the museum would have been on the hit list for the perpetrators. Moreover, I wouldn't have even been able to get to work that day anyway-all the routes going in/out of Westwood, UCLA and the museum areas were pretty much blocked off, especially the area around the Westwood Federal Building.

I lived right near LAX on Arbor Vitae & Eucalyptus back then, and it was very eerie to not hear or see planes making their approach into the airport. The only good thing about that day and the days following was how the sky was so beautiful and smog-free, and very few cars were going down the streets near the airport ... a lot of people couldn't go to work.

Sadly, my mom and brother didn't have the same opinion on the events of the day. My brother-who was really deep into the teachings of the Nation of Islam and like-minded groups at the time-actually cheered when the attacks happened, even though it certainly affected my job and everything around us. My mom-who was losing her battle with heart disease and would die less than a year later-was more upset because the round-the-clock TV coverage "took off (her) soap operas", and there was nothing else on TV for her to watch.

Unfortunately, there were a lot of people in Inglewood, South LA and Compton who shared those same views about what happened. Very sad. And when the museum finally reopened four days later, several employees were laid off because of the obvious security concerns that would affect business throughout the nation, not just at the museum. It was a relief to just go back to work, though the Federal Building still looked like an armed fortress...even from the 405.

On September 11th, 2001 I was at Sea-Tac airport in Seattle getting ready to board a plane to go east and visit my elderly mother who I had not seen in a while.

Just as we stood to get in line to board the plane I saw a terrifying scene on one of the t.v.'s in the terminal. A plane shot into a building, ripping into it, and then we boarded our airplane.

We sat down, buckled in and waited. I don't remember all of what was going on, but I do remember a man on his cell phone, I think he was talking to his wife. She was telling him shocking and unbelievable things about what was going on on the east coast. Something had happened at the Pentagon, something in New York City. It seemed surreal and impossible to believe what he was sharing with us.

Finally there was the decision to cancel the flight and we returned to the airport without ever having left the ground. All the television screens were dark as we exited into the airport.

I remember going to the ticketing area or perhaps it was baggage claim, and almost joking with an agent there. It was impossible to conceive that something truly catastrophic and life-shattering was happening outside in the everyday world where we so often take so much for granted.

The scenes I saw on television when I got home that were surreal. I felt as if the world had changed forever.

I heard from many people who knew that I was flying that day, most could not reach me by phone, the lines were completely tied up. Email was a real savior, otherwise I would not have been able to contact friends and family and let them know that I was safe.

On that fateful morning, I was standing in my apartment in Santa Barbara, Calif. My roommate was calling me out of my bedroom and I stood there watching the TV utterly baffled and shocked. What was so eery was that I was in Boston only the week before for my brother's wedding and returned to L.A. on a United flight from Boston.

Although I had lived in California for nearly 20 years, I'm a New Englander. As I realized how many people from the region died in the planes and on the ground, I was beyond consolation. It turned out that one of the pilots was from my alma mater, UMass-Lowell, and then Todd Beamer of "Let's Roll" was from my alma mater for graduate school, Wheaton College in Illinois.

Now I'm back in New England and last weekend I was in NYC and saw the building of the Freedom Tower. I look forward to the day when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are finally over and people of all religions may find ways to be with one another as one humanity.

I will never forget the first time that I landed on Star Island in Rye, New Hampshire. That early September day was brilliant and warm and I was not going to work. Instead, I spent the morning traveling to senior centers in the are volunteering as part of the United Way Day of Caring. My job was to help seniors board a bus that took us to the docks. There, the Thomas Laighton waited to ferry us out to Star Island.

This was the first time in recent history that many of the elders had left their residences. The mood was festive with everyone enjoying the late-summer day away from our usual grind. Snacks were distributed -- juice and coffee flowed. We motored into the Piscataqua River, the bridge went up and we were free!

Before we got out of the river, the captain's voice interrupted our reverie coming over the loudspeakers in nonchalant tones. He received reports that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center in New York. He didn't know much more than that but he promised to keep us informed. I don't think anyone was too bothered. After all, it was just a "report," whatever that meant. And no one knew what kind of plane was involved. For all we knew it was little Cessna that probably just bounced off the steel towers. The passengers' holiday continued unperturbed.

We reached Portsmouth Harbor and the open ocean stretched out glimmering in the late morning sun. Soon the speakers crackled again and the captain's voice sounded more measured now, as though he was working at keeping calm. Reports said that the crashed plane was a commercial passenger jet. Damage and casualties were unknown, but thought to be extensive. Details were still sketchy and he would update us as news became available. The passengers, of course, had no access to any mass media. Cell phone coverage was spotty and for all intents and purposes, our only source of news was the PA system.

The next announcement was short, deliberate and astounding -- a second plane had crashed into the other WTC tower. The news was almost incomprehensible. In that moment many of us knew that war had been visited on our country. We knew that life had changed forever. We knew these things, but we were gently rolling over small waves toward an idyllic island on a balmy September morning.

I say "many of us knew" because a good number of the seniors didn't seem to understand the events they were hearing about. Perhaps New York City was so far removed from their lives that the news didn't pertain to them. And dementia had certainly taken its toll on some of the oldest. But the effect was surreal. The captain made one terrible announcement after another: "A plane has crashed into the Pentagon; another plane crashed in Pennsylvania." And the person next to you might say something like, "Oh, dear. Now could you get me another cup of tea?"

The boat finally pulled up to the dock at Star Island and we disembarked. I stepped off the Laighton and looked around at quiet Gosport Harbor, the weathered Oceanic Hotel, the proud summer house and all the rest that makes up that place. Seagulls squawked, a bell-buoy rang, children played on a swinging tire. The constant but warm wind smelled of brine and seaweed. I sat in calm and peace unlike any I had known in my adult life. The mainland and its insanity were so very distant.

The world changed fundamentally for me that day in two ways: the terrorist attacks made our country a little less free, and I started a love affair with Star Island. Hopefully, our country will continue to regain some of what we lost on that day. As for me, I've returned many times to Star Island and I intend to continue this affair for as long as the Good Lord allows me to do so.

I remember arriving at Raymond A. Villa Intermediate School in Santa Ana, Calif. It was an ordinary day. I hung out with my friends for a little bit, headed to first period, sat at my desk, the usual. I was in sixth grade at the time. Around the middle of class when my teacher put the tv on.

I will never forgot the images or the confusion I felt upon seeing the videos replaying over and over again. I tried so hard not to cry for fear of being made fun of, but I was hurting for all those people and my country. Everything happening was so painful to watch. The second plane hitting, people desperate for help and waving white "flags" out of the windows, people jumping out of the windows, the towers falling. All the images were engraved in my memory and are still vivid.

That whole day all my teachers had their televisions on and it seemed like all we did that day was watch the news. Even when I got home from school all we did was watch the news. Everytime we saw the same videos that had been playing all day, felt like we were watching them for the first time. It was just so hard to believe that someone would be capable of killing all those innocent people. I'll never forget 9/11/01.

I stirred awake at 4 a.m. Pacific time on Sept. 11, 2001 in Costa Mesa, Calif. Turned on the TV with a strange feeling of expectation, only to find everyday local news. Went back to sleep until my radio alarm went off at 6:30 with President Bush declaring we had been attacked.

Getting ready for work while the South Tower collapsed in the middle of a "Good Morning America" broadcast will forever be etched in my memories.

Eerie silence as planes were grounded at the nearby John Wayne airport. Such a sad day, a strange mixture of solidarity with my fellow Americans reeling on the east coast as well as a geographical/psychic distance, as if it was only a bad dream.

I was getting ready for work at 5:00 a.m. and it was horrible. I was crying and wondering what was going on. My children were 2 and 4 years old, still sleeping very quietly for once.

The following Saturday, I was going on a vacation to Walt Disney World in Florida. Our flight was a United Airlines bound for nowhere. I had a fear of flying but felt I need to still make the trip.

All of this ideas flooded my head with the media images shocking me and ripping my heart out. We were told to go home early from work because everyone was watching the TV and work could not be done at all. Two more of my co-workers were traveling for their vacation too. One to New York on American Airlines and the other to Hawaii on a United Airlines flight too. Everyone wanted us not to go on a trip because we did not know if it could happen to us.

I knew that day my life would change forever and it did.

I was working as a set dresser in a music video of the band Blink 182 and we were in O.C. with a crane and a wrecking ball destroying a house ... on that morning we got in to a circle and somebody said some words, then a minute of silence, and back to work!

It wasn't until late that day, that I fully realized what was going on ... and I was pretty mad with the production company that didn't stop the shoot.

As with most people on the West coast, I was getting ready for work and turned on my tv at 6:30 a.m. to see the news. The reporters were talking about a plane that "accidentally" crashed into one of the World Trade Towers and we were seeing the smoke and fire from the first tower, when all of a sudden another plane comes into the picture and we see this plane actually crash into the remaining tower.

My husband and I were stunned, glued to the tv screen not believing what we were seeing. Of course, speculation was running rampant on the tv news as to what was happening. It was nearing 7:30 and I needed to leave home in just a few minutes to head for work.

All of a sudden, the first tower started to collapse and I just started crying not believing what I was seeing and realizing that all those poor people were still in the building. Then the second tower started crumbling.

At that moment I looked to the wall next to our tv set. On that wall is a beautiful picture my son took of the two towers when we visited New York in 1995. I realized how surreal it was at that moment as I was looking at the tv seeing the buildings crumbling and looking on the wall and seeing the picture of those beautiful buildings as they were on that day in 1995. I still have that picture on my wall, and every day, when I look at that picture, I keep remembering that terrible morning, Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001. My heart still aches for all we lost that day.

I woke up and put the tv news on that morning. There was a live feed of the first plane crash into the building. I couldn't believe what I was seeing! As I lay there watching, the second plane crashed into the building

I watched in utter horror with my husband, as it dawned on me that the crashes were deliberate acts of hatred. I was five months pregnant at the time and I kept asking myself, "what kind of world was I bringing my unborn child into?" I remember crying for all of the families. I cried for the innocence lost that day. Some might call it ignorance, but we were forever changed that day.

It was the first day of school and I was in my Spanish II class. Having just moved to boarding school in Connecticut just three days prior from my native Orange County, Calif., home, I was already feeling nervous jitters being the new girl.

Our teacher was just describing our curriculum for the semester when one of the teachers from down the hall busted into our room demanding everyone to report to the theater. We weren't told what was going on. Kids were whispering that there was probably some school bust, but when the whole school was all seated in the theater and seeing certain faculty members breaking down crying we knew it was much more serious.

Our headmaster took the stand and informed us that a plane had just hit one of the towers. The whole theater broke down in screams and sobs seeing as that we were only about an hour outside Manhattan, that many students had family members who worked or lived in the city.

I felt so scared seeing as I had only been living on the east coast for a few days, so far from home back in California, but at that moment I felt as if home was on a separate planet from where I was. Everyone rushed out to the nearest television or computers to turn on the news. Everyone else was scrambling to phones to call out to family and friends but no one could get through to anyone. I remember then sitting in the library in front of the tv as the second tower was hit.

It was like watching a nightmare unfold to the point where you wanted to pinch yourself to wake up and see that it wasn't real. I felt frozen in time, I hardly knew anyone at the school and also felt like I could not relate to their anxiety seeing as I had no family or friends in New York.

As the first tower tumbled down, I knew at that moment that life as I, as well all knew it, was going to be changed forever. Hours later I was able to get in touch with my family back in California. My mom was supposed to be flying out to visit a few weeks later but I told her I didn't want her on a plane, and that I never wanted to be on a plane again. Which would obviously cause some difficulty seeing as I would have to at some point to get back and forth from school to home.

Out of our entire student body which consisted of only 250 people at most, including faculty, only one teacher had lost a family member that day. Strangely enough, by the end of that horrific day, feeling so disconnected and like an outsider, our whole school came together and at that moment in time I felt a strong click, and knew that I wasn't alone and found comfort in that after all that occurred that day.

A nice Tuesday morning in L.A. ... I freelance so I didn't have to get out of bed until 7:30 a.m. when my roommate left for work. As always, I flipped on the tv to the "Today" show.

At first the words and images just simply didn't make sense. It was apparent that something bad had happened in New York. I kept looking at the images ... and then the horrible realization ... one of the towers was missing and the other was burning. Within seconds of turning on the TV the second tower collapsed ... my knees buckled and I crumpled to the floor ... the comprehension that thousands worked in those buildings.

I used to travel to New York all the time in the 1970s. I remember hating those towers for their lack of architectural elegance. However, they had become part of the landscape of New York ... two imposing fingers pointing to the sky at the tip of the most important city in the world. And, now apparently, in just a couple of hours they were gone.

And, of course, within moments we heard about the Pentagon and then the crash in Pennsylvania (God bless those brave people).

Oddly enough, I felt safe in Los Angeles -- there aren't any buildings tall enough or iconic enough to fly into. But I also felt helpless at the same time. There was no action to take that day, no way to help immediately, and no way to fully comprehend what was actually going on back East.

The rest of the day I spent like so many other Americans -- watching those towers collapse over and over again, watching the Pentagon burn, waiting for the news crews to get to central Pennsylvania ... and waiting for the other shoe to drop. It didn't, thank God.

I remain stunned 10 years later that a handful of corrupted minds could make us doubt all that is good and wonderful about this country. And I bet if we looked closely, we could see that the seed of our current ugly financial and political mess was planted that day.

On 9/11, I was living in San Francisco and working in the city of Emeryville in the East Bay. I took my usual commute on BART under the bay around two hours after the attacks and several passengers were talking of the city being attacked as well. As soon as our train emerged above ground in the East Bay, every single passenger frantically turned and looked out the window across the bay to check whether additional planes had struck San Francisco.

I was on my way to work heading south on the 17 freeway near the Thomas Road exit in Phoenix. At the time I was listening to Howard Stern on a local station. The show had a three-hour delay so it was about 6:30 in the morning local time.

An announcer got on the radio and interrupted, saying that they were cutting to the show live. So the first time that I heard about what had happened was listening to the Howard Stern show.

When I got to work, all of the tvs were either on CNN or FOX, no one was doing anything in terms of work. We were all like zombies, glued to the tv screens. I honestly do not remember the rest of my work day clearly. I remember driving home to hug my girlfriend and our 9-month-old daughter.

I am from Texas and I was on a business trip in L.A. on that day. I woke up that morning turned on the "Today" show and saw the coverage, I was dumbfounded and just could not believe what I was hearing and watching specially after the second plane hit the tower. I was sad, confused and angry that this had happened. I went on to my meetings but no work was done as everyone was glued to the TV or radio.

I had to return home on the 14th but my flight was canceled, I drove down to Tijuana and took a plane to Monterrey and drove back to Texas.

Everyone was shocked and unsure of what was going on but a sense of unity was felt, something that this country needs today.

I was working graveyard/late swing in Las Vegas, usually getting home at 4 a.m. The morning of 9/11, I had been watching the Game Show Network (I know!) until about 6 a.m., then was going to take a short nap before a dentist appointmentt at 10 a.m (Pacific time). I had no cell phone, and did not use the internet regularly at the time. I did not have a phone in my room where I slept, either.

So, I awoke around 9 a.m. after not sleeping very well, felt horrible and called the dentist to cancel. I was groggy, and didn't really realize that the conversation with the receptionist was rather strange.

It went something like this -- ring -- (her) ...hello? (me) Uh, is this the dentist office? (I was unsure cause she didn't identify herself like they always do). So I continued -- well, I don't feel very good and I need to cancel my appointment. (her) Oh, yes, of course. OK, bye. (click).

I kind of thought to myself, that was weird, she sounded very strange, distracted and very quiet - I know now she knew. But I went back to bed, not knowing anything.

My shift started at 7 p.m. that night. I slept all day, waking up just in time to get ready for work and jump in the car. I never turn the TV or radio on when I'm getting ready for work, but in the car I almost always listen to NPR. Of course, this day, for some reason, I had the radio on music. Halfway to work, I decided to turn on NPR. It's about 6:30 p.m. now. I hear a man talking about the physics of how some skyscraper fell. I think to myself -- OMG -- an earthquake or something happened in Hong Kong or Japan. I'm picturing a giant skyscraper falling over and lying on its side. How terrible! They talk for a few minutes, before I get the some more info about what happened. Wait, it happened here, in the US?

I start to panic a little, and it's all I can do to keep driving my car to work. Once I get there, I start asking people what happened, and they look at me a little crazy. I had no idea what was going on! I must have been the last person in the world to find out.

I had to start work immediately, and it was beyond eerie. I am a waitress in a restaurant, and here I am, starting work, 12+ hours from the attacks, and only knowing the basics. The customers were beyond somber. It was very quiet, although we were a little busy because a lot of people had flights canceled.

Three hours into my shift, I finally get a break. I had been dying to call my husband, my parents. I knew by now some of the horrors that had happened, and I just wanted to tell everyone I loved them. I missed them, and just wanted to be home with them. Not having a cell phone, I had to walk to the employee dining area. Payphones were along a wall that faced a couple of TVs. I didn't stop to watch the TV. I just started dialing my husband.

I don't remember any of the conversation, but at some point we became silent as we were both watching the TV, and then I saw the images for the first time of the towers, the planes and the destruction. I started crying. It was about 1 a.m. NY time, the next day.

I was stationed at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) in Washington, D.C., as an USAF enlisted pathology technician. My rank was Master Sergeant. I recall stepping outside earlier that morning and noticing what a clear and delightful fall day seemed to be shaping up.

My office was next to the break room, and the first hint that something was amiss was that Bryant Gumbel's voice was still coming out of the television after 9 a.m. when "The Price Is Right" was supposed to be on. Army, Navy, USAF and civilians came into the room once word spread that something was happening, and the initial consensus was that some idiot had flown his plane into the WTC. Then when the second plane made contact, I looked at the Navy Senior Chief we both nodded to each other; at that point everyone knew what the deal was.

A couple hours later, we were all in the auditorium, being briefed as to what had happened so far. At that point, the Pentagon had also been hit, and there was word going around that the Department of Labor building got hit too. The director asked for volunteers, and although the conventional advice for the military is "never volunteer" my hand shot up before I could stop it. I was then detailed to the command post where, as the preeminent institute of pathology in the country, we went to work coordinating the recovery, post-mortem examinations, identification, and forensic evidence gathering for the Pentagon and Shanksville locations. We set up two 12-hour shifts, with turnover adding about an hour on both sides of the shift.

Lastly for that day, when I left for the first shift of what would turn out to be a two week detail, I noticed that it was relatively easy to drive away from the District, but the DC police checkpoint for vehicles coming in evidently was deliberate in its security procedures; the line coming in was backed up well into Maryland, perhaps foreshadowing future airline security procedures.

I was working in Danbury, Conn., about 70 miles north of NYC. In the constuction tailer that we were using as an office, a co-worker, Hamilton Fish, received a phone call from his wife. His wife was working in downtown Manhattan at the time, she called and said a jet had just hit one of the towers of the World Trade Center. Hamilton was repeating what his wife said to him for the benefit of the rest of us in the trailer.

My thoughts went back to the story of the WWII bomber that flew into the Empire State Building, knowing that an accident was wishful thinking.

As they were speaking, she said another plane just hit the other tower. At that point in time, the room went entirely silent. We all knew that it was no accident. I then went outside to tell the construction workers the news. Our client came out with a TV set, I went to Radio Shack to buy an antenna and the workers outside tuned their radios to news stations as we watched and waited for more information.
I had gone to NYC the previous Saturday and toured the Intrepid museum.

Driving down Henry Hudson Pkwy, I glanced over at the WTC on my way to Battery Park and told myself that I would come back and see it next weekend. I never did get the chance.

I was a college student on 9/11 and had the day off from school. That morning I was lazily reading the newspaper and eating breakfast at home. My mom called between the time the first and second towers fell and told me to turn on the television. I went to the TV and turned on the news, but without fully understanding what had happened.

After I had a better understanding of what had occurred, I started to get angry -- angry at the people who would do these kinds of awful things to innocent people. Channeling my anger, I knew that it was more important than ever to go and vote in that morning’s elections.

At the polls, there was an eerie hush and everyone seemed more duty-bound then ever. I returned home with the pride of having exercised my civic responsibility and stayed glued to the media coverage of that day’s event for weeks on end.

I was recuperating in a suburban Philadelphia hospital from a heart attack suffered on Sept. 10, 2001.

As a result, my wife cancelled a 9 a.m. meeting on 9/11/2001 that she had arranged with a major securities firm whose offices were on the 11th floor of WTC, Tower 1. Also, as a result of my situation, a colleague had to take my scheduled place as a speaker in Philadelphia on 9/11, and he was forced to cancel his plans to attend an industry event at Windows on the World at the top of WTC that fateful day.

I am fairly sure that had I not had my heart attack, my wife would have survived the WTC bombing because her scheduled meeting was going to be held on one of the tower's lower floors. However, I have no doubt that my colleague would not have made it safely out of the event at the top of the WTC, which three of my other friends did attend, and unfortunately, did not survive.

I wouldn't recommend having a heart attack to save another person's life, but on 9/11, my heart attack did prevent at least one, and possibly two other tragic deaths.

I am and was in the United States Air Force on duty on Sept. 11, 2001. I was working in a alert aircraft facility at March Air Reserve Base. There was a television turned on when I arrived at work at about 5:30 in the morning, and the first plane had already struck the world trade center. After a short time had passed, I observed the second aircraft strike, and the war was on, almost in the blink of an eye.

Sept. 11 will be with me for the rest of my life for several reasons. First it is my birthday and second because I was in the building when the first plane had just hit.

I remember I was taking my time going to work that morning because it was my birthday and what a beautiful day -- not a cloud in the sky. I took the bus into NYC from NJ as I did every day and then jumped on the E train to the World Trade stop. I went into the building as I always did to cut through to get to my work place when I saw people milling around in a state of confusion because something had happened.

No one was really sure what had just happened they just knew that something had hit the building and then someone said a small plane had hit the World Trade. I was going to be late for work so I quickly turned around and exited the building back into the subway stop. I went up the subway stairs where I came upon the World Trade building pouring out smoke like you would see in a movie.

The first thought that went through my mind was that this was no small plane. The police had not even arrived yet and I was frozen by the enormity of this spectacle. There was a small crowd that had gathered next to me when we saw something that we could not process right away.

What was that coming out of the building? It was a woman with her dress flapping up and a man in a suit with his tie flapping like the streamer on a kite. I still couldn’t process this until a lady said in a tone of fright and amazement “Oh my God they are jumping” at that moment I felt like I was watching a movie, it was as if the camera lens zoomed in and the camera pulled back at the same time.

I continued to be frozen I just couldn’t process what was happening when there was this explosion from the second building, which I thought was some sort of gas explosion. We could not see the second plane because of the direction it came in at and the building shielding our vision of it. The explosion was so strong it actually caused an older gentleman to lose his balance and fall to the ground. Someone reached down to help the gentleman up when someone else yelled run because the glass and parts of the structure were headed down on to us.

We all ran as debris rained down on us, luckily no one was hurt. I walked up Broadway to the front of my building where I had found out from my co-workers that it was a terrorist attack.

Oddly several things struck me that day I could have been born and died on the same day and the other was that people watching the event knew more about what was happening than those that were actually there.

The one thing that people who were not there can’t imagine is the sheer size and enormity of the actual event. I believe it would be the difference between someone being in a war and those who watch it in the movies or on television.

For me September 11 is very personal and something I will never truly recover from.

I was a Californian living in D.C. The school in which I was teaching dismissed early that morning after staff meetings because the school's renovation was not complete, so I decided to head to Pentagon City Shopping Mall which sits opposite the Pentagon just on the other side of I-95 South.

As I approached my exit, I noticed a huge black smoking hole in the Pentagon. I quickly tried to get off as the F-15 Fighter jets raced throughout the city, but traffic was at a standstill.

I'll never forget all of the children sitting on the curb of sidewalks. Teachers were unable to contact parents because phone lines were dead. That smoking building is an image embedded in my mind forever!

I was working on a United Airlines commercial being shot in San Francisco. We were on the second day of a 3-day shoot and our call time was 6 a.m. I heard the news in the crew van on the way over to location. We watched the television coverage until the third plane struck the Pentagon when the production company called a wrap for the day and told us to be prepared to work the next day at SFO.

I was at school (University at Buffalo) and walked into the student union. About 50-100 students were huddled in front of the television. Everyone was saying how a plane accidentally hit the World Trade Center. As we watched, we saw the second plane hit. We all screamed and I thought, "This was no accident!"

Sept. 11 2001, I was at warehouse working on a film set when the production office called to say a jet had crashed into the Pentagon. I grabbed a co-worker and went to our office to turn on a television.

At first I was confused, the images were one of the twin towers burning, they had said the Pentagon. Then the small type at the bottom began to stream with information of the Pentagon crash ... My god I thought what are the chances of two ...

Then it happened, the third plane stuck. I ran to get the rest of my coworkers, explaining the three jet crashes, only then realizing there was one explanation, we all watched in horror as the towers collapsed.

I called my parents, I said, I don't know if this is it, or just the beginning, but I love you ...

Months later, I saw photographs of Ground Zero taken by a co-worker's son who had worked there as a EMT. Even after all I had seen, I was again devastated by the destruction ...

I felt the same way as a child when Kennedy was assassinated, for a moment the world stopped.

I still cannot grasp the enormity of that tragedy, the lives that it cut short, and the grief of their loved ones ...

From that day I always thought ... Never forget ... I never will ... God bless all those who went before their time ... I'm crying as I write.

I was living Utah; My wife was expecting our first child. I had called off sick for work, and was asleep when my woke me up to tell me that airplanes had crashed into the World Trade Center. I got out of bed and turned on the tv. I was horrified. I remember thinking "What kind of world am I going to raise my son in?""

A college professor of mine told me there is a moment in every generation that people will always remember where they were and what they were doing when they found out that moment occurred. My grandparents remembered where they were when Pearl Harbor was bombed; My parents can tell you what they were doing when they heard the news of Kennedy's assassination; I will always remember 9/11. I pray nothing ever so horrific and evil happens for my children.

There is a little bit of humor to recall on that tragic day. My adoptive sister was working in midtown Manhattan and she could see the billowing clouds of smoke from her upper-floor shop window, three miles north of the Twin Towers. Because telephone service was either overwhelmed or disconnected, she could not find out if her natural sister who worked in the Pentagon had survived that attack.

I was in California and was able to get more information. Eventually her sister was able to make telephone contact with her. She told her that the plane had crashed into the intelligence section of the Pentagon. "There is no intelligence in the section where I work," was her unintentionally humorous reply.

When I heard a second plane had hit a World Trade Center tower, I called the TV station where I had been a Middle East expert during the first Gulf War.

They said "come in" so I spent the entire day at the Fox 26 studios, watching the news and giving analysis, not really knowing exactly what was going to happen next and WHO was behind the attack. I was there until 9 p.m. that night and I still have the video tapes.

At one point an anchor told me about a photo someone had sent to her that we didn't air. She said the person who sent it asked "Do you notice anything unusual?" It was a photo of several people falling from one of the towers. She said no. Then the person said, "Look again. None of them have feet."

Apparently the fire was so hot that jumping was better than the searing heat that was burning off their feet.

It was a shocking day I will remember vividly for the rest of my life.

On September 11, as I rode my bicycle across D.C. to pick up my son from elementary school (feeling the subway too risky), I looked up and saw a lone jet fighter patrolling above in the clear blue sky.

At that moment I felt in my bones that the terrorists had succeeded in destroying us. Our priceless freedom would be forever lost. Americans would eagerly discard their liberty for the illusion of safety.

Our government would leverage this fear and mushroom into a police state. Our nation would bankrupt itself, morally and financially. I still feel that way.

My wife and I were attending a business conference in Las Vegas, our two daughters were in New Hampshire scheduled to fly from Manchester to Los Angeles the morning of 9/11.

On going to the gift shop in the hotel lobby, I saw a video of the planes hitting the Twin Towers. Later I received a call from a friend of our younger daughter inquiring about her. I didn't put the two incidents together until I tried calling our daughters.

After an extended time period, I made contact to learn that they were stranded in New Hampshire but safe. They finally arrived home from Boston on the 17th.

As a second-year UCLA-Anderson student spending fall quarter abroad, I was returning to my apartment in Barcelona after purchasing tickets for a soccer game at Nou Camp. As soon as I returned, my roommates rushed me to the television and we watched coverage, speechless for almost four hours. As soon as I gathered myself, I ran back to campus to email friends and family that worked in and around the area since all phone lines were tied up; many responses would not come until days later.

Less than two weeks before it happened, I distinctly recalled how beautiful the Twin Towers shone as I flew into LaGuardia to spend a week in New York to visit with friends before heading to Spain; the Towers' absence in the skyline still strikes me since I interned in the area in college and spent much time downtown before moving to Southern California in 1998.

Having grown up in Freehold, NJ, I lost a middle school classmate whose locker was next to mine as well as a classmate from Georgetown University, both employees of Cantor Fitzgerald.

Waking up at 6 a.m. was my daily routine for going to school. I would wake up to my radio already preset to KROQ FM.

That morning, getting out of bed and walking to the wash room, I wasn't paying attention to what was playing on the radio. I heard the djs talking about "this is a horrible accident! The tower is on fire!"

That's when I turned on the television and at exact moment I saw the second plane crash into the second tower. I could not believe what I was seeing before me. I thought all this was just a reminder of what had happened back in 90's when the trade center was attacked. Getting to school, that's when it all set in and that this was happening for real. Everyone was glued to the television in disbelief that this had happened again.

In 2001 I was 16. I was living in New Jersey, near McGuire Air Force Base and had an active modeling career in NYC. On the morning of 9/11 around 6 a.m., my mother and I had an argument about weather or not I would miss school that day to go to a "go see" with a fashion designer in Tribeca early that morning.

Her argument was I had an anatomy test and a track meet that day. I needed to keep my grades up and not let down my team. My argument was, as most busy 16 year olds, "This is my life mom! My career!"

She won.

I went to school and was sitting in my algebra class when the announcement came on that the WTC had been hit. I didn't think anything of it. But everyone was looking at me. I began to get very nauseous.

The bell rang. My next class was theater arts. I gathered the class and we all moved into a room with a tv. As I stepped up on a desk to turn on the tv, we witnessed, live, the second plane crash.

That was where we would have been! My mom and I would have been stuck downtown! I fainted.

Needless to say my mom picked me up from school within 20 minutes. We hadn’t spoken about it until this year after we found out that Bin Laden was dead. Being an accidental survivor of 9/11 is a very guilt ridden, odd feeling, but something I've grown to be proud of.

On the 10th anniversary, I will not be flying home to Ground Zero. I will be honoring the fallen from Los Angeles, at the Yankees vs. Angels game in Anaheim. I love New York, more than ever.

I was at our home in South Pasadena when it happened. We had just recently moved from downtown L.A. and it was our youngest child's first day at her new preschool. Both my children had been going to the Pregerson Child Care Center downtown.

That isn't what is so strange about that day. What strikes me about 9/11 is that I turned on the television that morning before taking my daughter to her new school. I never turn on the television in the morning. Ever. For some reason, a voice in the back of my head told me that I needed to turn on the television. Now.

I did, and what I saw was beyond belief.

I've thought about that day, time and again. Why did I turn on the TV that particular morning when I had never felt the need to do it before? It was almost as if I had picked up a psychic scream in the air that day.

I had never believed in that kind of thing before 9/11.

I do now.

I was in Massachusetts that day preparing for my mother's funeral. She died Sept. 10 at 11 a.m., causing me to cancel my next day's flight at 7:45 a.m. from Boston to LAX. I had flown in the week before using frequent flier miles and because of a situation with my mother, decided on Sunday to leave on Tuesday, taking advantage of the flexibility of the mileage points. My mother's unexpected death changed it all.

On 9/11, I was at my daughter's house getting ready for the day when she turned on the TV and saw the beginning coverage of the first tower. She called me and we watched together in horror as the second plane hit.

The people around Boston became paranoid about planes flying overhead -- they were National Guard and other military planes. It was a very surreal time.

I was not able to get back to Orange County for a week -- and my trip took 17 hours.

"Wake up John something big just happened," I recalled as my roommate and classmate Jimmy yelled out.

Still groggy from having been on overnight surgery rotation in Jamaica Hospital, Queens, NY, I replied "What are you talking about Jimmy? I thought you were going to Brookdale for your rotation."

He replied, "I was, but all the trains were shut down, somebody said a plane just slammed into a building in New York."

We turned on the tv, and every station had replayed the first plane slamming into the first tower, and the stunned disarray of the people below. The amazing thing was, we thought we were just watching the looped replay of the first crash, when all of a sudden we watched in real time the second plane slammed into the second tower.

We shouted our disbelief out loud. We were stunned to witness what had happened so near to us.

From that moment on, the entire city seemed in disarray, and cell phone service was disconnected. I could not reach my parents. It was like we were alone. On top of it all the TV station showed the towers collapse, but before that, they showed people jumping off to their deaths. I could never forget that day.

I was seven years old. I was getting ready for school, but I stopped to sit on my mom's bed, transfixed.

I couldn't tear my eyes away from the terrifying images as they replayed over and over again.

I was in New York with a several colleagues to attend meetings at the United Nations. A few of us were staying with friends on Staten Island.

As we got off the Staten Island ferry just a few blocks from the World Trade Center early that morning, my colleagues really wanted to stop at the World Trade Center for breakfast, insisting that I would enjoy the top floor view. I insisted, instead, that we breakfast near the UN, wanting to make sure we were close enough to the UN not to be late for our meeting.

Fortunately, for all of us, my insistence won out. By the time we arrived at the U.N., everyone was glued to tvs in the building, and the meetings were canceled. A few hours later, the U.N. was closed down, as well.

I was in my first week of a new NYC teaching assignment -- two blocks north of Union Square. My wife had taken the day -- her birthday -- off and was pregnant with our first child.

As the first reports came in, the teachers did what we could to keep our small student body calm. I was listening to my subway commuter Walkman, relaying news reports as they came in.

Realizing we had a tv/vcr, but no antenna, I walked to a Union Square electronics store to buy one, right around the time the second plane hit. (It was quite some time before we realized the reason we couldn't get a tv signal was that the broadcast transmitters were on top of the World Trade Center.)

It wasn't until about 5 p.m. before the first subways were allowed to evacuate Manhattan. I walked through the eerie silence and settling dust, remembering how my father described the aftermath of JFK's assassination, at which time my mother was pregnant with me.

I have loved and lived in Los Angeles all my life. It was my monthly fortune to be able to spend a week every month for the last 20 years in my second favorite city, NYC. The business I was in, made it necessary for the monthly trip and I took advantage of all that Manhattan had to offer: the theater, the food and even the crazy weather.

I was supposed to fly in on 9/11 from Long Beach Airport, but I was invited to a party in midtown Manhattan the night of Sept. 10th and flew in a day earlier to attend the gala. The next morning, I got up, got dressed and headed to the office, where I arrived around 8:30 a.m. My NY office was located on a rooftop penthouse on Broadway. I rode the elevator to the top, got out, and went into an associates office to say hello. As a routine, I would walk out onto the roof and gaze at the million dollar panoramic views my location provided to anyone who came up to do business.

As I walked out, I realized that there was black smoke coming out of the north tower of the WTC. My first thought was that the fire was ignited by gas lines coming down from the restaurant located at the top of the tower. Two associates joined me and we wondered how the NYFD was going to tackle this fire as it was located no more than ten or fifteen floors below the roof at floor 108. Our building manager who's office was on our floor came out to join us and was trying to get in touch with an associate who worked at the Trade Center.

The smoke started billowing out of more floors and was out of control. All of a sudden, we witnessed a massive explosion out of the South Tower. At that point we figured that we were being attacked. We heard fighter jets overhead and I went in to call someone who might be watching television. When I walked back out, the south tower started to collapse.

In slow motion, the building turned to dust particles making its way to the ground. It was unreal. We had nothing to reference the experience. We were numb. As we kept staring in disbelief, we lost sense of time and soon we saw the north tower buckle and disintegrate as it made its day to the ground.

No one talked. No one knew what to do at that point. I left the office and made my way up to time square. It was a ghost town. No cars, no taxis, no crowded street corners. I went back to my hotel and gazed at the television. They closed all the airports in the US five hours before I would have originally made my drive to Long Beach airport. The experience has change my life and I still cannot believe I was witness to this historical tragedy.

Not so much a where-were-you, but a single moment.

Living in San Clemente one gets used to hearing the "apocalypse now" soundtrack of helicopters, booming sounds of practice bombing and of course airplanes from the marine base.

I will never forget the extreme silence of night on September 11th.

While lying in bed, glued to the ever changing breaking news crawl running across my tv, I heard a plane fly overhead and was momentarily panicked knowing all flights were grounded. Realizing it was a military transport only slightly eased my mind.

Every once in a while when I see a plane in flight, I get that same feeling of dread in my stomach. I know it's small compared to what others have been thru, but it's one of my most vivid memories.

My mom called and said "turn on the tv." I must have been in shock from what I saw unfold because I jumped in the shower and got dressed. I went to work. During the drive, I listened to talk radio and the events were being detailed; people jumping from the towers, smoke, and chaos. I began to cry feeling incredibly defeated but mostly scared. Who could plan this type of attack?

The next day, on my drive home to my apartment in Orange, Calif. I drove down the usual streets. What I saw was beautiful. Each home and business had an American Flag flying. The streets were lined with pride and our colors. At that moment, I felt most proud of my country, my people, and my community of Orange, Calif. My eyes teared.

The days that would follow would be filled with friendship, family, compassion and a bigger heart for everyone I came into contact with. I felt the same from other as. I went about my day. When I reflect on this aspect of September 11, 2001, I am able to cope and feel hope for the world and believe that we can be better.

My story comes all the way across the country to Fullerton, Calif. I was home sick that day but was up, watching tv morning show and nursing a bad cold.

The shock was all of a sudden seeing, on TV, the horror of an airplane flying into the building. Then ... more horror, a second plane banking around and flying into the second building. Even seeing the first, no, I knew this was not an accident even though praying that it was.

I called my boss at work -- Cal State Fullerton. She said they were being told to evacuate and go home as the university was closing for security purposes. I think the images of those planes crashing into the buildings is burned into our memories forever.

I had no one I knew who was there. However, the next month I was due at my dentist. We both looked at each other and, at the same time said: "You're here!" To acknowledge that we were not among the missing we were all praying for.

Not a dramatic story, but probably reflecting what most of us were feeling in the days and weeks, then months later.

It was a Tuesday. I had called in sick to work. The sky was a brilliant blue and it was a gorgeous day. I did not turn on the news until a bit before 9. By that time the South tower was hit and I fell in immediate shock, mesmerized by the image and the pile of news that was coming out of our little kitchen tv. My boss was headed to Philadelphia that day. I knew he would not be going after all.

There was nothing to do but watch, but after a time it was too overwhelming. My husband and I took 1-year-old baby Max for a walk in the stroller to the Sepulveda Dam. It was a relief to be present in the world for a moment without the images, but the images were still there in my brain.

I reflected that what a time we would be going forward into. My stomach and my heart felt leaden. My husband was struggling with unemployment, a downturn in the entertainment economy which was to slide even further into a depression. Such an unusual turn for the industry that supported so many. Soon so many people would be looking for work.

The next day at my office, I cried and cried as I continued to listen to the news and share with co-workers. I knew that people thought I was crazy and too emotional, but I felt my world had narrowed.

I woke up early that morning to start my second day at a new job. I flipped on the television at about 5:30 a.m. PST and was ironing a shirt in my living room when NBC's "Today Show" began showing footage of a large smoke plume funneling out of the World Trade tower. Early reports said that a small plane had hit the north tower. The footage was mesmerizing. I started switching news channels, and it was on every station. I kept watching and was dazed when I saw the south tower struck by a second airplane. I just kept thinking "there's no way this is happening."

I didn't want to leave the television, but I didn't want to miss my second day of work either. So, I got into my car at about 6:45 a.m. and started driving to work. I turned on the radio and the news was on every station. I hadn't even gotten on the freeway yet, and heard that the south tower had collapsed. I drove the rest of the way to work feeling helpless.

When I got to work, it was like a ghost town. My phone rang only once the entire day. I started thinking about college friends who were working in NYC. A bulletin board used by friends started filling with messages asking if mutual friends were okay and a head count started. There were some crazy stories being told that day.

I remember just refreshing my internet nonstop watching the news unfold online. And when I got home that day, I was transfixed by the images we all know too well. It was a very lonely day that day.

I was in Washington, DC on a business trip. I was scheduled to fly home to California on September 11th. Obviously, I didn't.

I was at Gallaudet University for a meeting. All we did that day was watch footage of everything unfold on the large screen tv in the auditorium, including the aftermath at the Pentagon.

It took four days to get home -- I was on one of the first flights out of Dulles when air traffic resumed and was more than a little apprehensive. I arrived at LAX incredibly grateful to be back in California. Then I drove with a colleague to San Francisco where I lived at the time.

It was all horrible, surreal, sad. I still get teary whenever I think about it. I never travel on September 11th anymore.

It was the day before I was to start a master's degree program at Harvard Divinity school. We had an orientation to attend that morning, but my friend Jenny and I were hungry so we slipped out of the lecture hall to go get something to eat at a local deli.

Just as we headed towards the deli, a classmate passed us, running. He said that a plane had hit the Twin Towers -- Jenny and I followed him towards the administration offices, where a tv was being set up. We got there just as the second plane hit, and in that moment we knew it was no accident.

Several of our friends worked on Wall Street, one in the World Financial Center, and Jenny's aunt worked at Columbia. Jenny got on the phone trying to get through to people, but the lines were tied up. We watched the towers fall, saw what happened at the Pentagon and the downing of the flight over Pennsylvania. It was when they announced that one of the flights that had hit the towers was AA Flight 11 that I felt physically ill. That was the flight I often took home from Boston during college to visit my parents in the Los Angeles area.

After the initial shock of everything, Jenny and I split up to make phone calls and try to contact our friends and family. I was worried about my mom who was an administrator for L.A. City schools, because we had no idea what would happen next. Was it only going to be New York? After speaking to my dad (my mom was too busy trying to keep things calm at her school), I started calling friends in New York. Busy signal after busy signal. Just as I was about to give up I got through to a friend who worked as a banker. At that moment she was hustling uptown to get away from the chaos. She sounded terrified and I stayed on the phone with her for a while to keep her company as she walked. I don't remember the specifics of the conversation, but I do remember being so grateful to hear her voice. After I finished talking to her I sent emails to the friends I could not reach by phone, said a prayer that I would hear from them and went to Jenny's apartment.

On my way to Jenny's apartment I saw faculty from the Divinity School standing outside the main building sobbing, holding each other. Then I ran into a campus police officer who asked me to identify myself as a Harvard student. Shocked, I did, and it was that that moment that I realized that our open, peaceful, society was no longer. Campus police were posted all around the edges of the University -- which was strange because we usually never saw them.

Later that night, emails trickled in from all my friends. One had barely escaped the collapse of the Towers. And all that night I lay awake listening to the F-16s patrolling the skies over Boston.

The alarm on my radio had just gone off, instead of music I heard a woman screaming that a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. Two seconds later my phone rang and I knew whatever was happening was bad and I needed to turn on the tv. As I ran to the living room my friend told me what she knew so far.

My memory is a bit fuzzy now but I believe the first image I saw, when the TV came on, was the second plane flying into the tower and it felt like someone had knocked all the air out of me as I dropped to the couch and just watched.

I had gone to New York to see the U.S. Open and stayed at my parents' apartment in Battery Park City which is located a few blocks from the WTC. We can see the buildings from the kitchen window and when the first plane struck I thought initially it was a sightseeing plane, despite the huge scale of the flames.

After the towers fell and the white dust settled and blanketed everything on the ground, around the neighborhood you see pieces of financial sheets and an occasional shoe. We stayed for a few days until we were told by the National Guard that we had to evacuate the neighborhood since it was a crime scene.

It was a Tuesday, a workday for me, a school day for my four boys. After my shower, I went out to the kitchen and turned on the morning news, something I had done habitually since the Oklahoma City bombing. Out on the west coast, important news often breaks while we’re still asleep, so I always turn on the news first thing, to see what’s happened over night.

It was about 6:30 in the morning, and the picture on the small tv screen on my kitchen table showed burning towers that were immediately recognizable as the World Trade Center. My first thought was that I was seeing a commercial for another bad disaster movie. Then, I heard tense voices describing what was going on, and the view shifted to the morning news anchor who calmly explained that two jetliners had flown into the WTC towers. The image on the screen wasn’t fiction, wasn’t the twisted imaginings of some screen writer -- it was real.

My oldest boys were in college, and getting ready for the drive to Cal State Long Beach. I went to their bedroom and told them what had happened, and they followed me out to the living room, where I turned on the other television. We stood there together for a few minutes, mesmerized by what we were seeing, disbelieving. When the news anchor announced the report of a fire at the Pentagon, I couldn’t imagine how the two events could be related.

My older boys left for class, and soon after, my middle son’s friends arrived to walk to school with him. They sat on the couch together while my son ate his breakfast, watching the news, too young to fully understand the scope of what was occurring. When the first tower fell, we all stared at the television screen in disbelief. How could a tower made of concrete and steel just collapse?

Soon, the boys were off to school, and I got in my car to drive to work at the Lamoreaux Justice Center in Orange, listening to the news as I drove. When I arrived, everyone in my office was talking about the events back East, of course. My co-workers all seemed a bit stunned as they prepared to go up to the courtrooms where the day’s calendar of cases would be heard. One woman was very emotional, and asked the question we must have all been thinking: how can we just go about our day like nothing’s happened?

More bad news followed, each event adding to the horror and disbelief of the day. At lunch time, I walked across the street to The Block, hoping that getting away from the news reports and wandering through some of the stores would bring a feeling of normalcy back to my day. But all of the shops were closed. Most people, it seemed, weren’t going about their day as usual.

I lived near the approach to John Wayne airport, but that evening as I drove home, there was no line of jets moving slowly across the sky. According to the news, there were no civilian planes in the air anywhere in U.S. air space. The grounding of all flights was an idea that would have been unthinkable before that day, but I immediately understood the wisdom and the necessity of that extreme measure. How else could we be sure to stop the terror from continuing?

During my drive home from work a week later, when I saw a jet flying overhead on final approach to the airport, I smiled with joy. Life was finally getting back to normal.

I was living in Seattle. My parents were living in Portland. My father was suffering from end stage prostate cancer. My younger brother was an airline pilot for NW.

A friend called me shortly after 7:00 to tell me of the first attack. I called my sister-in-law to find out where my brother was. In the air, flying from Japan to Seattle, past the point of no return was the report from her. Then I had to call my father, wake him up and tell him what was going on. Fortunately it looked like his only son was safe.

I was living in Hawaii with my parents and awoke to my mom yelling at my dad to turn the TV on. I was in 8th grade, a little naive 13-year-old, thinking the world is perfect and everyone is invincible. Because of the time difference, we were 6 hours behind the east coast, so when the attack actually happened we were sound asleep. So when we woke up and turned on the news, it was all live footage of the aftermath and replays of the planes crashing and the Twin Towers falling.

At that point, the country knew that it was a terrorist attack and not just a fluke accident. I had awoken with a horrendous stomach ache, worse than I've ever had, and when I told my mom she responded with, "Now Paige, everyone has a stomach ache today. Go get ready for school." Needless to say, that put me in my place.

I felt like I was in an eerie, nightmare-filled haze -- going through the motions of school and trying to comprehend what had happened to all the poor people on the East Coast. As time went on, my stomach started hurting more. Eventually I called my mom to come pick me up and take me home, and as we were lying on the couch watching the 9/11 news footage, I doubled over in pain and screamed. My mom took me to the hospital and the doctors determined I had appendicitis and my appendix had burst. I spent the next week and a half in the hospital, watching the footage over and over and over again, since that was the only thing on TV.

That day, my mom says, was the worst of her life. Not only did our wonderful country come under the worst attack in its history, but her pride and joy, her only daughter, underwent major surgery.

Ten Years After

When the planes hit the towers, I was living in Seattle. As soon as I caught my breath, I made a plane reservation to fly to New York. As hundreds fled, I was heading home. I wasn’t even sure what I would do there, but New York was the only place I wanted to be.

I soon realized that after living on the west coast for over 2 decades, many of my family and friends had left the city and I had no idea where I was going to stay. I made a few calls and only came up with one secured two night stay at a friend of a friend.

I wasn’t able to get to NY for two weeks. When I finally arrived, I learned that the decision just changed from rescue to recovery. It was determined that the only bodies that would be found would be dead ones.

I contacted the Red Cross, Salvation Army and any other organization that could tell me where to report for volunteer duty. I soon found out that the volunteer force was over stocked with people like me who felt helpless enough to give a hand. I was told that the only people accepted to volunteer are those that lived in the tri state area, New York, Connecticut and New Jersey. I would not be deterred and began to follow one lead after another.

The first place I found was way uptown to a warehouse that was donated by the city and turned into a kitchen. It was here that some of the best chefs in New York donated their time and resources to cook for the firefighters and police that were working 24 hour shifts to restore what they could of their crippled city. My job was to chop vegetables for them. Although I was happy to help out, it wasn’t where I wanted to be. I was determined to find a volunteer gig that would take me to lower Manhattan. However, as I chopped the onions and carrots, I began to hear stories. The stories that never made the press or the nightly news.

The first one came from a woman who lived a few blocks from the crash. She and her family made hundreds of sandwiches and gave them out to those who were wondering around her neighborhood aimlessly for hours after the crash. There was a young man who brought people to his apt and helped them contact family and friends to let them know that they were safe. Just before I left my stint in the warehouse I noticed this very old man who came every day and chopped for hours and hours. One day as he left I noticed that on his jacket was the emblem of a retired fire chief. He never spoke to anyone, just chopped.

Eventually, I was led to Ninos. Ninos used to be a restaurant that was now closed to the public and became a respite for those who worked on “the pile." Ninos was located one block away from the site of what was the World Trade Center. There were always two cops stationed by the front door keeping vigil and keeping out anyone who wanted an autograph from those “heros” inside.

When I inquired about where to sign up for a volunteer shift, I was pointed to a long line that snaked around blocks and blocks where eager volunteers waited for hours just to be assigned to one 4 hour shift a week. I knew that I didn’t come three thousand miles to stand in a line, so I walked to the front of the line, approached the guy with the clip board and told him I was ready for my shift, and just like that I was in. My four hour shift turned in 12 hour shifts that lasted 6 weeks.

I was game for anything and was immediately assigned the task of doling out grub to the long lines of rescues workers before they headed out of the safe mecca that was Ninos. I learned that the food that was served here was donated by some of the best restaurants in New York. I realized that most of the people I served could never afford to eat steaks and lobsters that they were served here. As the people came through, I asked them who they were and where they were off to that day. I could not respond when they answered “identifying body parts”, “on bomb watch” and “trips to the morgue”. I noticed a group of what looked like Canadian Mounties looking a bit confused. I went over to them and asked if they needed help. They told me that they were here to attend funerals. They had never been to New York before and came down on their own dime to assure that all the funerals of cops and firefighters who were killed by the crash were well attended. They weren’t going to see a show on Broadway or to walk through Central Park; instead, they were attending four funerals a day for people they never met and felt honored to be doing it.

My days there turned into weeks and the stories kept coming. I stood next to a woman one day on the food server line. She told me that when the planes hit, she walked from Manhattan to Brooklyn. She told me she was able to make that walk because she was a cancer survivor and the only way she could stop the nausea of her chemo was to take walks for miles until the nausea stopped. She told me those walks saved her life, then and now by walking across the Brooklyn Bridge to safety.

There were young beautiful women serving food and comforting others wearing angel wings and warm smiles. And then there was Astro. Astro was a three year old Golden Retriever owned by Jack Peyton. Jack was a regular guy who took his sweet dog Astro to every elementary school within 100 miles of Manhattan. Astro and Jack visited the classrooms, just so Astro could sit in front of the classroom next to a kid who lost a parent in the crash. These kids told him who died and how sad they were. When they were done, they thanked Astro and Astro shook their hand. Stories like Astro never made it to 60 Minutes but will be remembered by each of those kids who shared their story and by me.

We heard that Astro was coming to Ninos and began to set aside the juiciest steaks for him. When he finally came, Jack told us that Astro couldn’t eat red meat because it makes him hyper. Too hyper to sit still for hours in front of classrooms. Astro lived on kibble for over two months. I still cry when I think of him and Jack.

After a week of serving my shifts, I became friendly with the cops who spent their breaks at Nino’s. One day Sam, a police chief asked me where I was from. I told him I was a New Yorker living in Seattle. He invited me to go inside the heavily protected fences of the “towers”. I brought along a camera and eagerly awaited an opportunity to take some pictures, but when I got there, I saw Rabbis and Priests and Ministers and Chiefs and Shaman praying with families for the bodies that still lay under the rubble. I put my camera away when I realized I was at a gravesite and not a historical monument. Sam encouraged me to take some shots, and I did. Sam took me to the site six weeks later just before I left NY. The difference was astounding, but people were still praying.

Regarding my housing situation, after word got out to long lost relatives and high school friends, places were offered to me that were amazing. I spent two weeks in a two story penthouse on top of the world on the Upper East Side. I was on Riverside drive for a week, Soho for two and my last week was spent in Chelsea.

Once a New Yorker, always a New Yorker

I moved to NYC right after the attacks ... I lived in Chelsea but have been down to the site dozens of times. I have many friends in NYPD and NYFD. So many people lost. My friends who were first responders are sick and get no help ... I don't know what's worse, surviving and being ill or having gone down in rescue.

I live in Las Vegas now, but this has left an impression on me that will NEVER go away. I feel as though NYC will always be a part of me and this really hit hard. Ten years seems like ten months. It is still too fresh.

It still feels like yesterday and not 10 years ago. It was a beautiful late summer day. Sun shining. Mild temperatures. Children back in school. School year and commuting routines starting to get back to normal. Yankees and Mets fighting for playoff spots. Jets and Giants off to another season of aggravating football fans in the NYC area.

I was at work in Newark when the radio announced that there was a fire in one of the twin towers. I went over to a window in the employee lounge facing lower Manhattan, looked at all the smoke and thought that is one heck of a fire, much worse then the one from the early 90s. I went back to my office to listen to the news reports and do some work and it wasn't long until the radio was announcing that the second tower was on fire. I initially thought that some debris from the first tower hit the second but when I walked back into the lounge someone said he saw a second plane hit the building. I thought that was impossible, that is must have been an explosion from the first plane, until I noticed that the second fire was many floors lower and realized that it was an attack. I don't know why, but I do remember replying "what do you think?" when someone wondered how both buildings could burn. After that all heck broke loose.

As a lot of people in my office came in via the PATH train from the World Trade Center, and weren't in yet. Many of us had friends and family downtown & were pretty freaked. My brother worked on Rector St at the time (across from the Twin towers) and my sister was upset that she couldn't reach him (turned out his office was evacuated right away and he was already in Brooklyn when the first tower fell). I called my wife at work (she didn't even know anything had happened) and told her what happened. I could see people on the roofs of buildings lower than ours staring at lower Manhattan. And I of course saw all the smoke pouring out of the towers.

After the second plane, people in the office starting getting nervous -- we knew then that it was deliberate. We didn't have a TV and the internet was worthless (I thought it was ironic that somebody watching events on TV thousands of miles away had a better view than those of us just a few miles away). Many of us starting congregating in the employee lounge which had a good view of downtown.

Some of us started getting calls from the lobby from later arriving workers saying they weren't allowed up. Apparently we were in lockdown. The radio was reporting all sorts of rumors, the Pentagon was on fire, the Mall was on fire, the Capitol was about to be bombed etc and we all had that "What the heck is going on?!" look.

When the first tower fell, the room went silent. I remember looking out the window as the smoke cleared for a bit and seeing just the one tower and thinking "How odd to only have one twin tower." After the second tower fell, the lounge was packed but silent, except for the radio and some people crying. I remember one manager with his head in his hands and a completely devastated look on his face. We could hear the fire engines roaring past our building headed to the city (I guess). Soon we were evacuated and I remember standing in the street in a suit, sweating and thinking "now what?"

NJ Transit was a mess, but I was able to get ride(s) home. For the first stretch, we put on the car radio and heard the recall of all off-duty NYPD and FDNY personnel. We turned that off real quick and rode in silence.

The rest of the day was relatively uneventful. As we got further away from the city, I could see traffic stacked up at the Staten Island crossings, as the bridges were closed. There were tons of emergency vehicles (fire, police, army etc) streaming up north on the Garden State Parkway.

It wasn't until I got home sometime in the early afternoon and was able to put on a TV did I see what everybody else had been seeing for hours.

I remember when the twin towers were finished in the mid 70s and seeing them daily when walking to school. In the 1990s, my wife and I lived in Brooklyn and had a beautiful view of the towers from our kitchen and bedroom windows. The towers were a part of my entire life until 9/11. Downtown hasn't looked look right from a distance since the attacks.

I was in San Diego at a client site when my cell phone rang at 5:45 in the morning. By the time I woke up and got the phone, whoever was calling had gone to voice mail.

It was my son, who lived in New York about four blocks from ground zero. It turned out to be my son, who started out "Hi Dad, just wanted to let you know I'm Ok", and I thought "gee, that's nice Josh, but at 5:45 in the morning ---". He continued, "In spite of what those idiots have done to the Trade Center Towers." I immediately pushed re-dial and flipped on the TV. The rest, as they say, is history.

The submission page reminds me of the Alan Jackson song that came out shortly after September 11th. “Where were you when the world stopped turning ... where were you on that September day”.

Living in New York City, it’s a unique situation to have started 2001 working on the 64th floor of Tower 2. I had worked at Morgan Stanley since 1999. I made it through Y2K and bomb threats during that turnover. I was laid off in May 2001, I didn’t know what a blessing that would be at the time. By September, I had been working at Martha Stewart Living for three months. Our offices were on the West Side Highway and 26th Street.

For me that Tuesday didn’t begin like any other day. I woke up early ? 6am early ? took my time getting ready; My boss wasn’t going to be there. She and two others from my department were on a flight to Detroit out of Newark. She wouldn’t know if I was late.

As I prepared to make my shoe selection a voice popped into my head ? wear comfortable shoes, you may have to do a lot of walking today. I argued with myself, no, I won’t. Why? My boss isn’t even in the office, besides I have cute new strappy heeled sandals I want to wear! Again: WEAR COMFORTABLE SHOES. But it’s HOT... I want to wear sandals. Again: WEAR COMFORTABLE SHOES. I finally compromised with what I thought was just another random voice in my head and chose comfortable sandals. It was after 8 a.m. when I headed for the subway not knowing that when I returned above ground 30 minutes later, life would be different.

I got off the subway at 23rd & 8th Street where I ran into the corner grocery store to grab something for lunch. Inside, I overheard that a plane had hit the Trade Center, I thought who was stupid enough to not see the building. Back outside I was waiting for the M23 bus with several coworkers to get to our office. Between getting on the buss and arriving at our office 4 blocks later, the second plane had hit.

Once we reached our building, we were stopped by FBI agents and required to show our IDs. They weren’t sure what the next target might be. Our office was on the 9th floor; It was a clear view to downtown and a clear view of smoke billowing from the Towers. Seeing that smoky skyline against the clear blue sky made this real -- it wasn't an accident.

The next few hours we were glued to the TV. Phone service was spotty. I called and woke my mother who lived in Colorado, told her that I was okay but turn on the news. My boss who had been on a plane was finally able to make contact. They had made it safely but weren’t sure when or how they’d get home. The ended up driving to New York City from Detroit.

We were scared. Emotions were raw. No one knew what to do. I couldn’t sit at my desk or with others watching the news. I went to see a friend at her desk, with windows on the south side of the building. It was just before 10 a.m. Knowing it was a moment in history, we took photos. I turned to go grab a Kleenex, I couldn’t quit crying when I heard someone say “They’re falling! They’re falling!” Everyone ran back to the windows. We watched in horror as a dust cloud enveloped downtown. Someone still had their camera, catching the collapse of the Tower, the collapse of my old office.

At that point panic started to set in. How would we get home? What was next? Who did I know still there? Subways were shut down. We were going to have to walk. My apartment was at the very northern tip of the island and I worked 13 miles south. I ended up walking only five miles that day, in what I thought were comfortable shoes.

My coworker and I walked up 10th Avenue to a gathering point for members of our religious congregation. On our way, we were part of the pilgrimage escaping lower Manhattan. We passed people on the street covered with ash, dirt and debris. Women barefoot, carrying their high heels. Street vendors handing out water to anyone who needed it. We passed the Lincoln Tunnel and cars at a standstill.

Once at our gathering place, we started emailing and calling people to see who we could account for. I didn’t want to go home and be alone. One of the downfalls of living by yourself. I still have most of the emails from that day and their responses. I also have emails from 2002. Memories from 9-11 now sit in a scrapbook in my closet. It’s not one of those things you pull out for company. But it was a way I could deal with the tragedy and loss of the day.

In the years since, there have been anniversaries where I felt alone in remembering. I usually listen to my old favorite NYC radio station because they get it. When I brought this up with my LA friends they explained by the time they had woken up, it was already over. It happened someonewhere else. To many, it wasn’t a big deal. And it’s hard to explain the emotion that is tied to that day, when someone asks, “Where were you?”

I was getting ready for work. The phone rang. It was my friend Mary. She said "Turn on the television, a plane hit one of the Trade Center towers." I turned on the TV. We were talking and speculating about whether it was a tourist's Cessna or some such thing. As I was watching I saw a jetliner go into the tower. I said "It is amazing that they caught it on video" and she said "No, Richard, that is a live picture." She was right.

Haven't you ever seen "Independence Day?" The flick with aliens and Will Smith? I haven't seen the movie in a long while, but it's images were the only ones I could remember on 9/11. My sixth grade class room was huddled in the corner, watching the vintage TV. I loved movies growing up, and the images on the TV looked fake.

The school intercom buzzed. We were rushed to the school auditorium. A faculty member announced that all classes were cancelled. "Go home. Tell you parents you love them."

I rode the bus home. Hugged my mother waiting for me on the porch and sat with her, watching the same news anchor I'd seen in the classroom.

I was a 22 yr old flight attendant living in chicago away from my family in California. I woke up to my roommate banging on my door to turn on the news...I thought it was a recording but then realized it was live ....then I saw the second plane hit. I sat on my bed crying...confused...and in shock. I will never forget that day.

I don't know which story to tell you ... the one where my two-year-old is the one who shouted "Look Mommy, an airplane hit a building!!" as if it were the greatest action movie of all time; that when I dropped him off at daycare that morning, I cried, with all of the other parents dropping off their kids, as I explained to my daycare person that I worked for a disaster response hospital and may not be home on time that night; sitting in the full Q parking lot at Fresno State with everyone else still in our cars listening to the radio for news?

The full realization that those that died were also parents who dropped their kids off at daycare or school like I had just done, and now, those kids were orphans? Those memories are indelibly stamped in my mind, and can bring tears to my eyes even as I write this. The one memory I learned the most from: going to Psych Ethics class, where my professor came in, told us that some things were more important than class, and turned on the news on the classroom TVs. Almost every other professor refused us that right to know what was going on or assuage our need for knowledge. I have never forgotten that lesson, nor that professor.

I was in 6th grade on September 11th. I was getting ready for a school day when I came out to see my mother staring at the TV with tears streaming down her face. I understood that something terribly wrong had happened, but I was not mature enough to comprehend the meaning behind the tragedy. Why did the planes go into the building? Why were we being attacked? Did we do something wrong?

My mom dropped me off at school and there was an eerie hush around campus. Teachers were talking off to the side in small groups, administrators were whispering to each other on their hand-helds. As I started classes that day, some teachers refused to even bring up the disasters, as they felt it wasn't necessary to traumatize 11 year olds.. but I specifically remember my history teacher making us watch the news. As a history buff, he obviously understood the significance of this day and he wanted us to know everything about what happened.

Today, I am 21 years old, and over the past ten years I have definitely seen the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. Several of my friends have been called to fight overseas for us. My mother's best friend's husband had been in the reserves for several years, working as a pilot for American Airlines. He has recently been called back to fly in Afghanistan. The guy I'm dating recently left to serve overseas, and my best friend's husband is doing the same. I am old enough to understand the significance of 9/11 now, and it chills me to the bone when I see pictures from that day. I am so thankful for the people in the military, who leave their loved ones behind, to serve for us overseas. Their sacrifice makes me proud to be an American.

After watching the TV coverage for an hour before school I rushed to work where I tried to make sense of the tragedy to my students. My classes were half full of students, but the discussions were full of questions and reactions.

I remember the "moment of silence" lasting a really long time, but the students being very dialed in. Several students had friends and family in NY so they were frantically trying to get more information about them. I just wondered how our way of life would change as a result of the attack.

I'm a Dutchman living in the south of the Netherlands. At the time of the terror attacks on the twin towers an American lady with whom I became good friends with lived just two streets away from my home. That day, september 11, 2001, I was out for some shoppings and I returned home just a few minutes before 3 pm, Dutch time. When I opened the front door I heard the phone ringing and at the other end of the line was my lady friend yelling "Bert put on your TV, something terrible has just happened in New York."

When I put on my TV I saw the pictures which showed smoke coming from one of the towers, meanwhile my lady friend telling me that a plane had crashed into the tower. All I could say was "That pilot must have been drunken, how the heck can a drunken pilot get onto a plane and fly it?" While we were still talking on the phone we saw on TV the second plane hit the other tower. From that moment on it was clear to me that this was not an accident, these planes were crashing into the towers on purpose.

I am a full grown 6 feet tall man, been in the militay and I have seen some nasty things. But I will never forget the images of that devastating act of terrorism.

On the morning of September 11, I was getting ready for work, when my Mother who lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, called and asked, "Are you watching the news?" I said no and she said, "Turn on the news!"

Hearing the terror in her voice I asked, "Why?!" While I ran to the TV and turned on the news. The next thing I heard was my Mother saying while sobbing, "America has just been attacked." My Mother is an extremely proud, strong woman, (whom I've seen cry twice in my life), and to hear the pain in her voice, I knew we were in the midst of a catastrophe...

Reminds me of the generation of when President Kennedy was shot, every American can remember exactly what they were doing on that day. Now my generation will always recall exactly what they were doing on September 11, 2001...

I was driving to work in Downtown LA and a friend called me on my cellphone. Our home office is based in NY and she had gotten a call that an airplane had crashed into the WTC and that since our office was one of the high rises in Downtown LA the building management was going to evacuate the building and we were all told to go home.

I returned home and turned on the television right as the tower began to fall. I was in shock and couldn't believe this was real. I recall sitting there for hours watching it and not believing it could be true. It was so surreal.

I was a freelance journalist covering the telecommunications industry, and I woke up in a bad mood that day. I lived in Hackettstown, NJ, about 60 miles and 90 minutes by train from New York, and I had wanted to go into the city and cover a hearing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, which met in lower Manhattan. The industry had been imploding all summer, and one by one, my clients had told me they had no freelance money, even for a good bankruptcy story.

I went instead to a local gym to work out. As usual, there was a tv monitor in the gym, with no sound. I finished my workout, went in to shower, and when I came out of the shower, everyone had stopped working out and was looking at the monitor. The sound was on now, but it didn't register. One of the World Trade Center towers was on the screen, smoke pouring out of it. "What happened?" I asked.

"A plane hit the World Trade Center," someone said.

"A small plane?" I asked.

"No," the person next to me said. "An airliner."

Just then, as I looked at the screen, the second airliner struck the second tower.

I drove home and found my wife glued to the tv. My two high-school-age daughters were in school. Though we were all a long way from New York, I wanted them home. I wanted my family around me. I don't remember whether they got home on their own, or whether one of us went to get them, but I do remember they got home. As I watched the terrible events unfold on tv, I remembered that I'd wanted to be in lower Manhattan that day, and would have been coming up out of the subway station, probably at Rector Street, about the time the first plane hit.

When we woke up on 9/11, the news on my radio was that Michael Jordan was about to come out of retirement. By the time we were headed to work, my husband and I heard the news that a plane had hit one of the twin towers in NYC. Even though the radio announcer (erroneously) said it was a small commuter plane, both of us said, "that doesn't sound like an accident." Arriving at work, my co-worker had already heard about the 2nd plane and was trying desperately to get on any internet newsite (which proved to be impossible over the course of the day).

Over the next few hours rumors and truths were interspersed with what little info we could get from the internet (we did not have access to TV). Finally, my co-worker hit upon the idea of an internet radio station. We listened to the announcer describe what he was watching on CNN. But sometimes this news didn't provided what we needed to know. We had one faculty coming back from Maine through Logan that morning - we had no idea what flight he was on (he was supposed to be on a later flight). We had other faculty coming in to tell us that the Mall in DC was on fire (this turned out to be the Pentagon strike, but who knew what was really happening).

My mom called to tell me that Downtown Chicago was being evacuated. At the time, my father-in-law worked in the Sears Tower as the head transmitter engineer for the local PBS station - I knew he wouldn't be leaving anytime soon. Our day was spent hunting for news, praying for those lost, and wondering what was going to happen the next day.

That night, looking up in the central Illinois sky - even there, in the middle of the country, you could tell nothing was flying - the skies were empty but for the stars.

The next day, I gave birth to my daughter (2 weeks early) and promptly shut the TV off for the next 4 weeks. Most of the images of that day are new to me - I've yet to see any of the footage. Since that day, I discovered that I had a distant cousin - Michael Cammarata - a FDNY firefighter - who lost his life in the South Tower collapse. I've also struggled to try to explain to my daughter what was happening the day she was born. A nation coming together to morn is the best I can do.

I had just gotten a job in the Silicon Valley and was in Blacksburg, VA to handle my move to CA. My wife and 6 month old daughter were back in Santa Clara. I had sold/given away my stuff and was on my way to leave the car to a transportation service and had to stop to listen. I had a noon flight on that Tuesday (i am sure it was a Tuesday), from Roanoke, stopping at Dulles!

I went to my friend's house and stayed watching TV all day. I will never forget the news page in CNN: "America Under Attack!". I felt this was exactly the case. I was very scared and assuming that more attacks were on the way.

Grounding the planes was the right thing to do, but the thing is, we had no idea when they were going to release them. On Friday I got tired of waiting and decided to drive home. I still remember how scared my first hotel receptionist in Tennessee was when I said my name was Faruk. I quickly added "I am from Brazil". And, clearly relieved, she said: "God bless you!"

Most of us Brooklynites were from from some place else - Ohio, Italy, Washington, Florida, etc. I was from California, my wife was from Brazil. In one night, we all were made New Yorkers for life, whether we intended to be that or not. It's like the City absorbed us into its organism.

We were 100s of Brooklynites - strangers - standing shoulder to shoulder across the river, all silently feeling and thinking in one never before heard chorus. The surreal mass of dark Manhattan was a black ghost ship. Someone had pulled out the City's veins and arteries. It was a dead island.

There are few moments where all the divisions between you and the people in your neighborhood instantly become forgotten. Not that there was a grouphug, and we certainly didnt suddenly fall in love with each other. But everyone in my neighborhood seemed disinterested in thinking about themselves, their careers, material goods, partying etc. We were 100s of strangers on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade sharing a bizarre artery of pure, undiluted fear, loss, shock and tears. It became vividly clear that New Yorkers are as heartened and caring as anyone else, despite our rough surfaces, and that's a bizarre enough notion alone.

Conversation didn't seem needed on the Promenade, in the bars, on the streets. We didnt really acknowledge each other. We remained aliens as always from each other despite sharing the same neighborhood. But there was one big difference - you knew that everyone else was doing, feeling and thinking the same exact thing you were.

It had been a long day and night out on the streets, in the bars, restaurants and on the Brooklyn promenade watching a lifeless city of of sirens and lights stitching their way through the hulking monoliths of dark skycrapers.

Brooklyn had gone dark by noon that day from the smoke. Neighbors passed by each other on the sidewalks through the eerie sooty thick fog, all hidden by masks and glasses . My wife and I and friends walked a couple miles to the local Red Cross to give blood through the black stark silent air.

We tried to keep it together along the way, but the unspoken fear was what is going to come out of the sky next and where?

I was asleep in my bed when my roommate pounded on my door. "My mother called", he said, " she says to turn on the news, something has happened." I awoke, heard his voice and thought it was nothing. I grumbled back a half asleep "OK" and then rolled over and prepared to go back to sleep. As he walked away to go turn on the TV, I caught him say, "...all air traffic in the US is grounded." Immediately I dismissed the claim, never would the airlines allow that.

In my house, about two miles from LAX, it's a given that every two minutes during the morning rush hour you can hear a plane on approach. As I laid in bed, contemplating what my roommate said, I waited to hear that sound...I heard one...and I was relieved...then I waited for the next...silence...a much too long silence...five minutes...ten minutes...maybe 15 minutes passed before the next jet, but I knew something was wrong...

Getting up so late in the day, I was greeted by replays of both towers tumbling down.

The odd part of it all is that what I remember the most of that day was the weather in LA. On the Westside it was that weird, random broken low level fog. With one block in the sun, another block in the fog...too strange...and I thought during my drive to work if there was some odd simile to be drawn between the weather and the events of that day...those who had survived in the sun, and those who were lost in the fog...

My phone was ringing as I was getting ready for work. "Turn on the TV, and talk with you later," a friend said, hanging up. I turned on the TV and could hardly grasp what I was seeing. The second plane was just flying into the second building. I called my son, at his job on a golf course, and we tried to understand what was happening. I called work: people were there, so I got on the freeway. Big trucks carrying long steel cylinders were traveling beside me. Were those missel silos, being removed from the L.A. Port? When I got to work, so many people were calling in. The dean of our college came by and was telling everyone to go home, since we still didn't know what was happening, other than our country was under attack. It was all very surreal seeming.

Later that day I went out and purchased Bob Dylan's latest album, Love and Theft, which came out that day. When I listened at home, it seemed both comforting and disturbingly prophetic.

Other than that, there were no words. The day was surreal, horrific and heartbreaking. Friends and I exchanged calls, watching television until we were numb, turning it off and then on again.

My window has a view of the Port of Los Angeles. Not long before, the Vincent Thomas Bridge had been lit. Planes flew over, large and small, and helicopters, and the Good Year blimp and several others.

For weeks after that, when I looked out my window, nothing was flying over the harbor.

I knew a threshold in modern history had been crossed, and we were entering a whole new era.

I was at my grandparents' place in Slovakia. It was already afternoon there. I and my grandmother were chatting in the kitchen, waiting for my grandfather to come home from work. When he finally showed up, he begun telling us about an accident in New York he had heard about on the radio on his way home.

Apparently, an airplane had collided with one of the Twin Towers. When we turned on the TV to learn more, there were two buildings on fire. Confused, disturbed and scared, we sat there in front of the TV in an eerie, uninterrupted silence for hours. That night, we were all Americans.

September 11th in Los Angeles began with grief. This was the day of my grandmother's funeral. Sleep had not come easily. Just as I closed my eyes, the telephone rang. My sister-in-law was calling from New York City. She yelled, "Turn on your TV NOW", in a voice that was indescribable.

I tuned in just as the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center. The call was the last contact from New York City for what seemed to be an eternity. In the middle of the frenzy of trying to reach family and friends, some that we knew worked in or near the towers.

I remembered that today was the day I had to bury my grandmother. Family members, many from out of state, had traveled to Los Angeles to console us our grief. Who could have imagined that on that day we would also need each other to lessen the grief of a greater tragedy. There was eerie silence at the gravesite, broken only by the frightening roar of a fighter plane patrolling the sky. When my grandmother was laid to rest, so was life as we knew it before 9-11.

I was in that early morning twilight sleep, when your mind slowly becomes cognizant of the light streaming through the curtains and the muffled sounds beyond your bedroom door. It was in those precious moments before the alarm went off that my mom was suddenly in my room, suddenly screaming about a plane crashing, about trying to get a hold of my aunt, her sister, who worked in the Deutsche Bank building across the street.

It was the second day of my senior year of high school.

I sat at the edge of my bed, combing my hair, watching the footage of the first plane. And then, just as suddenly as my mom had delivered the news about the first plane, there was a second plane and I witnessed in real time as it crashed through all that steel and glass and human life. In that instant, I became keenly aware that this wasn't just some horrible accident caused by malfunctioning mechanics in a jet engine, but a deliberate and calculated attack.

My parents, because they had always been notorious sticklers for perfect attendance records, or perhaps because they hadn't realized, like many, the magnitude of that morning's events, still drove me to school and dropped me off. I sat in second period as my Spanish teacher rattled off verbs while footage streamed silently from channel 1 on the wall mounted TV above the chalk board. We shuffled through the halls until reports came in that downtown LA had received unspecified threats. Then, parents (including my own), came to pick up their children from our small private school a few miles northeast of L.A.'s own World Trade Center, hoping that the reports had been wrong and we could continue to remain at a comfortable geographic distance from whatever was happening on the other side of the country.

My mom's cousin finally tracked down my aunt in a hospital in Garden City, NJ late that night. She had been lucky. As my aunt had tried to navigate the blinding smoke and debris outside her building (which was severely damaged by one of the falling towers and eventually torn down), a man recognized her. They rode the Long Island Rail Road together every morning, she getting on a few stops after him. She was disoriented, her corneas scratched and her vision blurred. He grabbed her arm and lead her onto a ferry where he stayed with her, making sure her name got on a list of survivors.

A decade later, it's still difficult to process how that morning changed us. Within my own insular family, my aunt's emotional scars are still ever-present, the tiny flag that she still pins to her jacket serving as a contrast red, white and blue reminder of that morning.

My sister, Helen called and said 'turn on the tv.' My daughter, Molly, called from high school. 'What does this mean, Mom?' I immediately call my Dad, a navy WWII vet, 'What does this mean, Dad?' His reply: 'It is an act of war.' My heart sank. We gathered as a family to watch as the rest of the day unfolded. Shock and disbelief, feelings of such sorrow for those who lost their loved ones. Life will never be the same.

I was 15, hanging out in the library with friends before class started for they day. One of our teachers came into the library and asked the librarian to turn the TV; she'd heard on the radio that a plane had hit a building in NYC. We all crowded around the TV, curious to see what had happened. I remember thinking, 'how is someone that bad of a pilot that they miss one of the tallest buildings in the world?' and giggling with my friend about it.

Moments later, we watched live on TV as the second plane hit the other tower, and our giggles vanished in an instant. Suddenly, there were tears, and a lot of hushed whispering, because we realized that this wasn't an accident...

My uncle worked in one of the Towers. As I watched the buildings crumble to the ground, I remember crying and rushing to the school office, trying to get in touch with my mother to see if she knew anything. Of course it was far too soon... we wouldn't know for another six hour that he had survived, walking all the way back to Long Island.

At work my boss came in and frantically asked where my daughter lived. I said 'Maryland why?' 'Because we are under attack and they have shut down the White House.'

My Daughter lives in the fly zone. My legs gave out. I called home and told my honey to turn the TV on and call Frances and to keep calling until he got her voice. I still get emotional over it. I cant see 9/11 films or memorabilia without the tears. Our country changed that day and not for the better.

I was at the summit of Fourth Mountain of the Barren Mountain Range within the 100-mile Wilderness of Maine when I heard the news in the early afternoon that gorgeous day. I had just arrived at the mountain's crest, having completed more than 95% of the Appalachian Trail, a nearly 2,200 mile hiking path along the Appalachian Mountains, as a New York City police officer on vacation was repeating news reports, blow by blow, from his tiny radio to a small crowd of my hiking companions.

I was stunned and shocked for about an hour until I realized that, given the myriad terrorist attacks of the previous decades, such an event was bound to happen in the USA one day. I anticipated that it would make many Americans more paranoid, racially intolerant and religiously fervent for years to come and it saddens me that such cultural behavior transpired and dragged us into two unnecessary, seemingly endless wars.

'Where were you on 9/11?' I was fine, but my husband's experience was one that few in our family will ever forget.

Tom was traveling frequently for work those days, so when he left early that morning for a flight to an obscure hospital in Pennsylvania via Dulles in DC, I barely glanced at the itinerary he'd posted on our bulletin board.

At 8:10 or so (CST), my mother phoned to ask if I'd turned on the TV. Of course I said, the kids (Mary Frances, then 6; Joe, then 3 and Ted, not yet 2) were watching "Blue's Clues". No, she said. Turn on the news. And by the way, where's Tom off to today?

When I went into the TV room to look at his itinerary, I was still not alarmed, because then the focus was still on NY. I don't recall the time interval, but we spent the intervening minutes tracking down Tom's brother and father, who operate a discount brokerage firm on Wall Street. After making sure they were OK - traumatized, but OK - I turned back to the TV.

Because I'm sure you've heard too many of these, you don't need to hear all the details. Suffice to say, when I learned about the plane flying into the Pentagon and Flight 93 in PA, I collapsed. The kids, thankfully, were either at preschool by the time or watching cartoons with the volume turned up. Thankfully - and for too few of those anxious relatives that day - Tom finally called to say he was OK. He spent the next 3 days with my cousin, then a Wall Street Journal reporter, and his family in Silver Spring, MD. He commandeered a Ford Expedition (never a finer land yacht was ever made) from Avis and drove home in record time. Not exactly the island of Circe or the straits of Scylla and Charybdis but an odyssey nevertheless.

He came home. I almost feel selfish in saying it, considering of all those whose loved ones didn't, but he came home.

I was flying an airtanker, working a fire out of Grangeville, ID. When the twin towers were hit, all aircrafts were grounded. Later in the day, emergency aircrafts were allowed to fly and I was released back to my home base of Missoula, MT, right about sunset.

They only allowed us to fly after filing a special flight plan with the FAA, using the airplanes federal registration number. For years, in all my dealings with air traffic control, I used my tanker number, Tanker 07. I arrived near Missoula in the dark and called the control tower. It was eerily silent on the radio at that normally very busy airport and mine was the only radio call to that tower all day.

Out of habit, I reported in as "Tanker seven". The tower guy was extremely nervous, as he was only expecting a airplane of a different number. A shaky voice came over the radio, "Tanker seven, are you by chance, Nxxxx? The relief in the controller's voice was audible when I apologized for forgetting the federal number and I confirmed that my airplane was indeed Nxxxx.

The controller cleared me to land and I have never seen it so empty and quiet at a major airport before or since.

I was living in Park Slope Brooklyn with two buddies as roommates, one with whom I worked. We would BBQ and hang out on our roof deck nightly and enjoy our amazing views of lower Manhattan, wondering who was working so late in the glowing Twin Towers.

The evening of 9/10 was no exception. At 7:30 the next morning my coworker roommate and I flew to Kansas City for work and heard about the disaster when we landed.

It couldn't be - we just came from there!

Only then did I realize why I had over 20 voicemails when we landed after the 2 hour flight, as friends and family thought our plane may have been one of them. All flights canceled, we drove what was the last rental car available back to NYC, passing people across the country holding American flags on the roadsides.

We didn't see the horrendous visuals until late on 9/11 when we checked into our hotel, listening all day to the effects unfold on the car radio. We arrived to a solemn and forever changed New York City the next day. "Missing" posters with faces and descriptions were plastered everywhere. Over the following months we watched "Ground Zero" burn and smoke from our roof, now knowing all to well who worked so late in those buildings.

I was a 1st year analyst at Morgan Stanley in NYC - working on the midtown trading floor. We were in our morning meeting or just had gotten out of it when word came that a plane had hit one of the towers. I remember thinking it must have been some small recreational plane with an inexperienced pilot that just screwed up. Buzz on the floor kept getting louder and some of the senior guys put on the news on the TV in one of the conference rooms a bunch of us came in and I remember thinking the damage was a lot bigger than a small plane hitting the building.

The second plane hit a short time later and I remember one of the assistants screaming it was a second plane but a bunch of us thought it was just a second explosion of the fuel tank of the first plane or something like that... we couldn't imagine it was really a second plane... then the pentagon got hit and we were told to evacuate the building and I really started to worry... I remember thinking "holy sh!t - we are under attack".

I lived a couple blocks away and walked home with some of the other analysts I worked with and met up with my roommate and a littler later my girlfriend (now wife) and we watched the news and I remember wondering what the towers would look like once the fires were put out and wondering how do you get cranes up that high to fix something like that... it never occured to me the towers could fall.

I was in the lobby coming back from getting food or water or something when the first tower fell... I watched it fall with my hispanic doorman who didn't speak much English... we just looked at each other and didn't say anything and I went back up to my apartment and a little while later the second tower fell... the whole day was surreal... like it wasn't really happening... but then we'd go out to the roof of the building and fighter jets would be flying overhead and you could hear all the sirens....

It was going to be a glorious Indian Summer weekend in Boston, and I was planning a quick trip from Thursday to Tuesday to Duxbury to take it all in -- crisp air, blue skies, the smell of low tide, and fried clams with stomachs....my idea of heaven awaited me. A phone call over Labor Day weekend changed all that, an invitation to a party on the 8th at the home of a Producer friend with whom I had just worked on a movie.

Thinking that it might be a good opportunity to meet new contacts in the industry and to celebrate the completion of the film , and as it was called for 6:30 (I'm no night owl), I decided to postpone my weekend jaunt. I cancelled my trip. That decision saved my life. I did not get on American #11 with 92 other souls for my return trip to LA that morning as had been previously scheduled. Instead, I watched in horror as, what would have been my flight, slam into the North Tower of the WTC.

The party on Saturday was a great success, I had a wonderful time. It was a beautiful weekend in LA, and I had no regrets about not being in Boston. I could always go back to Boston, my heart's home, where I had gone to school and spent my summers since I was a child. All that weekend, I didn't give it another thought, happy in my decision to stay in Los Angeles.

Tuesday, September 11 : I woke up very early as I always do, and turned on the Today Show to get the morning news. At that moment, the reports had just started coming in that a "small" plane had crashed into the North tower of the WTC. I continued with my morning ablutions. The phone rang, it was my sister asking me if I'd seen the news about the plane. We rang off, I continued to follow the news as I made the bed and prepared breakfast. Minutes later the 2nd plane hit the South Tower. Suddenly, it wasn't just a freak accident. Suddenly, the whole game changed.

As the morning progressed, and as the horror of what was going on took hold, I went into hibernation mode -- locking myself in my house, closing the windows, hunkering down in front of the TV, calling friends in New York to see if they were all right, calling friends all over the world to tell them to turn on the TV. Who knew what was coming next and where? It was a terrifying time, I had never felt that way before or since.

The moment when it was announced that American #11 had been the aircraft that had flown into the North Tower was one of the most surreal of my life. I knew I had been scheduled to return from Boston that morning, so I raced upstairs to look at my E-ticket which confirmed that I would have indeed been on that flight had I not changed my plans. I felt a depth of despair and a depth of gratitude unlike anything I had ever felt before or since . Just short of fainting, I fell to my knees and was overcome with a primal urge to scream from the depths of my soul. Which I did. I don't know where it came from, I had no idea that I had it in me, but it was an emotion that rocked me to my core.

A friend came over to be with me, I was inconsolable. We spent the day glued to the TV -- and as each new bit of footage was released, as each new frame of the nightmare was presented, we both held on to each other as we screamed in terror, and wept in heartfelt grief.

It took many, many weeks for me to be able to get an emotional grip on the profundity of this event, both personally and as a nation. I lost a friend that day in the WTC, and I still grieve his tragic and untimely passing, as I do the loss of all that day. We lost our innocence on September 11, it was the most collectively life-changing event in our history. 10 years later, there still isn't a day that goes by when I don't think of it.

But it was a new beginning for me, and I still thank God daily for the blessing of sparing my life. Every September 11, I send an Email to once again thank that Producer for having the party when she did, for unwittingly playing such a large part in my "new" life. Before September 11, I never believed in having an angel on my shoulder, but you can bet that I know I have one now.

I was in Rotterdam, Netherlands giving a presentation when a colleague came in and told us a plane had flown into the WTC. I expected it to be a mishappen personal aircraft, but as I left the meeting to go to the airport for a flight back to London, I realized that it was in fact a terrorist attack.

I spent the ride to the airport contemplating what in the world was happening to my home country, only to arrive at the airport to see the second tower crumble, learning that the first collapse happened a few minutes before. Spent the evening back in London, trying to absorb what I was seeing on the news.

I was only in third grade that day. I was in class ... I just remember my teacher running in crying, turning on the TV and watching it. I just remember thinking "What does this mean?," because I was so young. I couldn't comprehend what had just happened.

At recess no one really talked, or played. Many students were picked up early by their parents. I remember in sixth grade sitting around with some friends and us all guessing where the terrorists were hiding. We even remade "hide and go seek" to fit the currents events.

It's so weird looking back on it. I can't believe that it's been ten years. The day it happened, I was sitting in my third grade class. Ten years after, I'll be sitting in a college lecture hall.

I will always remember where I was that first day.

It’s incredible to think that eighteen minutes can profoundly change everything that happens to you from that point onward. That’s what 9/11 did to me, to?New York, to America, and to the world as we know it. We were there, on 9/11, as close to Ground Zero as we could possibly be, while still remaining on the periphery. To some degree, I’ve been remaining on the periphery ever since.

Our apartment was located a mere five blocks from Ground Zero, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Towers. We witnessed the explosions and the collapse, paralyzed with fear and uncertain as to what we should do. Our television was in the living room, next to the solarium, which had the floor-to-ceiling World Trade Center view, so we ran back and forth between the television image and the view out our windows, the images softening to an indistinct blur between media and reality. We felt the earthquake of people fleeing the Towers, stampeding up Church Street as fast as could be imagined. My partner David and I watched the Towers collapse, and as we watched, he told me that I uttered a sound that he had never heard before or since.

Having to evacuate, I was able to reserve a room at the W hotel in Union Square, a miracle unto itself, as hotel rooms were scarce in a now isolated Manhattan. When we arrived at the W, I was told the rate was $450 per night. I asked if we could possibly get a break on the rate, as we had no clue how long we could be there, possibly for months, as we did not know the fate of our building. I was curtly informed that we were getting the discounted rate. So much for 9/11 compassion.

We owned a vacation home here in Palm Springs, and finally decided that we should be there, as far from tragedy as we could get. When we arrived in Palm Springs, we decided to check into Merv Griffin’s Givenchy Resort. Unlike New York, we were charged a very reasonable rate, and upgraded to one of their best villas -- one larger than the house we were returning to. And we were greeted upon arrival by Merv himself, who knew of our plight and could not have been more gracious. Merv was the perfect host throughout our stay, treating us to dinner that night, and I will always appreciate the kindness and compassion that he had shown to us.

We moved into our house, and lived in a numb state of shock for many, many months. We couldn’t even figure out why we were in Palm Springs -- we were supposed to be in New York, and the overlay of our lives to Palm Springs was incomprehensible to us, but there we were. And there we have stayed to this day. I do mean “there,” because “here” was New York City, a place I had lived the better part of my life, a place my friends and I had aspired to live throughout a childhood spent in its suburbs. We all had made it to Manhattan, the dream realized in various ways, but realized nonetheless. And that dream was blown to smithereens on 9/11.

II.

We held onto our New York apartment for a couple of years after 9/11, simply because I wasn’t able to sever ties to a place that was so dear to me. We finally decided it was time to give it up, and I flew back to New York to pack. One night, in what I felt was going to be the climactic moment of my trip, I went down to Ground Zero, hoping to complete the circle that had thrust me three thousand miles from a home that I was so emotionally connected to. When I got there, lights were blazing at a construction site whose purpose is still unclear to me. I felt nothing. It’s very hard to connect emotionally to something that is literally a void, as opposed to a presence. I guess that is what makes dealing with death so difficult ? there is nothing tangible to hold onto, just the memories and the loss. I felt no emotion whatsoever, and left the site to join friends for my final New York dinner. I wept that night -- not because I was leaving friends that I cared for, for I knew that I would see them all again; not because of Ground Zero, which was simply a hole in the ground; I wept because I was leaving New York, a place that was all the world for me, and I knew it would never again have my heart the way it did for my entire life before that.

The tragedy of 9/11 continues to this day, beyond the horrifying reality of those who lost loved ones, beyond the current health woes of the heroes and heroines who came bearing help and hope. A lingering tragedy is that our beloved New York and America are no longer what we thought we knew. New?York never seemed like a particularly innocent place, but, in retrospect, it was merely a child, without a lot of acknowledgment of a world beyond itself. Growing up overnight is generally not a happy way to do it, but New York has grown up now and it will never be the same. The pleasures, the parties, the glamour and the twinkling skyline have all survived, but are somehow changed forever. There is no going back, and?I?think that we will always mourn the loss of an innocence that we never even?knew?existed.

My wife and I had our first date on that day 9-11-01. I clearly remember calling and saying, "You must have seen the attacks. I know the world is falling apart around us, but do you still want to meet up and talk. Lets get away from all of this?"

So for us, that is a special day. Although destruction was happening, new life was born as we now have been together for 10 years this Sept. 11 and have two wonderful kids. For us the 9-11-01 was a great day for us and a bad day for USA.

At the time, I commuted from Long Beach to Redondo Beach and worked at 7am, so I was just getting on the road at 5:45am. At 5:46am NPR announced the first plane hitting the WTC, apparently a terrible accident. 15 minutes later they reported that a commercial airliner had struck the other tower, and it was immediately clear to me that it was no longer a "terrible accident."

I worked for a major hotel and when I got to work the "midnight shift" people were processing their paperwork to leave for the day, and the morning shift were coming in looking for their first cup of coffee and preparing for the day. Nobody was aware of what was happening in NY at the time, so I went into the employee cafeteria and turned on the television. There were about 3 of us in the room at the time watching the images of both towers spewing so much black smoke, and then close ups of the towers sadly showing people falling from the towers and the panic in the streets. After a few minutes word spread throughout the hotel about what happened and soon enough, the room filled with people glued to the television.

Our general manager was a NYC native, and asked to have our A/V department place 3 televisions at various locations in the large lobby of the hotel, and soon enough each tv had dozens of people in front of them, silently watching events unfold.

I will never forget the exclamations and cries when the first tower, and then the second tower collapsed, and then it was so quiet.

Our general manager asked for everyone to have a moment of silence for all of the victims, and many just stood and silently cried.

The airline crews that stayed at the hotel and who had already left to go to LAX were returned and ended up staying with us for the rest of the week until the airports reopened.

I was at work driving my Lift Bus in Portland, r. The first time I saw the crash of the airplane into one of the New York Twin Towers was at home on my morning break from work. I was still in disbelief of this horrible act. I turned on the TV and there was the most shocking thing I had seen. I started to cry. I wanted to wake my husband but I did not. I wanted to get my kids home or out of school but I knew I needed to finish working that day. I just left the TV on the news channel so my husband would know right away what had happened.

When I went back to work two of my passengers were talking about a second plane hitting the other Twin Tower. I said aloud. WHAT? Second plane hitting the other Twin Tower. I cannot believe this horrible act. That was the talk of the day. I worried about all of those people in New York City, NY. That evening my husband would tell me of the other plane crashes. We sat in front of the TV and it was hard to talk about all of those people in terror. We were in a somber mood. A month later my husband and I would find out we were pregnant with our fourth child.

To this day, I’ll Never Forget.

I still remember but can’t explain why or what I went thru on that illustrious day. I awoke, actually popped out of bed at 5:46am, in Huntington Beach. I threw open the covers, jumped out of my deep slumber and marched straight into the living room without any hesitation and turned on the television not knowing what I was really doing.

After a few minutes of overwhelming awe, frozen in disbelief, I couldn’t believe my ears and eyes as to what was happening. Then at 6:03A I witnessed the 2nd aircraft crashing into the Tower. I was awake now, mesmerized and would be transfixed for any good news out of this great, historical tragedy in the greatest city in the world...to this day it is still so unbelievable.

That Tuesday morning I was sleeping in late, feeling sorry for myself because the previous Friday my car, a blue, 1990 Toyota Corolla had been stolen from the school where I was substitute teaching. I was living in San Francisco at the time, another big city with lots of people. I had been on the phone all weekend, calling my insurance company, the police, my friends, my father. "How did it happen?," they all asked. I was exhausted and sort of glad I had an excuse not to go to work that second week in September.

My neighbor Blane came to my bedroom’s sliding glass window from upstairs. “Lynn, get up!” he said, pounding on the window with his fists. I only saw his mouth moving, too tired to care.

Oh geez Blane, I thought, what is it now? I dragged myself up and over to the door to our courtyard.
“Get up NOW,” he roared “and turn on the television.” Blane had crazy eye.

“What, what?” I stammered.

“Get ready, you are not going to believe this.” Blane grabbed my arm, leading me to the living room. The TV channels blazed.

As we watched the first tower suffer, steaming with dark smoke and orange flames, the image didn’t register. Our first thought was still that it had been a terrible accident, a jet from La Guardia, JFK, or even Newark that had missed its mark. I knew these airports well. As a kid I had flown into one of these busy airports almost every summer. I would peer out the windows to see the skyline of Manhattan; the Twin Towers there since forever in my world. My thoughts as we watched the crippled first tower ranged from "how are they getting the people out?" to "I hope they can fix it."

“Oh my God, oh my God” Blane kept saying over and over. I wimpered by his side. We watched as the second plane hit, almost literally, live on television. We screamed. At almost the same moment, we heard them overhead.

Fighter planes, F16s? from who knows what airbase, had begun to circle our city. We could see them out of the front windows, circling low, making those fighter jet whooshes as they passed overhead, San Francisco becoming a kind of eerie battle zone of it’s own. We didn’t know at the time that one of the planes that hit the WTC had been on it’s way to San Francisco, that information would come later.

Or that basically the United States was under attack.

As we watched the second tower being struck, and heard the noise of our own city, we knew that something, very, very terrible had just occurred. You know when you can pinpoint an exact moment when everything changes? Like a wedding, or the birth of a child, or a significant death in your family? It’s as if Blane and I knew exactly at that moment, together, that nothing would ever be the same. And ten years later, it’s still true.

It’s as if those buildings were people, in a way. Or the idea of people, built by people, admired by people. My own Twin Tower stories go way back. I remember driving right under them as a kid, craning my head to look up at their unfathomable heights. As a student at NYU I went to Battery Park to take pictures of the skyline and the towers, not especially for their beauty, but for what they represented. I’m glad I did. But I always thought the best view was from the air, up high where you could get a really good look at them.

On that day, living in San Francisco, I felt very far away from New York City and all the people who suffered there, some of them my own family and friends. It’s as if the rest of the country had to watch, on television, when a part of us wishes they could have been there, helping. I did wish I was there that day, is that strange?

Each year I try to call my old neighbor on September 11th to say hello and catch up. If I don’t call him, I always think of that day. Standing in that San Francisco living room ten years ago with Blane, crying and listening to the fighter jets outside, I knew that there would never be a moment like it again. And I hope to God there never is.

We were camping in the Eastern Sierras, on the June Lake Loop, at Silver Lake on 9/11. I was down at the “point”, where Alger Creek runs in, about 6:30 a.m., fishing by myself. As my wife Cheryl's birthday is Sept. 11th, I was thinking what we'd do that day to celebrate.

A lady came jolting out from the trail down to shore and told me the World Trade Center towers had been knocked down by airplanes. In her excitement, I really didn't understand what she was telling me. She indicated it wasn't an accident.

I remember thinking it was only a matter of time until this happened in our country, just like the Oklahoma bombing. I dismissed what she was telling me by saying “a lot of people hate us around the world.” She acted shocked by my comment and left quickly.

About a half-hour later, I ran into the campground host Scott Andersen. He filled me in, even with all the very sketchy, early details. He had been watching CNN at the time - this only about an hour into it. I got a better picture of what was happening - planes were missing and airspace closed. Possibly 50,000 dead in the New York towers the excited newscasters were reporting. We both wondered if L.A. Would be hit next?

As the news traveled quickly around that morning, I saw three camp sites clear out right away. The short haired men were throwing stuff into their rigs as quick as they could and took off. They were vacationing members of our military and told me they would probably be needed back on their base right away.

Around 10:00 a.m., someone drove out to the Junction Shell on Hwy. 395, and came back reporting that the gas prices hadn't shot up, and his credit card still worked. These were things we were all concerned about in the first few hours. We even speculated perhaps our troops might be setting up road blocks somewhere down Hwy. 395, just to keep people out of L.A. for now. Would we be able to get home? By noon, we were relieved that it appeared that maybe the worst was over. I did look up at the majestic Carson Peak and give thanks for being here at this moment, because no matter what might be happening around our country, we would be pretty safe here, at least for now.

Later that afternoon, it became pretty clear this 9/11 operation had come from the Middle East. I was in the Silver Lake store and the owner Gary Jones had connected a TV, which we all were staring at. I remember waiting in line to buy something, and there was an older guy in front of me. He and his two grown children were obviously from somewhere in the Middle East, talking in a foreign language as well as English. It could have been Farsi, Hebrew, Egyptian - I didn't know. I wanted to grab him by the collar and hatefully tell him, “Today my friend, I suggest you speak English.” Just before I opened my big mouth, I looked up at him watching the TV, and saw tears streaming down his face. It was his America too that was attacked.

That night, about nine fellow campers gathered around our van as we listened to the President's speech to the nation. We could finally, in the evening hours, pick up KFI out of L.A. for live coverage. For all Pres. Bush did wrong in the last few years of office, I will always be grateful to him for that night, and the words he said to us as a nation.

Early the next morning, I was in Mammoth to pick up something at Rite Aid. I stopped at Schat's Bakery to get a donut and Lee Greenwood's song “Proud To Be An American” came over the speakers. I completely lost it. I couldn't stand in line anymore. Sobbing, I had to go outside and sit down. A customer leaving, put his hand on my shoulder and simply said, “We'll be okay.”

I remember the silence in the sky. Air space was closed for two days. Normally I would be cussing out the many commercial jets that fly directly over Grant and Mono Lakes on their approach to Bay Area airports, amazed at the loud sound they make from 10,000 feet above. But the skies were silent those first days.

Sitting around the campfire on the night of Sept. 14, we finally heard that sound. It was a precious, and healing sound - a commercial jet flying over. We all looked up and saw the plane's lights and knew the worst was truly over. I wondered what those people inside the plane must be thinking, being the first to fly over America after 9/11?

As the events unfolded, I again gave thanks to be away from the TV on 9/11. I didn't have to watch the victims jump out of buildings and internalize all the pain and suffering. As a former radio news guy, I tend to fixate on tragedy in the news. I stayed up 48 hours straight watching the L.A. riots unfold.

I know now there is nothing I can do physically to change the outcome of world events. So next time something major happens in the world - if I'm not directly involved in it, I'd better off to go fishing instead! We all would!

I live in the San Fernando Valley, and was getting ready for work, listening to the radio when it was reported that the first tower was struck by a plane. After reports came in that the second tower was hit, I quickly called out to my step-daughter “something awful is happening?”and ran to the television for any news.

I was a stagehand in Los Angeles and was working on the television sitcom “Just Shoot Me.” As actors and crew arrived on set to begin the workday, it became clear, as one actor put it “we can’t do comedy today.” We all went home.

I had just gotten out of the shower when the phone rang, it was my mother. She said to turn the tv on which I did. She knew what I was seeing and quietly said that some people think it was intentional. I hung up and continued to get ready for my job as my husband did as well. I had to drive on the 405 freeway in Los Angeles and the traffic was just as bad as other days.

However the emergency vehicles never stopped driving by with their sirens and lights flashing. They seemed to be FBI/Government type as all the vehicles did not have any thing on them to indicate what branch, station or anything on them. I was just passing the 10 freeway when the radio announcer lost his breath, the first tower had just fallen. A few minutes later the other tower fell. I looked around and nobody on the freeway with me at the time looked any different which really seemed to be wrong.

I finally got to my office only to be told to go home we will call you when we want you to come back. I turned around and went home. I watched the coverage on & off all day. And I so remember the images, the faces and the tears from everyone. I remember hearing about the school that was so close by and the kids there. A few days later a friend gave me a laminated photo, it was one of the famous photos from that day. The fireman hanging the flag. I have that photo to remind me of the emotions of that day, the pure frightened feeling that was running through the nation and the people who were lost.

I worked at a Nuclear Power Plant. I was a member of the Emergency Technical Support Center. I recall vividly the announcement for all the members of the TSC to report to the meeting room. I also noticed that Security were all around and the officers were carrying some kind of anti-aircraft missiles. I knew then, that something big was happening or had happened. At the TSC we were able to watch TV and we saw the tragedy as it unfolded.

I'm a Vietnam veteran but I was scared! I had mixed emotions. First I was scared that they would attack the plant, but then, just as what I had experienced in Vietnam, I became angry. Angry at whomever dare attack my country, my people.

Some of the same feelings that I had in 1962, when President Kennedy was shot. I was 12 but I will never forget the TV breaking news. A good President, according to my family, was dead. Shot by some weirdo. A terrible experience that I will never forget.

Wow...it seems like just yesterday this historic event happened.

It was actually the beginning of my senior year in high school. I turned on the T.V. and automatically I saw the first tower already on fire. At first I thought it was an accident. Rationale set in, and I realized it was a terrorists attack. There usually aren't planes flying in that area.

I woke my dad up telling him we were attacked. Second instinct was to call my family that lives in New York. Headed to school that day and my teacher put on the radio to hear updates. We heard about when the 3rd plane hit the pentagon and how later on the other plane crashed in Pennsylvania.

A horrific day for our country, but I remember a sense of unity even amongst my peers. My god bless us all, and bless the United States of America. A country that has given me, a first generation Latino, the opportunity to go to school and become a teacher and influence our future. We will never forget!

I had been at school all day, oblivious to what had happened in New York City. Third grade in Massachusetts, I was looking forward to my childhood friend coming over that day, but when my mom came to pick us up we were told it would be better to do it another day.

I didn't understand at first, but I could tell by the tone of my mother's voice that something was wrong. She told me there had been a very bad plane crash in New York City, and we didn't know why yet. When we got home I remember standing in front of the television with my mom, shocked and devastated by what I was seeing. I had so many questions, and I will never in my life forget that sudden feeling of being scared, traumatized, and so surprised.

On Tuesday's, I would wake up at 6:30am, get ready for work, have cereal for breakfast, brush my teeth and then head off to my job in Long Beach. On September 11, 2001, I woke up at 6:30am and got ready for work. My sister came down the stairs and asked me if I heard what happened in New York, I asked her, "what happened?" She said two planes had crashed into the Twin Towers. It made no sense to me whatsoever.

I immediately turned on the TV and could not comprehend the sight of the smoke billowing out of both Towers. I kept thinking, "What in the world is going on?" I was glued to my television, then there was a report of another crash at the Pentagon and I started to get scared, I didn't know if I should go to work or not so I called and was told to come in anyway. On my drive along the 710 to Long Beach, I remember listening to the radio and hearing the dj sound so stunned.

When I got to work, most of my co-workers were glued to the TV there, I joined them. I couldn't keep my eyes off it. I needed to know what was happening. I remember thinking, I hope they're able to put out the fires. It never crossed my mind that both Towers would fall. The image engraved in my memory of that day is watching that first Tower collapse.

I kept thinking of the people inside and their families. I cried so much that day, I still cry when I see those images and I think I always will. When I got home, my parents, sister and grandmother were all watching the news in the living room. Later in the evening, my sister and I were conferencing on phone with our best friends trying to make sense of this madness. I remember watching on Univision, replayed scenes of people slowly falling from the sky, then other scenes of people completely covered in dust, it was a horror movie come to life.

Ten years later, now I have a six-year-old son, he's not yet aware of what happened that day. This year, I want to tell him what happened but I don't know how to explain it to him without crying.

My teachers words echoed as I stared at the television in disbelief, "This will be the most historically significant day of your lifetime, never forget this moment."

To this day, just thinking about 9/11 brings back the same feelings of shock and sadness. My teacher was right, I will never forget that day as long as I live.

I will never forget the day of 9/11/01. I was within blocks of the World Trade Center when the first plane went into Tower 1. My friends and I were inside a Starbucks and had just gotten our morning coffee, when I glanced at my watch before heading out the door. The time said 8:50 am.

What started out as a vacation that week in lower Manhattan, turned out to be a life-changing event for me.

We had a video camera and camera with us because we were going to Levittown, NY for the day. Instinctively we started videotaping and taking pictures, which when viewing them today, it is as if no time has passed. I still can't believe it's been 10 years.

The things I remember are the crying people walking the streets looking for their loved ones, and the hundreds of pictures that lined every block we walked. I remember seeing hundreds of US Flags being put up everywhere in NYC, but what was amazing was how everyone came together so quickly.

Within minutes people were no longer strangers to one another.

We lit candles at St. Patrick's Cathedral for those that had perished, and for those still missing. We attended a Candlelight Vigil on Friday, Sept. 14th at Battery Park, and watched as the firefighters, EMTs, police officers, and Port Authority walked home full of soot, dust particles and sweat.

We walked by numerous firehouses that had lost many of their brothers and sisters that fateful day. There were many candlelight vigils every night, hoping that some may be saved.

We walked near Ground Zero to applaud the many firefighters, EMTs, Port Authority, police officers, FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and National Guard that lined the Highway leading to and from Ground Zero. They truly are heroes for all their courageous acts that day, and for those that followed. The looks on their faces told a story of sadness, grief, disbelief and shock.

When my friends and I flew back to Northern California on the evening of Sept. 15th, I was extremely scared to get on a plane back home. I had visions of the plane being hijacked. Our friends picked us up from the airport, and told us later that we looked in shock and emotionally drained. We were.

I had a scheduled doctor's appointment. Later that month, and I had been wheezing ever since I had gotten home from NYC. I am a runner and had never experienced anything like it. My doctor ran some tests on me, and found that I had asthma, and now required me to carry an asthma inhaler at all times. She had taken a long Q-tip swab and ran it inside my nose and ears, and when she took it out, the Q-tip was black. She took a chest x-ray and thankfully everything was clear. I continue to get regular checkups and don't need to use my inhaler as much as I did for the first few years. For the first year at least I was wheezing quite a bit, and had several asthma attacks.

For several months after 9/11 I had a hard time sleeping, ran to the windows when I heard a plane overhead, and had anxiety attacks on a very regular basis. I had a love of flying prior to 9/11, and now I still feel a sense of anxiety boarding a plane. My doctor told me that I was suffering from Post Traumatic Disorder, which took years to diminish.

Each year as we approach 9/11, I always feel anxious and the feelings that I experienced that day and week, never seem to fully go away. I guess it will always be a part of me."

Around 6:45 on 9/11 I was getting my daughters ready for school, and as I walked back and forth across the living room I kept noticing footage of flames on the television in the corner of my eye. "Oh Lord," I thought. "Not another bushfire."

Then I heard the newscaster say New York and I stopped to look and realized I was watching one of the WTC towers burn. Then the station showed footage of the second tower being hit, then of the Pentagon in flames.

I told my girls our country was under attack and scrambled mentally to decide whether or not they should go to school. We lived in the San Fernando Valley at the time, a block away from an aerospace facility, so I definitely did not want them at home.

I called my carpool-Mom-friend and we decided to go ahead as planned, even though we were already running late. By that time, Flight 93 had crashed in Pennsylvania. As we watched the report, I told my girls that the people on the plane made it crash on purpose, to save the capital - they must have attacked the hijackers, I said. (Why I knew that before it was known in general, I have no idea).

I told my girls in the car, as we raced to meet the carpool, that the reason the people on Flight 93 were so brave was because they grew up saying the Pledge of Allegiance everyday, just like we all do. That sounds so corny, especially for a diehard liberal like me, but I really believe it's true. Above all things, we Americans grow up knowing that defending our nation and liberty is paramount.

When I got home from the drop off, I emailed every single one of my relatives and friends in the New York and DC area to make sure they were all okay. The most chilling response I received was from one of my high school BFFs. I'd written her because I thought her sister worked in the Financial District, near the WTC. My friend wrote back something to the effect of "My office is a block away from the Pentagon, so we had to evacuate, but I'm okay." I knew she lived in Maryland, but I had no idea she worked in DC.

Another friend, who lived on Long Island, later told me that 25 families from her neighborhood lost loved ones when the twin towers came down. I've heard many other personal stories since. They all make me cry.

Later in the day, after the girls got home, I had to turn off the television coverage because my youngest daughter was so upset seeing the pictures of people jumping from buildings.

My most vivid memory of the images I saw that day was one of the Statue of Liberty with smoke and debris streaming past from the collapsed towers. She symbolized it all. We are such a beautiful, strong and resilient country, even in the worst of times. We are quick to help each other in crisis, and quick to heal.

I had a small auto repair shop in Lexington, KY. My staff came into the office and said they heard on the radio that an airplane had hit the World Trade Center. We all stopped what we were doing and watched the TV in the Customer Lounge.

Talking and chatting as we watched the coverage, we watched in horror as the second plane struck the other tower. After that, I do not remember any words being spoken for quite some time. It was a few hours later I realized my Mother was flying back to San Diego from Chicago that morning and I panicked to call her.....got her right away as she and her husband had taken the a red eye the night before.

As I called my wife, I overheard one of my technicians on the phone with his reserve commander requesting to be activated immediately. Horror, patriotism and happiness and hope while we all watched. Not a single customer was upset about our not working on their cars. Never forget it as long as I live.

I was 19 and had just started my freshmen year of college at a school far from home. My roommate came into my room early that morning and dragged me out to the living room. She was scaring me because she was crying.

I watched in horror as the second tower began to fall on live TV.

People were screaming and there was footage of people jumping out the windows hundreds of feet in the air. I didn't fully understand what had happened until a few hours later I went outside to call my mom and there were all these kids walking around outside, talking to their mothers on their phones, most of them crying.

It was then I think I fully realized that something terrible had happened, something that would change the rest of EVERYONE'S lives forever.

I remember looking up at the normally busy sky and seeing nothing. It was as if everything had stopped for a little while in shock and it seemed deathly quiet. One beautiful thing that came out of it was this odd sensation that all of us Americans were united in our grief like none of us were alone. We had all just gone through an experience together that we would always share. The feeling lingered for months and several songs came out that kind of kept that feeling alive.

I had been living in Florida for over 6 years when the attacks happened. I was at work in a small store when the phone rang. My boss was asking me if I heard the news; everyone knew I was from New York.

I said no, why? Then she told me. I was asking her what kind of movie she was watching, because it couldn't be real. But it was. I started thinking about my family and friends that still live up there. Started calling everyone I knew. It's weird when you live in NY you take all these things for granted, but when they are taken from you, it's like a whole was ripped out of you.

My son is now in the National Guard and will be going over to Iraq in Feb. He joined because of this action. Thank God for all our heroes who have done all they can do to fight for our freedom. I am proud to live in the USA and very proud of our military. May God bless all the families who have lost someone or during the war. We will never forget!

I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints and was on my way to the Latter-Day-Saint, Washington DC Temple on the morning of 9/11. My *Relief Society President and I had left around 7:00-8 that morning and talked all the way down (no radio was turned on) we arrived at the Temple two hours later with no idea of what had just happened.

We were in the Temple from approx. 9 or-10am to 3 or 3:30pm. Our plan afterwards had been to go to the Visitors Center next-door to the Temple then on to the Church bookstore. Yet when we got outside she said to me " Under the circumstances is it OK if we don't go to the Visitor's Center and just go to the This Is The Place bookstore?" Not knowing why our plans were changed I said "Sure, that will be fine." It was that moment, in front of the Temple, that I learned what happened that day because she went on to say, "Don't you know what happened this morning, didn't you hear them talking about something in the Temple?" I said, " No, what happened?" and she said "The Pentagon, World Trade Center and a plane in PA have been hit and there are many dead, three planes total were lost." I said, "You're joking!" and she said, "No, I wouldn't joke about something like that. While we were inside I heard some of the people talking about planes going down and people dying and also heard that the Pentagon was on fire and that smoke had been seen from the roof of the Temple by the Temple Matron, so what do you want to do?" My answer was, "Well we might as well go to the bookstore and then, hopefully, we will be able to go home."

We were concerned that they might have the highways blocked to travel. So that is what we did. While at the bookstore a fighter jet flew over making it all more of a reality for us. There are three things that stand out in my mind about that day, one was seeing that fighter jet the other was noting how light traffic was for that time of day going to and from DC and the other was an apparent absence of birds in the sky. I didn't see hide nor hair of a bird until we were in PA! Due to being in the Temple that day I never got to see things unfold and therefore have no true sense of the tragedy as it unfolded yet being in the Temple that day made it easier to accept what happened and helped me to feel that as a Nation we will make it through this thing . The show of Patriotism from that event was also noted by me and warmed my heart because so many Americans are quick to run our country down rather than loving it for the freedom that they have. I love this country and hope to never again have another 9/11. Only prayers, time and God can tell whether we will or not. Thank you for this opportunity to share my memory of that day.

I was living in Long Beach, Calif. and woke up with Katie Courie being really surprised when the second plane hit. All I could think of was getting to work and shutting down our network. I expected cyber attacks would follow the plane bombings.

Drove past LAX on my way to work and noticed no planes in the sky, incredible. Headed up I-10 at around 90 miles an hour and flinched when the shadow of a single plane flew overhead.

I had worked in the WTC in '93 when that bombing took place so I knew in an instant this was no accident.

I was in 8th grade that year. I remember getting ready for school and the news was on in the background. I had seen images of the iconic Twin Towers, but didn't really have any clue as to their importance. All we did at school that day was sit and watch the news. There hasn't been a day that I remember every detail so vividly as I do with September 11, 2001.

I was working at my desk when one of my co-workers came into the office and said a plane hit one of the twin towers. At the time we thought it was a small plane. A little while later he came back and said that another plane hit the other tower. I said this is no accident this is an attack on New York.

It did not take long to know it was an attack on the USA. I went home and turned the television on and was horrified on what actually happened. I got mad, I cried and did not leave the television for hours. I did not know anyone, as far as I knew, but I hurt, I cried along with the ones who had loved ones killed. I never got to see the towers and was hoping to see them someday. Well, I can"t now but hopefully I will see the memorial and say my goodbyes to all who lost their lives.

I woke up at exactly 6 a.m. PST with my alarm clock radio blasting, "Turn on your TV, literally to any station - do it now." I was a senior in high school, 18 years old, recently having made the decision about where to go to college. I thought all was well. In a sleepy haze, and never having heard something like that on the radio, I dutifully followed orders.

It was about 6:01 a.m. PST and I had run into my parents bedroom to turn the TV on and wake up my mom. I got the TV on and the north tower was in flames - I was not prepared to hear Katie Couric get cut off by another reporter saying "Oh my God, another one just hit" and then to watch these TV personalities I was so familiar become temporarily speechless. (reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xomUzh3QOg&feature=related) Looking at United #175 slam into the south tower gave me goosebumps. My Mom screamed out, "Watch out!" Obviously a motherly instinct, and then placed her hand over her mouth.

Once I arrived at school, it was chaos, each teacher had TV's on just watching, no one was saying much. The Pentagon had been struck, United 93 had gone down, and no one really knew what was coming next. It was the most awful day. My emotions started to get the best of me knowing "we" had been attacked and that there was little I could do all the way from California. I knew it would forever change us, but I don't think I really knew quite how much.

Three months later, my school district selected me to travel to NYC and assist with disaster recovery. I worked in St. Paul's cathedral for 3 days doling out food, towels, soap - whatever the NYC Dept. of Sanitation, NYFD, NYPD, etc. needed. The workers were still pulling body parts. It was crushing. To see fully grown men in tears three months later was just absolutely indescribable. The same feeling of helplessness that I felt on 9/11 was occurring, and I was literally RIGHT in Ground Zero. To look up and see the void of the towers was also shocking - they were such icons, such a symbol of our power.

I am (as we all are) forever changed by 9/11. I travel regularly for work and it's the little things, like grabbing onto my hand rests when a plane I am on encounters turbulence. Not being given metal knives to eat with on planes. Lower Manhattan missing it's most symbolic structures as you fly past the east side of Manhattan into LaGuardia. Perhaps most of all, my illusion of America being bulletproof is now forever changed. Each day I have a fleeting moment where I wonder what's next. Will it be in LA?

That morning I was getting ready for work. When I dropped off my daughter at my mother's house she had the TV on and I could see the horrific images. I remember I felt lightheaded and my knees got weak.

When I got in my car I heard Howard Stern and his assistant saying they were going to leave the show and they said "good luck." When I got to work I could see the plane hit the first tower and I started to cry. The worst day in history. A few months after we visited New York you could see the buildings that were around the Trade Center destroyed and you could feel the sadness.

On Sept. 11, 2001 I was in kindergarten. Everyday before school I had to get dropped off at daycare because my mom had to work early. While my friends and I were playing before school started, all of a sudden the news came on and they kept replaying the building collapsing over and over again. I looked over at my friend Taylor and she was crying hysterically. I asked her if she was alright and she said, "No! my grandma works in that big building!"

Never had I felt so sorry for someone. Everyone was trying to comfort her while someone called her mom. She got picked up, and I never saw Taylor after that.

I was in the 4th grade on September 11th, 2001. I remember waking up, getting ready to go to school. While getting dressed, I had MTV on, the three music videos I remember watching were "Alive" by P.O.D., "Whenever, Wherever" by Shakira, and "Can't Deny" by Fabolous. It felt like a normal day.

For the most part, the day did seem normal, until around 9. My teacher was called out the room, and when she came back, she seemed rather tense. She appeared to always be worried, confused, shocked, to name a few emotions. For the most part, she could hardly even teach, she just told us to read for the majority of the day as she went in and out the classroom periodically. When it was time to leave school, she said to us, "Today, something terrible happened, class. Be sure to watch the news tonight."

Indeed when I arrived to my aunt's house where I'd wait for my mother to pick me up after she got off work, I watched the repeating of the planes hitting the tower. My aunt's face was filled with shock and confusion.

During the age of 9, I could not comprehend and take in the situation that occurred. I saw the planes hit the towers, I saw the towers fall, but I was so innocent, all I could wonder was why I couldn't watch MTV, why were all the channels showing planes hitting these big buildings? I had no emotion for it, especially compared to how I do now.

When my mother came to pick me up, the first thing she said to my aunt was, "I am sure you heard about what happened." It was on the screen, my aunt nodded, she was glued to the screen, possibly trying to comprehend the situation. As my aunt watched, my mom sat down to watch too. They watched what happened in complete silence for around an hour and a half.

When my mother and I were going home, it was for the most part quiet. Mom said to me, "Kendra, something horrible has happened today and I know you won't understand now, but this day will be a day to remember for the rest of your life. As you get older, I am sure you will understand slightly more, but there's will always be unanswered questions. Kendra, if anything ever happened... I love you so much, you know that."

My mother normally isn't the type to speak in such a manner, but when she did, I knew it was something important. Those words have followed me, even up to now, and though I'm sure she may have forgotten everything she said, what she said was completely true.

On 9/11/2001, I almost lost my son -- twice.

He was working for the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Va., but attending classes at the NYC Fed location, a few blocks from the WTC buildings. He explained that he was distracted by what looked like thousands of pieces of newspaper floating by the windows. Then the class was given the order to evacuate.

I knew my son was in New York City, but also know where the Fed building is in relation to the WTC, so I generally thought he was out of danger, except for a certain gnawing feeling about it. You'd have to know my son.

Instead of making his way to Brooklyn, where he was staying at his sister's apartment, he felt compelled to go to the site to see what was happening. It was nearly impossible just to walk against the tide of humanity rushing toward him and away from the WTC. He saw a stretch limo impaled by an airplane part and, all along the way, everything seemed to be covered by what he told himself were pieces of fruit. He tried not to focus on it, but was finally riveted when he looked down and saw a disconnected human foot.

When he reached the site, he was horrified to see people fall to their deaths and wished to tell the firemen he saw running into one of the buildings to "be careful." He was transfixed even as the first tower began to fall, until the survival gene kicked in. He ran as fast as possible up the street and around a corner -- a move that saved his life.

He described the rush of debris cascading along the street he had just left as having the force of a freight train and reported he had looked back and caught a "glimpse of Armageddon." Had he been a couple seconds later, just a little slower, he would have perished.

As it was, he sought refuge in various buildings, all of which were eventually evacuated. He cut up a white shirt to fashion crude masks that he used and distributed to others he encountered as protection from the dust. Eventually, he walked through the blocked Brooklyn-Battery tunnel to get to my daughter's apartment. There he sat down at the computer and wrote about it, the experiences still fresh with horror. That act probably saved him for the second time, from the PTSD he struggled with for years afterward.

The essay became the front-page story within the next day or so in his hometown newspaper, The Richmond Times Dispatch under the title "A Glimpse of Armageddon" and his wide circle of friends came to his aid, giving him comfort and support as he struggled to regain his psyche. He cannot bring himself to write further or even speak of it to this day. I still shudder at the feelings of horror I experienced when I learned the story later that night. My daughter, who was working in mid-town Manhattan promised to stay with friends near her office, but secretly knew she had to get home to be there for her brother. Had I known what was going on, I might have died from fright. As it is, I still have a son and daughter, for which I am deeply grateful and I will have life-long feelings of sorrow for all those who lost beloved family members and friends that day."

The first thing I remember was the beautiful weather in Manhattan. I was attached to P 234, the elementary school in the frozen zone. At first we heard a loud sound that shook the school slightly...then we looked out the window and saw flames coming from the towers. My colleague who was at the school 1993, the year of the previous attack, knew it was planned. Immediately shades were pulled and the children were escorted to the cafeteria and gym.

Voting was taking place in the gym for a primary election. Teachers gathered with their students and read stories, played games and kept things positive. Parents had to be calmed as they approached the children to take them home, as to not alarm the children still awaiting their parents. The building shook again. The children were headed toward the basement for safety when police and fire officials came into the building thinking it was empty. "What the f--- are you doing here?" The children couldn't stop laughing at the 'f' bomb.

But then we were directed to run...run for your lives. Teachers and students, under the guidance of an incredibly able principal, ran ahead of the second 'cloud' north on Greenwhich. Little did we know that the next year would test our strength for an entire year....The school, in another building, the children in hotels and different homes, achieved the first place reading scores for that school year in NYC. What I remember is a day of bravery, a year of dedication in response to an act of cowardice. So very proud to be a New Yorker and an American.

I was at work putting together pages to go to press. I work at a small daily newspaper in the midwest and the news is fairly mundane most of the time. I had the radio on as I prepped pages by hand.

My coworker and I looked puzzled as we listened to a broadcast about the Twin Towers having been hit by a plane. It wasn't until the second report of the towers being hit did it register that this wasn't an accident.

I rushed to my computer and attempted to search the major news sites for information. The web was in gridlock everywhere I tried. The cursor just sat there spinning. Our editors were frantically calling other papers in our group and national contacts but confusion and chaos seemed to reign.

Then the pictures started coming over the Associated Press wire. One by one, they showed the massive destruction, the fear and the bravery of those dealing with this unbelievable tragedy. Everyone in the newsroom crowded around my desk and there was absolute silence as the pictures scrolled by, and later a few tears were shed.

I didn't have time to process what was happening until I went home much later that day. The attacks on 9/11 galvanized a nation and for a time, we were truly one people, united. All the petty political squabbles and personal rifts took a back seat to the welfare of our country. I hope it doesn't take something of this magnitude to find unity once more and realize what's really important in life.

Where was I that day? I was on my way to work. However, my only thought as I was boarding the subway that day was that I was looking forward to attending the Yankees-Red Sox game that night. You see, the game was rain delayed from the night before. My friends and I spent a couple hours in the rain and miserable humidity the night before and we were excited for the game given the beautiful morning.

I worked at Chase in their 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza (1CMP) building which is just two blocks away from the WTC. As passengers came on board the subway, chatter began to circulate about a plane crashing into the WTC. Some said it was a 747, while others said it was a small Cessna. Everyone agreed it couldn't have been that big of a deal if the subway was still going towards downtown, particularly the “2” which I rode every weekday to the Wall Street station underneath 1CMP.

As I exited the subway, there was still no sign that anything out of the ordinary was happening. My memory tells me that people seemed to go about their own way at the station that morning. However, as I was going up the escalators from the branch level to street level, that's when my world completely changed.

Halfway up the escalator, I began hearing screams and felt a huge rumble. The street level of 1CMP has very tall windows. What was an otherwise beautiful sunny day was suddenly and immediately turned to darkness as I tried to search from where the screams were originating. The beautiful view and pristine windows were completely covered with debris. I did not know it at the time, but Tower 1 had fallen. In fact, most of us thought 1CMP was hit. After all, that was the only reasonable explanation for that big of an impact.

There were some people who were fortunate enough to be “pushed-up” against the revolving doors and were able to make their way inside. Unfortunately, others weren’t as lucky as they were trapped outside pressed up against the glass with nowhere to go. I don’t know what happened to them, but if the reports were accurate, they somehow survived. As I neared towards the top of the escalator, a large crowd of people running in total fear yelled at me to head back down. I had to listen; otherwise I’d be trampled to death.

We all ran down the “up” escalator back down to the branch level of 1CMP. However, the smoke and debris were quickly making their way through the floor. Most of us went through the branch and made our way to the sub-levels of 1CMP where there were training and conference floors. While we found some relief from the smoke and debris it was only temporary as it continued to permeate down and through the floors. As each floor became too difficult to breathe and see, we went down one floor. Amazingly the land-lines were working and I called my family in Phoenix, AZ when we reached the 3rd sub-level. They were just waking up and had not heard the news. Naturally they were extremely scared when I told them the news. Despite my reassurances that I was ok (of course, I did not know that myself), images on the TV were telling a much different story.

Alarms and people pulling me to go to the 4th sub-level cut my conversation short with my family. Neither they nor I knew when we would speak again. By the time we got to the 4th sub-level our group split as the smoke and debris began to make its way through. Some argued to go down another level, while others wanted to stay. I was with the latter and felt that the lower I go, the harder it would be to get out. We found some Chase t-shirts and soaked them in water and covered our mouths and noses to help with the breathing. We occasionally would also use them to dampen our eyes to help lessen the sting.

Our group that stayed on the 4th sub-level started to consider going down another level but thankfully an announcement came over the PA system advising us that it was “safe” to leave the building and make our way uptown. It was 2:20 pm. Covered in debris and coughing from the smoke, we slowly made our way up the floors and out the building.

The city was a giant cloud of smoke. Everything looked gray. Looking west, where the mighty WTC once stood, there was nothing but sky. It was a very eerie feeling to say the least.

My friend and I walked towards Chinatown where her mom lived and we waited until the subways and buses started to operate again. I survived 9/11 and was extremely fortunate to have not gone through what many others went through. I am also very fortunate to not have lost a loved one that day. My heart and prayers constantly go out to those who lost friends or family and like millions of others, I will never forget.

That morning I was awakened by my alarm. I turned on the television and I thought it was a movie. I then thought, "Wow imagine if something like that would happen for real," but it was. I realized after the second plane crashed that this was actually happening in New York.

It was a horrible day. The images of the towers crashing and exploding gave me a sense of insecurity that something like this could happen in downtown Los Angeles.

Memories are blurry and yet that attack is still in my unconscious senses -- a tall building is burning. It was about past ten in the evening Manila time and I was sitting next to my cousin and his wife in a box room. The television is tuned in to Fox News. As a 10-year-old child I thought what I was watching was a scene from a film or a documentary; it did amaze me.

The tall building is burning in broad daylight and soon after a jet started attacking the other building. I thought it was an accident, but clearly as the events started to unfold it became clear that America was under attack. I grabbed a piece of paper and pen and start writing the series of events unfolding live before my naked eyes. People filmed on the television were just standing on the street and looked so baffled and shocked not knowing what was really going on.

Soon after, the burning building with thick black smoke started to collapse, people started running and New York City was declared as a city of dirt and dust.

There was another report that the Pentagon was attacked too. Washington D.C. was declared as a no-fly zone area with the concern of attacking the Capitol.

This event became the subject of everyday life, on local news in Manila and in my school. Having witnessed the events live, there is a little thing that sparked in me but that little spark has changed my life forever. The event on the 9/11 became so special a date to remember that it opens my thought at a young age to what was really happening in the world. I became more vigilant and it became an inspiration for me in academic terms. I even wrote the event on my personal statement to get into university as an inspiration to study the course that I wanted.

I may have not been in NYC that time, and the events were maybe vague at that moment, but the memories live. It did touch the hearts of many who have witnessed the scene with their very own eyes; I was one of them.

On 9/11, I was traveling most of the day by car in France, from Tours to just south of Toulouse, where I had booked a B&B overnight on my way to a meeting in Barcelona, Spain. I had left Tours at about 10 a.m., and with a break for lunch, I arrived at the B&B at about 6 p.m. I was listening to CDs on my drive, so I had no idea what was happening in the United States.

When I arrived at the B&B, the owner rushed out, as he knew I was an American, and while yelling a series of profanities told me that Arab terrorists had flown commercial jets into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, and that both buildings had collapsed killing an estimated 20,000 people. I was not only in shock, but simply didn’t believe him (as the buildings had only collapsed within the past few hours, his information, gathered from news services was inaccurate, at least with respect to the death toll). I tried calling my wife in California, but could not get through.

A short time later, an American couple from Los Gatos, Calif. arrived at the B&B, and of course, they could not believe what had happened either. The owner of the B&B suggested a local restaurant for dinner, and the couple and I went there. There were many European foreigners - on vacation in the area - at the restaurant, and they could hear us speaking English with an American accent. Several came over to express their sympathies at what had happened. Among them was a couple from The Netherlands; I asked them if the twin towers had really collapsed ? they confirmed that they had. We remained shocked and in disbelief.

The following day, on my way to Barcelona, I listened to French radio. Among updates on the tragedy, the program consisted of various funeral marches, interviews with French callers, and every 20 minutes or so the playing of John Lennon’s “Imagine.” (I found that interesting, yet touching, as many local French people don’t speak English).

As the meeting in Barcelona had many Americans and other foreigners on the program, only about half the participants showed up due to the grounding of most international flights. I returned home for Paris Charles de Gaulle a week later on an American Airlines flight. The airport was almost empty, with the exception of passengers for the few flights, and many pairs of French soldiers bearing machine guns.

I was in the subway under the WTC waiting for the uptown local. After twenty minutes of no trains I asked the station what was up. Right then a woman came into the station and shouted "what are you doing here! get out get out! concrete is falling!". I still don't know she'd seen. The station guy said there was a fire.

About 150 of us were evacuating through a rear exit, it was actually a turnstile and very slow. Two women fell to their knees screaming LORD OH LORD OH JESUS, they started clawing people in their panic. We let them go first to calm things down.

When I got onto the plaza I was between the towers. A guy in a black helmet was was saying "go, wait, go, wait, go" as he sent us running in small groups. The WTC plaza was weirdly silent. I saw the south tower in flames, vertical flames 3-4 stories high from about the 70th floor. People were leaning way out of the windows above, men flapping their jackets and arms wildly.

At Church and Dey you heard 'bomb, Cessna, rocket', but one woman said "I saw it from my office, it was a BIG JET, I saw a man in the sky, he was holding on to his desk, he was blown through the window still sitting in his chair." People were escaping, rushing in to watch, arriving for work, walking their dogs oblivious to what was happening.

Getting away seemed like hours when it was really minutes. Cellphones went dead, a junkie was charging people $5 bucks to use a pay phone, cabs were being commandeered as ambulances. A young man in shock had his arms wrapped around a building as if he were going to fall, I peeled him off and led him to a cop. Groups of people were huddled around vehicles trying to hear the radio reports.

I was behind two men helping a third and saw that I was walking in blood. I said "wow that guy's foot got cut" and just as I realized he had no right leg there was a boom and a column of air hit me. I looked up to see the fireball over the south tower. I thought of the Die Hard movies and I said "terrorists."

Running away I heard many huge explosions, much louder than the plane crash. I thought these were bombs but they turned out to be people hitting the concrete.

On September 11, 2001, I had just turned 4. All I can remember is it being dark in my parent's bedroom, with only the T.V. on, and seeing tall buildings burning.

My mom was sitting on the bed, crying into her hands. I didn't know what to do so I went over to her, in my Blues Clues night shirt and tried to make her feel better. I couldn't understand why she was crying, and I just wanted to make her feel better. I was sad and cried on her shoulder, just wanting her to be happy.

Years later, my mom told me that she was supposed to fly to New York City to attend a meeting in the World Trade Center that day, but her boss said that she didn't have to go because he knew she would rather stay home with her kids. Even though I was only 4, this day still saddens me, and I am just glad I still have my mom.

In 2001 I was in eighth grade in Tucson. That morning, like every morning, Mom came to my room to wake me up for school. I could hear the TV, which was not a usual morning sound in our house. "Two airplanes just crashed into a couple buildings in New York," she said. "Bummer," I thought. "Why would they do that?"

In my groggy pre-teen mind, it was strange, but nothing more. Surely planes fly into buildings all the time. Even when I came out to the living room and started to watch the reports on TV, I was still thinking it had been an accident. As I walked to the bus stop, my primary thought was that the event seemed significant enough to probably disrupt our normal class routine. I predicted we would spend most of the day watching TV. I was right.

At some point in the morning the magnitude of the attack, which I now understood it to be, began to dawn on me, and I realized I had borne witness to a day that would change the course of history. "This is what it must have been like to have been around during Pearl Harbor," I thought. I was, and still am, incredibly grateful that my immediate personal connection to the attack went no deeper than the TV screen. But even then I knew I would not forget that day, and I haven't.

It was the beginning of my senior year of high school. I was asleep when my mother, who along with my father wakes up at 4:45 a.m. every morning, came upstairs to tell me a plane had hit the World Trade Center. My initial reaction was, "What kind of an idiot would fly into the two tallest buildings in New York?" It didn't register with me what had just taken place.

As I had to drive my friends to school that day I decided to give up on further sleep and get ready. While I was fishing in the bathroom my mom came in to tell me a second plane had hit. A second plane? That can't be right. Down the stairs and into the living room I rushed, only to see both towers ablaze against a crystal clear New York sky.

"This is incredible," I said to my mother. I don't remember a lot of dialogue that day. I do remember driving my friends to school and being offended at how lax they were being. I'm a history guy and new that this day was special. This day was a shift, a massive shift from what was, to what would be. As I drove I turned the radio on only to hear the second tower fall. "Son of a b**ch, f**k" is all I softly murmured. Silence. It wasn't rage or fear, but a profound sense that we had just lost thousands of Americans, people like you and me. I'm a logical person. Their was no way they evacuated everyone, no way every one got out. During that drive to school people had just died.

School was pointless that day. After our first class we rushed to our history teacher to ask what it all meant. He seemed a little overwhelmed, but he did his best to answer our inquiries as best he could. I went home at some point. I even went to work. The moments that live in my memory are the moment I heard the second tower collapse on the radio and this last one: On my way to work I drove to a T-intersection and there, standing in the sidewalk was an elderly woman holding a full sized American flag. She had no sign. No agenda. Nothing to indicate her inner thoughts or feelings, but I knew. How could I not know? 300 million people all thought and felt the same thing that day. Sorrow. I remember the sorrow.

Standing by the window of my office in Stamford, CT, I saw the billowing smoke from the World Trade Towers coming from across Long Island Sound. I remember turning to a coworker and remarking helplessly that thousands of people were dying right before our eyes.

The terrorists shouted “God Damn America.” American shouted back “God Bless America.” The terrorists called America “The Great Satan.” Citizens showed the world that America was the “Good Samaritan.” Our hero first responders showed courage and unbelievable sacrifice as they came to the aid of victims.

September 11th changed my life in an unusual way. I was an illustrator and artist. But after, 9/11 I decided to pick up a camera that I had inherited and focus on documenting tributes to America.

Flag tributes to America began to spring up everywhere. Flags sold out and homemade ones were created. The flag came to life in new ways. I have had the opportunity to photograph more than a dozen flag-painted houses.

I started off taking photos in my hometown and then eventually branched out, traveling to 43 states. Ten years later, I believe I have captured the American spirit through my more than 30,000 photographs.

I had started my shift at a corrugated paper plant, in Cerritos, Calif. One guy kept a small tv in his locker, to watch football/baseball/soccer games whenever there was a good one going on. We wore headsets that allowed us to talk and listen to one another, and I remember this guy in the "knife room" saying "a plane just hit the World Trade Center." I listened, with great disbelief.

We were all trying to get more information, and a sinking feeling began to fill my entire abdomen. Like someone had punched me in the stomach. Then information came in that a second plane had hit the second tower. Now both towers had been hit! Then I knew that something really bad was happening at that time, and nobody knew the extent of it. I felt for all those people who I thought must have died in the attack. Then the towers came down. Then announcements about the plane that hit the Pentagon, and the one that fell in Pennsylvania. It was pure chaos and disbelief. I couldn't wait to go home and see just what was happening in the world, and I worried about my family. I was hurting inside, and I could not do anything about it. I had to stay there, and continue to work. It was a very sad, miserable day.

One of the things that made it even worse, was this supervisor-in-training. He was from Lebanon, in the Middle East. His greatly insensitive comment of "3,000 people die in the Middle East, and nobody says anything, but they die here, and we're supposed to cry?" Oh! How I wanted to punch him! I couldn't even stand him being next to me, and I remember telling him very clearly so. It was a very tense day! Here was someone who was given a free pass to come to America and live the American Dream he didn't have in his country, and he was talking that way to an ex-Marine? A guy who came from Mexico, and gladly volunteered to serve and defend this great country? Oh, no! I still don't know how I was able to control myself and not do something stupid that day.

On September 11, I was a freshman at Minot State University; I had just arrived from San Francisco to attend school and be close to my boyfriend, who was a B-52 aircraft mechanic stationed at Minot Air Force base. That morning was typical until I arrived at my midmorning English class: my instructor came in, her eyes red and swollen, and simply said, "Go home and watch the news, just go home." That's all she got out before she began sobbing.

I returned to my dorm hall and went to the media room, and turned on the television right as the second tower was crashing down into a spectre of dust and wreckage. I saw bodies on the ground, and the replaying images of people falling from windows 80 floors up to avoid the fire. I tried to call my boyfriend, but the base--essentially the whole town--had gone on high alert. All of the phone lines were jammed, and stayed that way all day. I watched tv alone in that media room, watching the replay of the planes disappearing into the side of the towers, the spark and explosion and devastation that followed. Out the window, I could see the line of military personnel who lived in town funneling onto the highway towards the base.

The next evening, I finally got a call from my boyfriend; he and his unit were prepping for deployment orders. He talked his unit's orders, about a base in the Indian ocean; he was angry; he was ready to act. "We're going to go get them," he kept saying. He had never sounded so purposeful in his life.

I wrote a lot in that filament of days, when the ash and dust were still in everyone's eyes and throats, regardless of where they were. I wrote about the sensation of being horrified, about the act of watching and about being powerless, about tragedy on such a scale that the immensity bleeds into caricature. But I also wrote about september 10, how my main concerns the day before were my anatomy exams and what movie I would see with my boyfriend that weekend. Now, he was going away to war; many of my new friends on the base were going to war. Lives were lost under rubble, and more lives would be extinguished in the name of what had happened in New York. I could feel that shift already, that we were entering a new phase and a new sense of gravity. Nothing was going to be the same, not for me or my country. We would never get september 10 back.

On September 11, 2001, I was getting ready to take the bus to 7th grade for the first time. My mom had already left for work when I received a phone call from my grandmother at around 7am (Pacific Time) advising me not to go to school saying, "some evil people are crashing into buildings". I immediately ran into the bedroom I shared with my older sister and woke her up, still unaware of the full extent of what my grandma was saying. I told my sister that the WTC had been attacked, not really knowing what the WTC was. By the look on her face I knew that something was terribly wrong.

We ran into the living room and turned on the t.v.; within minutes the first tower came tumbling down right before our eyes; tears began to stream down my face. For the rest of the day my sister and I remained glued to the t.v. The news reporters were naming all the "likely" other places for terrorist attacks including government buildings, military bases and nuclear plants. Living in San Clemente, CA, a city that borders Camp Pendleton Marine Base and San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant, I began to fear that the terrorists would bring the horrors occurring in New York to our little beach town.

On September 11th, 2001, my image of the world forever changed. I'll be the first to admit that I have never been the most patriotic person, yet September 11th changed me like it changed the rest of Americans. At age 11, I witnessed with great pride the way our Nation came together, people of all races, religions and political orientation, not in an act of war or hatred but in pride and unity, in defense of freedom.

Ten years later I have a B.A. in American History. The other day it hit me that one day soon I will be teaching students of future generations, who weren't alive on September 11th, 2001, the events that happened that dark day. It will be up to me to explain to them, not only of the evil that occurred but in the way our country came together united in a common cause. It will be up to me to explain the way the 9/11 has forever changed the course of American History, as well as our global history.

A lot has changed in 10 years but nothing has been forgotten.

I was 21 years old and living in Galveston. My boyfriend was attending Medical School at the time and we wanted to go somewhere we both had never been and used my birthday 9-14, as a good reason to go. I had always wanted to go to New York. About 2 weeks prior to 9/11, we got on the internet and started researching hotels and flights. The plan was to fly out on Friday September 7 on an evening flight from Hobby and return on a morning flight on September 11, 2001.

My boyfriend and I after much sole searching decided to wait until the following summer and go to New York with his classmate (a New Yorker) in order to save money and be taken around by someone with first hand knowledge of the city. Although I was disappointed and gave up on forcing the issue of just going NOW, I instead went home to visit my family in Central Texas.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, my mother came into my room and said, "Get up and come to the living room." I can remember walking into the room and starring at what I believed at the time to be an accident. A short time later, as I was listening to the newscaster speak; I saw a plane flying low behind her near the towers. At that moment, the plane crashed into the second tower. I began to scream. My heart sank. I was at that time terrified and never happier to be at home.

At this time, my boyfriend called me and we discussed how LUCKY we were to have decided not to go to N.Y. this month (although we would have not been on any of the planes that crashed, we would have been right in the middle of the terror like so many thousands of people were). I began to think about all the many unsuspecting people who boarded planes that day and how UNLUCKY they were. What a horrible day for those who lost their lives and for those who lost their family/friends.

After some time, I felt a rollercoaster of emotions. Scared, Sad, Depressed, And ANGRY! I think all citizens of this country ran into one or all of those emotions. That day made an impact on my life not only because I am an American, but because I learned to never want to force something to happen (i.e. the trip to N.Y.) when the time just isn't right.

I was in my second year at Calvin College in Grand Rapids Michigan. I was on my way to my English class and decided to check my email because I had a few extra minutes. The only new message I had was one from the president of the college, saying that the Pentagon had been attacked and that one of the World Trade Centre towers was on fire. I barely skimmed it, thinking it was some kind of ridiculous joke.

The air in the classroom was electric with anxiety. Nobody was speaking. Nobody was whispering. When our instructor arrived, she repeated the news from the email and told us to go back to our dorms and call our loved ones, and to watch the news.

There was a television in the lobby of the building as I exited. I was thinking of nothing but how far away from home I was at that moment, and how I not only could not afford a flight back, but that of course no planes would be going anywhere for a long time. I paused to glance at the TV, and the towers fell.

I'm back on the west coast, back in Canada where I belong. I still get shaky thinking of that morning.

The morning of September 11, 2001, dawned earlier for me than my fellow New Yorkers back in the U.S. I was on a month-long safari in southern Africa, and had been up very early for our long bumpy-road drive to a campsite along the Luangwa river in Zambia. One of two Americans among 12 travelers, I was the focus of good-natured jokes directed at my less-than-popular government.

Not today. It was mid afternoon when Eddie, a 64-year-old Belgian on our safari, walked up to me with a short-wave radio as I lounged near the river. He said there were planes, and the World Trade Center, and collapsing. I said he must be translating the French broadcast wrong. As a New Yorker, I knew those building don't come down just because a place accidentally hits them. No way. Only a few weeks before this safari, I was at an outdoor concert at the foot of one of the Towers.

The next two weeks I remained on safari, incommunicado. I had no access to TV, news, internet. At night, in my tent, I used my portable CD player/FM radio to tune in Voice of America, and heard a few discussions of the attacks, but no real summary of the tragedy. As we crossed borders from Zambia to Malawi to Mozambique, etc., the official in Passport Control would see my citizenship and invariably ask "Have you heard?" I'd say yes, though not much. "It's awful. I'm sorry."

My sister and I had driven from San Diego where we live, to just outside Mammoth, CA on 9/10, to meet up with our dad and step-mom, who were working at a Pack Station for the month. Hikers, fishers, campers, etc. hire the "packers" to take them out into the wilderness and essentially guide them through the trails of the Eastern Sierras. As is common when you are in the mountains and away from the trappings of civility (television, cell phone, etc.) we woke early that morning, 9/11. We listened to the radio briefly, barely hearing that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. There was no information on the kind of plane and the reports we were hearing made it sound like it was some sort of accident.

So, we walked away from the radio and got to work packing and saddling the horses and mules to get ready for the day. There were others around, campers getting ready for their trip to the wilderness, and no one seemed to think it was really that big of a deal. We mounted up and rode off into the woods, prepared to be gone all day. We had the most amazing day riding horses and experiencing the beautiful Muir Woods. We rode through streams, took our shoes off and waded in pristine, icy mountain lakes. We ate lunch in a grove of aspen trees that had just started to turn yellow in anticipation of fall. We returned to the pack station late. I'm not sure of the time, but it was pretty close to being dark. We ate dinner and went right to sleep. There was no mention of any of the devastation the rest of the world had watched while we were blissfully unaware. The next day, my parents, sister and I went into Mammoth Lakes to stock up on supplies for the station. Even for the summer, it was strangely empty.

We stopped for lunch at a little cafe. I remember asking my dad where everyone was. When we walked in, there were only 3 or 4 people, sitting at the bar. All eyes were glued to the televisions at the end of the bar. It was at this moment that it really hit us all.

We saw the footage of the towers collapsing, the second plane making contact, the names of the people unaccounted for scrolling across the bottom of the screen. I remember my mouth sort of falling open, literally dumbfounded at what I was seeing. I remember putting my hand over my mouth and just watching. There was no sound from the television, and there was hardly any sound in the room. I started to cry. We didn't say much the rest of that day, and my sister and I left later that afternoon for the drive back to San Diego. Neither of us really grasped the seriousness of what we had just seen.

The whole drive home, we saw cars and houses and businesses flying American flags. When I finally got my sister home (she was living with our mom at the time), our mom rushed out to us, saying that she was so worried, that she hadn't heard from us, and didn't we hear about what had happened? We went in the house and were finally able to see and hear news reports. I spent the next 3 days (at least!) glued to the television, with the rest of the world, trying to make sense of it all.

Sitting in my office in Suburban DC, one of my colleagues called me from Chicago to tell me to turn on the TV. As I did, I saw the second plan hit the towers. It was indescribable - an eerie sense of unreality. I called a friend in DC to see what he knew - he was going to be interviewed on CNN that day- and we figured out the news outlets were reporting the wrong flight numbers. We figured it out.

I went home to a neighborhood of stunned people: a flight attendant who knew people in the planes, a nurse who had to pronounce people dead at a local hospital, a man who escaped from the Pentagon. We watched the Pentagon burn together.

My wife, Margaret, and I were stationed in Saudi Arabia, working for the Saudi Aramco Company. The Company has several compounds dedicated to housing expatriate workers. We lived in the Ras Tanura Camp, which is located about 60 kilometers north of the main camp "Dhahran."

About once a week I would take my wife into Al-Khobar to the Shops and the Tamimi Grocery store (the only modern grocery store in Eastern Saudi Arabia). For us it was evening as compared to being morning in New York.

Our routine was usual: shop, have a dinner, walk the streets for fun, then drive back home to Ras Tanura. To get started and save time in our shopping I generally would drop Margaret off first at the store then proceded on to the local aquarium supply store, where I could buy special food for my Marine fish. As scheduled, I dropped Margaret off at the Tamimi and proceeded to the pet store.

Just at that time the radio (Armed Forces Network) announced the news about the first tower being hit. "Probably an accident," I figured and went on into the store. A few minutes later the shops turned into a state of panic. All expatriates in the area were exiting to their cars. One guy stated, "Did you hear about the WTC being hit?" "Yea..." "Well the other jut got HIT."

I got to my car and headed to the Tamimi to get my wife. It was well after dark by then. I could hear celebration gun shots in the area and see bullet tracers zipping up into the sky. The first thought, we are in the lion's den and need to get to the closest safe house possible, Dharan Camp, asap. As I pulled into the parking lot I saw Margaret standing by the curb with a cart of groceries. She had a panic look on her face. As I pulled up close to her, she quickly yanked open the back door and threw the sacks into the back seat screeming "Let's get out of here!"

While in the store several Saudi men who recognized her as being an Aramco expatriate circled her and told her she was safe there, which only added to her feeling of panic. Due to all the rush of exiting cars, getting to the main street was slow. Traffic heading towards Dhahran camp seemed slow. We rolled up the windows and got into the middle traffic lanes for security. Again we heard celebration gun fire. The line of traffic getting through the gate into Aramco camp was long and seemed slow.

At the entrance there were two Armored Personell Carriers with heavy machine guns parked in proximity of the gate. Aramco and the King of Saudi Arabia were determined to insure the safety of its expatriate workers. After we got in, we went to the camp cafeteria to get some coffee/soda and wait for a couple hours before deciding if we could make trip to home, "Aramco Ras Tanura Camp," which was a long 60 kilomieters trip across hostile territory. It was about 11 p.m. Saudi Time, when things seemed to slow down. I decided to make the attempt to get us back to Ras Tanura Camp.

As we exited out the North gate we were stopped by the security guards. We must wait for a while for the next convoy to go out. This meant we were going under armed escort from Dhahran to Ras Tanura. There were two security cars and a military vehicle leading about 5 cars with about the same number of vehicles bringing up the rear. We were escorted the entire distance into Ras Tanura. During the trip we could see off into the distance tracer bullets flying up into the air. I figured we were a safe distance from the party people.

After getting through the security check points and through the Ras Tanura gates we were safe, for sure. I poured myself a strong (illegal and homemade alcoholic drink) and relaxed and watched the news unfold on the satalite TV until sun up.

When the sun came up, I put in my usual 10-hour day of work without being even slightly tired.

The official company communications announced the news, with a follow-up statement: "Anyone celebrating or making derogatory remarks will be arrested, and will be great disgrace to their families," meaning, "Any Saudi who is out of line will be arrested."

Over the next few months there were a few car bombings that went off in Khobar and Dammam. One Expat compound was invaded where several were killed and injured. Remember that a couple years before the Dhahran Towers were blown up (next door to Dhahran camp) killing a number of civilian and military personnel.

A few weeks later, I lost a friend in Yanbu Saudi Arabia to a wild crowd of disgruntled Saudis. The country went into a type of police state exceeded only by Afganistan.

After 10 years things have calmed down considerably. But there is still some stress between Saudis and Expatriate workers living in the country.

It feels good living on the edge.

I had just left our home in Colonia NJ to go to work in Jersey City, across the river from the towers, when the news hit my car radio. As I drove closer I could see the towers burning, but never imagined that shortly thereafter they would be gone for good.

I never made it to Jersey City because of the tremendous backup of traffic on the NJ Turnpike bridge leading there, and re-routed to another work location in Bergen County. After the reports from Washington and Pennsylvania, I stopped my car and fell apart. In the privacy of my vehicle I cried, I screamed, threw my cell phone,and questioned the existence of God.

I never did make it through a full day of work and, not knowing who was responsible for the attacks, wondered if nukes would be falling somewhere by the end of the day. All I could think about was being home with my wife, and our 9-year-old daughter, and that's where I headed after being unable to concentrate on my job. I remember it vividly, that day I consider to be the darkest in our history. My thoughts go out to all whom were lost, those they left behind, and all of us who will never, ever forget.

I have heard it said that people remember the exact moment in time when something tragic or catastrophic happens. My grandmother remembers Pearl Harbor and the Kennedy shooting like it was yesterday. In my life, I never thought this was true until September 11th, 2001.

I was in the fourth grade, on my way to school. We were never a news in the morning family, so I went on with the day worrying about my spelling test. Once I got to school, I just saw tears -- tears and worried faces of students. I walked into my classroom, completely confused, and I heard my friend anxiously say, "I have family in New York. I have family in New York."

I kept going through my morning, not understanding anything. Finally, my teacher told us the story and turned on the small television set in the room. Watching what was going on, I could help but feel scared. Even across the coast, I felt scared.

Shortly before 6 a.m. my mom called and woke me up, saying, "Turn on the news, they're blowing up buildings in New York." I mumbled something in response, hung up then rolled over, thinking I was dreaming. When the haze cleared a few minutes later I got up and turned on the TV, just as the second plane hit the south tower and it became clear the first crash was no accident.

Most of my memories from that incomprehensible day are a blur, but I distinctly recall the feeling of complete helplessness and that we'd be next in Los Angeles.

I wish I could put my experience of that day into just a few words. I remember the first hours in such vivid detail. I lived in downtown Chicago then. I heard them break into the 7:55 a.m. local update to go back live to the Today Show and saw the damage to the first tower. Now running late, I watched the second plane hit and can still hear Matt Lauer's "Oh my..." as he saw it happen.

After a frantic 90 minutes at the office and briefly hearing an air raid siren, I walked home with a colleague who lived near me. The buses were packed solid with people who lived further away and I wanted nothing to do with being in a crowded train or eL station. As we neared the point where we would part ways, two middle-aged Arab men turned a corner and walked past us in the opposite direction. After they passed, she quietly said, "I know it's wrong, but I was afraid of them for a moment."

After I got home, I turned on the TV and saw the replays. The rest of the office had watched the towers come down live. I had briefly seen the wreckage of Flight 93 as we passed a storefront TV during the walk home. Otherwise, I hadn't seen anything for two hours - not since watching the second plane hit. The Pentagon, the falling towers, Flight 93; I had heard about it but I hadn't seen it.

For some reason, I sat on the floor for most of the day. It seemed better - safer - than sitting on the couch; to this day, I don't know why. As I watched the replays of the colappses and the continual aftermath, I started doing my own assessment. I was just three blocks from the Hancock Center. I looked up at my floor to ceiling windows and thought "Well, at a minimum my windows would be blown out." At that point I decided I needed to have a bag ready ... just in case. It sat next to the front door for three weeks before I finally unpacked it.

I went to the store around the corner for groceries since my refrigerator had nothing but water. I was shocked to see the cafe next door open and with customers. At some point I fell asleep, exhausted from the worry of the morning and the tears of the afternoon.

Going to work the next morning, I couldn't figure out what was "off." I had felt it on the eL and felt it on the streets walking. Then I realized - it was quiet. No one was talking, no horns were honking, no music was blasting. Chicago was silent. I can't remember when it went back to normal, but it was after everything else changed.

I was flying home to Los Angeles on leave from North Carolina's RDU airport. I flew out at about seven in the morning, thinking I will be home in time for my mom's cooking. After I missed my connecting flight in Atlanta, I was thinking "what's the worst that can happen now"? The attendant booked me on another flight leaving later that morning, and I was thinking to myself, as soon as I land at LAX I will be able to chill with my family.

At around 9 maybe 15 minutes after AAF 11 crashed into the towers I started to watch the tv after I had seen a lot of people tuning in and crowding the lobby. I was thinking to myself that maybe it was an accident, but never ruled out the possibility of being attacked. About a couple minutes later another plane had hit the towers and I knew then that it wasn't an accident. I see a full bird colonel getting paged, and I immediately thought that I was going to get called back to base.

I call my Platoon Sgt. and asked him if I was being recalled. He said "no stay where you're at". As I am watching the events unfold in NYC, Washington, and Pennsylvania, I can't help to think what will be in store for us Marines. I was angry.

It wasn't until later that night that I broke down after seeing all the images of first responders helping people and having the buildings collapse on them. I was just in awe when I saw the Pentagon being hit and in shock about flight 93 crashing in a field in Pennsylvania...How can they do this to us?

I was living on the Upper West Side in New York, attending graduate school at Pratt Institute. On September 11, I had scheduled a full day of classes, work meetings, and a doctor's appointment. I was running out the door with sweater and bag in hand at around 9am, when the land line rang.

I debated whether to pick it up since I was already late. My former father-in-law, who lives just outside Washington, DC, was on the other line, asking if I was OK. My former husband had just left for a six-week business trip, and I assumed he was just checking on me. Slowly, he realized that I had no idea what was going on. "We're under attack. Terrorists just got the World Trade Center and the Pentagon," he said. I immediately turned on the television and got off the phone to call my parents and brothers in California.

I spent the day shell-shocked, watching television, making calls trying to find my friends and co-workers, who were scattered about the city, and taking calls, assuring everyone that I was OK.

The city was shocked into silence. In the days that followed, we lived in uneasy stillness. The air was thick with smoke, and there was a gaping, smoking hole that where two towers once stood... a site that is now a grave for thousands of people.

Rudy Guiliani gave a speech shortly thereafter in which he said, "We are all New Yorkers," words that resonate with me, even now. In the hours and days that followed, I saw countless acts of kindness -- not just in the very generous monetary donations, blood drives, collections for supplies for the rescue effort. It was in the neighbors who checked on each other, the hugs given and received, stories shared. I never quite felt like I belonged in New York - I'm a California girl at heart -- but that single shared tragic experience brought me closer to the city, and somehow bonded me to it.

A day or so after the attack, I was sitting on the roof of my apartment building, watching the smoke billow from Ground Zero, when The Beatles "Let It Be" came on the radio. Ten years later, I'm still waiting for the answer.

I was at home and suddenly the TV flipped to coverage of the first tower being hit. My wife and I were wondering was it an accident or something much darker. When the second tower was hit, my heart dropped. We were under attack. Make no mistake, those people will accept nothing other then total domination of all religions different then there own. That day I realized there would never be a long lasting peace in my lifetime. I was so sad.

My heart, my heart. It still hurts. I now live in L.A. I was in NY that day because my mother was having rather serious surgery on 23rd street on 9/10. I picked her up on 9/11 to take her to an outpatient consultation. On the way uptown, we heard the sirens. We got to the doctors office and learned of the first plane hit. We thought it must be an accident.

When we learned of the second plane hit, we knew we were in trouble. My family headed back to their home in Long Island before the city closed down. I refused to leave, thinking I might be needed for something -- blood donor perhaps? I stayed in my hotel in Times Square. It became clear not long after that no blood would be needed. There were way too few survivors. The gory details are known by all.

What I can tell you about me is that NYC has always been my home, always had my heart. I couldn't leave it that day. It is the strength of character of all of those who live and work there who kept the city going. A testament of will and spirit. I am so proud to be a New Yorker. So proud to know that no matter what, we all stood shoulder to shoulder.

I watched the buildings fall from fifth avenue close by. An unobstructed view in a robins egg blue sky. There was a man next to me in a business suit with his hands on his head screaming "the buildings are falling". I watched in amazement, refusing to believe what my eyes were seeing. "No they are not," I said, in total denial. He was right, I was wrong.

My life changed that day. My value of life, of this great city that is the pinnacle of life, were forever raised into an untouchable strata. We are all dispensable, we are all finite. But this city and its heart are indestructible. Even this crazy amount of hatred couldn't maul it or change its nature. New York is hope.

Thirty-eight years ago my mother sent me a World Trade postcard to a tiny town in Sri Lanka and said “ Son, one day you must visit New York and visit the top of the World Trade Center." It was the words of a young women truly awed by America.

I was ironing my shirt for work and watching the news in Toronto, Canada when they said “We interrupt this program to bring you news of a plane crash at the world trade centre. I thought great, another idiotic light aircraft had accidentally crashed into the building. And then as I was watching, the second plane crashed and the announcer said “ Oh my God, I don’t think this was an accident." It was surreal. As I watched, it got worse. I nearly burnt myself with the iron. My heart was beating faster and faster. Oh my God! I stepped out and smoked a cigarette, trying to calm myself.

Then I called my mom in Los Angeles and said “ Mom, get up! Put on the TV. The World Trade Center has been attacked.” She didn’t believe me at first, but my crying and sheer force of command made her run to the TV. Within minutes she was waking my dad in Hong Kong.

Then the first tower collapsed and soon after the second tower went down. It was like World War Three had arrived. I was mad as hell. Those poor people. My brother was working in New York as a banker but he was not at the WTC. They evacuated downtown Toronto too. There was panic. The Red Cross donation centers were just full of people giving blood. I gave money and cried for the next month.

And I never got to the top of the World Trade Center despite visiting the place three times before. I would have gladly given up that dream if I could have those people back.

I remember being woken up by my mom rather aggressively. The sun was up, but it was bright -- more bright than I was used to. It was around six or six thirty, I'm not entirely sure.

She sat me and my siblings down on the couch and the TV was on. I was used to the radio being on in the morning, but not the TV; I just remember not understanding why a building was on fire. I didn't really know where Manhattan was. My mom works in downtown L.A. and our home phone was ringing non-stop. People were telling her not to go to work "in case LA was next." My mom drove us to school that morning and she told us she would be picking us up, which wasn't what I was used to. Though I wasn't entirely sure what was going on, I knew it wasn't right.

In class we talked about rumors we had heard from the media or our parents. We tried to make sense of it as a class -- a group of ten year olds and our teacher. I didn't understand why anyone would fly a plane into a building. I didn't even know you could do that. I remember going home that night and watching the news and not understanding why people were jumping out of a burning building. Nothing made sense to me at that time. I hadn't thought about it until now, but I couldn't imagine what my parents were going through. How do you explain the "why" of what happened that day? The "why" of what led up to that day? I can't even explain the "why" now, ten years later."

I was working at McLean, Va. at the time on the 9th floor of a 10-story building and when the 2nd plane hit the towers, the news was saying that Washington, D.C. was next. I remember our building getting evacuated since we were one of the few high rise in the Tyson's Corner area. I started calling my family in Los Angeles and told my mom not to go to work in downtown L.A. A 20-minute drive from my work to my house took 2 hours and I remember everyone's feared looked every time we would here a plane in the DC area. My wife and I just watched the news all night and since we were near the Pentagon the whole place was on lock down.

9/11 was on a Tuesday and we were told to not back to work until next week. Having served in the Marines I felt helpless and wanted to help out at Ground Zero but I couldn't leave my wife alone scared because of what transpired. I cried when I got back to work the following week and people were still shocked from what had happened.

To this day I still remember telling people on my floor to evacuate and one of the last ones to get out of the building making sure they were safe.

I was the Captain on a Northwest Airlines 747 on that tragic day. We were in the air, Tokyo to San Francisco, as we received the news of 9/11 in bits and pieces. What started out as a routine flight turned into anything but as we learned more and more of the tragic story being played out on the east coast of the U.S.

With 6 hours remaining in the flight we found ourselves briefing on how to protect the cockpit with crash axes, how to deal with a possible threatening passengers and how to say the correct words to an air traffic control system that refused to let us land without declaring an emergency and with the threat fighter interceptors that were more than ready to execute an order to shoot us down given the right set of circumstances.

It was a flight fraught with potential dangers and one that, after 37 years of flying, I can say without equivocation, was the most harrowing of my life.

One of the saddest memories for me was seeing, in the days and weeks that followed, the desperate search by loved ones of their lost family members and friends.

In every subway, on many street corners, in Union Square, were quickly copied fliers with photos of people who had not come home that day, and a phone number to call if by some chance they were found.

It was heart wrenchingly clear that most of the people pictured on those fliers were gone.

At 21 years of age, I was sleeping when my mom suddenly entered my bedroom screaming "Alex wake up, there has been a terrorist attack in New York, the Twin Towers were hit by two airplanes."

I immediately turned on my TV and saw the towers covered in smoke. Minutes later, the first tower went down. It must have been around 7 AM on the west coast. Living in Tijuana and working in San Diego, I immediately knew the border crossing was going to be a nightmare. My shift at the Nike Outlet in San Ysidro was at 11 AM. Back then the line was around 120 cars per lane or around 50 min to an hour of waiting. After the 2nd tower collapsed around 8:00 PT, I immediately went to the border only to hear on the radio that the line was 600 cars per lane and and around a 5 to 7 hour waiting time. Rumor has it, customs was taking 3 to 5 minute inspection per car. I turned around went home and asked my Dad to drop me at border to cross by foot. Again, back then at the most, the line was 50 pedestrians which takes you 10 minutes to cross. On that day the line was 3,000 pedestrians. I could not believe my eyes when I saw how long the line was.

Even the SENTRI lane (a special rapid inspection lane) was incredibly long.

It took me 2 hours to cross to the US only to arrive to an empty Nike store. For the first time ever, not a single soul was at the store shopping. The manager closed the store and we were sent home around 1:00 p.m.

When I got home, I talked to friends and family who also work in San Diego. All of them turned back after being 3 hours at the lane advancing only half the way.

Since then, the border has never been the same. Now, lanes are longer and slower. The pedestrian crossing now has an average of 500 pedestrians every morning reaching 700 to 1,000 on weekends.

Now at 31 and with an MBA under my belt, I will never forget that atrocious Tuesday morning!

I had broken my arm the night before, and was sound asleep when my husband called as he dropped my daughter off at school, saying "There's something bad going on. Turn on the TV."

As soon as I saw what had happened in NY, and the TV commentators were saying that there were more "missing planes" perhaps headed to LA, I was very worried about my ex-secretary who worked in the tallest tower in Downtown LA. So I called her and said "I'm worried about you. Get out of the tower." She and her co-workers hadn't known what was going on, but when informed about half of them left the tower and headed for home. Her employer was very angry, but she and I say "Better safe than sorry."

I still wonder about the employees who stayed at their desks on lower floors in the first tower at World Trade Center which was hit, the North Tower. The North Tower was the second one to collapse. Did people die because their supervisors intimidated them into staying and working when their building was on fire?

Post 9/11 our company's "office manager" sternly discouraged us from leaving our high rise near Wilshire/LaCienega when there were bomb scares and fire alarms. "You can go downstairs if you really feel the need to." Post 9/11 at-will employee intimidation to enhance productivity at high rise offices. That's one unfortunate legacy of 9/11.

Sadly, some day there will be a high rise disaster in LA due to earthquake or fire, and some office manager will intimidate employees into staying, and cause their deaths, just like I suspect occurred in the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

I was in my apartment building in Times Square and overheard my neighbor say that a plane hit the WTC. I was thinking it was a charter plane or something as I walked out the building around 9:00 am. As I made my way to 9th ave, I heard a fire truck racing down 9th ave. This is not something odd but the fact that the passenger in the truck was just holding down the horn without letting up surprised me. As they passed me, the fire-fighters had a look on their faces as if they saw a ghost. It was odd.

Next came 7 more fire trucks right behind the other truck and they were weaving in and out of traffic like no tomorrow. Their faces were glued to the windshield with a very somber look. After that came about 10 police cars flying down 9th ave, some coming from 49th street with their lights and sires on moving at a very high rate of speed. At this time there were no other cars around but only Fire trucks and Law Enforcement. I knew something was seriously off here.

I walked into a store and the workers were glued to the TV watching the tower on fire, It was so surreal. Everyone I saw was in shock. As I headed to the subway around 9:30, people were walking around like zombies and the city was awfully quiet. A couples later, I saw people walking around bloody with ashes all over their body. It was crazy! For the next 2-3 weeks, Manhattan smelled like jet fuel.

I was working at McLean, VA at the time on the 9th floor of a 10 story bldg and when the 2nd plane hit the towers, the news was saying that Washington DC was next. I remember our bldg getting evacuated since we were one of the few high rise in the Tyson's Corner area. I started calling my family in Los Angeles and told my mom not to go to work in Downtown LA. A 20 minute drive from my work to my house took 2 hours and I remember everyone's feared looked every time we would here a plane in the DC area. My wife and I just watched the news all night and since we were near the Pentagon the whole place was on lock down.

9/11 was on a Tuesday and we were told to not back to work until next week. Having served in the Marines I felt helpless and wanted to help out at Ground Zero but I couldn't leave my wife alone scared because of what transpired. I cried when I got back to work the following week and people were still shocked from what had happen.

To this day I still remember telling people on my floor to evacuate and one of the last ones to get out of the building making sure they were safe.

I was 16 and sitting in the hallway of my small Petersburg, Texas high school waiting for classes to begin. Two classmates walked in and said "We have to get to TVs. A plane has just hit the World Trade Center."

I had never heard of the World Trade Center (though I might have recognized the picture in a skyline shot) so this news didn't register for me at first. We hurried to the library and tuned on the old set with foil bunny ears there and as soon as we got the picture to come in the second plane hit.

I will never forget crying just thinking of all those people who were dead and dying just as a I watched. Standing there helpless in a classroom hundreds of miles away I watched as almost 3,000 people were murdered. Seeing that you cannot help but be forever altered.

Seven of the 21 people in my graduating class joined the military. They made their commitments to serve as we sat watching. The year we graduated was the year that we declared war on Iraq.

Hundreds of miles away people and places I had never heard of changed my life forever.

I was visiting with my mom -- a retired real estate broker and entrepreneur who had suffered and survived multiple strokes, heart attack, and cancer up to that point -- as we watched in horror on the local morning news as the planes crashed into the towers. My mom later that evening suffered another stroke due to the emotional devastation of that day's events and has not fully recovered to this day.

To the Civilians and First Responders who dedicated their very lives to Freedom that day, I offer this anthem:

We shall not be conquered ... We shall not be bowed ... We will forge ahead ... Tall and strong and proud ... Against the tide of tyranny ... Against the rage of foes ... We'll march that banner-FREEDOM!!! Until that final trumpet blows ..."

On September 11th, 2001 I was in fourth grade. I remember arriving at my school, Immanuel Lutheran, in Albuquerque, New Mexico tardy as usual. It seemed like just another day at the mundane school. My teacher Ms. Green who was probably in her late 20s at the time was beginning the arithmetic portion of our day when a voice came over the PA system and asked us all for our attention. The principal at the time was fairly new and was telling us that there had been an attack on America and had instructed the teachers to turn on the televisions and watch the news.

I remember being extremely confused. Being the age that I was, I could not understand the magnitude of the attacks. I was bewildered and frightened by the somber demeanor all the adults seemed to possess. After watching the news for about an hour we continued our lessons and ended the day with a prayer for those affected.

After school my father picked me up in his Datsun 280Z that he had been promising to fix up. I remember asking him "Who did this and why?," "Why?," "Why would anyone want to hurt all those people?"

After explaining to me that he thought it was Osama Bin Laden, a name unlike any I had ever heard. I felt like I was beginning to understand or pretended to at least. At home the television would not change, and after watching the footage of the planes crashing into the towers I too began to feel the shock and awe. It seemed almost instantly that American flags began to pop up around the neighborhood and the town developed a sense of unity, which I today realize is the beautiful ability of Americans to stand together when we need it most.

I recall the days following when seemingly everyone had an American flag on their home, car, office, and even clothing. I remember wearing a pin with the flag on it everyday for months. September 11th then touched my life when a classmate of mine Jacob's firefighter father was sent to the Pentagon. I remember how scared the boy was, while at the same time proud of the courage his father was exhibiting. The whole school came together and supported Jacob and his family while his dad was away.

September 11th not only showed me the ugliest of humanity but also the best of it. It showed me fright, anger, bewilderment, but most of all it showed me empathy and compassion.

I was managing The Palm on West 50th St. in New York. The company wanted management to get certified in food safety handling. So at 8:40 a.m. on September 11th, 2001 I had just come up from the subway and was running down Varick towards Canal, late for my second day of food safety class.

I checked my cell for the time -- it was 8:44 a.m. and before I ran into a deli to get some juice, a plane flew over my head. It was so low I could see that it was an American Airlines plane. I thought that was strange, but for the first of two times that day, my mind tried to rationalize what I saw.

Newark wasn't really that far away. When the cashier handed me my change, I heard a loud boom. I ran outside and asked the guy in the street, "That wasn't the plane was it?" He looked at me, his mouth open, but he didn't say a word. I ran over to his vantage point and looked straight down Varick at the North tower, with a huge black hole, smoke pouring out. My co-workers from the Palm poured out onto Varick along with other people from the surrounding buildings. The first thing our catering sales manager, who used to work at Windows, said was that the people at Windows would never make it out.

As I saw the first few people jump from the North tower, my co-workers tried to convince me that I was seeing debris falling. But as people started jumping together, some in twos, some in larger groups, there was no denying what we were seeing.

None of us could understand how a commercial plane could crash into one of the Twin Towers. When we saw the explosion from the South Tower (we were north looking south, so we couldn't see the second plane), in an instant we all knew this was an act of terror. Someone on the street turned on their car radio. We quickly learned it was another plane.

When the initial first responders started coming down Varick, it was total mayhem. Our class instructor quickly took control and started directing cars to the side so that the emergency responders would have a clear path. We could not have imagined that so many of those men and women we saw driving down to the scene were driving down to their deaths. That's one of the most haunting memories I have of that day, seeing so many of those brave firefighters going to do their jobs and knowing later, that many never came back. At some point Giuliani told us to start walking uptown, get out of downtown. I was never a huge Giuliani fan, but that day, he took charge and he comforted New Yorkers (as best as we could be comforted). He was a regular at the Westside Palm, and after 9/11 the man could not go to the bathroom without a standing ovation from the entire dining room.

I cried all day long for the first several days. The rest of the week I was crying for most of the day, with moments of repose. It slowly tapered down, but for that first month, I still cried several times a day. Some lasting memories: how clear and beautiful the sky was, the sight of people jumping in groups from the Towers, the image of all those firefighters driving down Varick, and the collapse of the two Towers.

It was the first time I was aware of having a fear of dying horrifically. I was a flight attendant at the time, and always chose to work the cross-country flights -- the same types of flights targeted by the terrorists. Sept. 11, 2001 was to be the first day of a five-day stretch of cross-country flights, but I'd come down with a flu and called in sick the night before. I was in my home, instead of on an airplane, watching as the day unfolded in slow motion. With each report of how the crew and passengers were savagely murdered, I grieved for them and for their families who had lost them. I chose to quit flying within two years. Now the date has a new meaning, one of new life: my daughter was born on Sept. 11, 2008.

The September 11th anniversary day is never easy for me. But September 12th is just as hard. Those days are markers of twin tragedies, public and private memories of a painful time that will forever be intertwined in my mind.

On September 11th I watched with the nation as the towers fell (towers that were once my gazing point from my desk on Chambers Street) and wondered what world my 2-year-old daughter and my unborn child would live in.

On September 12th my mother called to say the pneumonia she'd been admitted to the hospital for was actually Stage 4 lung cancer. The news felt like a knife jab and the airport closings were the twisting of the blade. But we did get on a plane to see her before she died, one month and two days after the towers burned. The one grandson she never knew was born, with autism, and many days since I have wished she were here for comfort and cajoling.

But we -- the family she left behind -- are here and are making her proud. And what of the "new" world that dawned that fateful day that I worried about so? It's proven to be much like the one before, with strife and triumph, predictability and surprise. Me, I take comfort in that milestone of survival.

I was in my office in the Bronx. I was the CFO for a nonprofit organization based in New York. We also had a major project in Boston. I was always the first person in the office because I'm an early bird and a lot of work could get done before everyone came in. I had moved to Providence, R.I. as a good midpoint between the two locations. I lived in an apartment in Harlem during the week and went home on weekends.

I was at my desk when my phone rang. It was Greg, a former administrative assistant. He said "Deb, there's a plane in one of the towers" very calmly. I said what idiot thought he could fly his little plane close to the World Trade Center?! Greg responded, "No Deb, this is a big plane, an airliner." He was standing not far from the WTC. I knew immediately this was no accident. I told him to get out of there! I went into the staff lounge upstairs and the TV was on and there were several women standing watching. Then the second plane hit. Several of the women had relatives or spouses working at the WTC. Some of the women started worrying about planes attacking the Bronx. Then the first building started collapsing and we all screamed in shock. Then the second one collapsed! I understood everything had changed.

I started transferring funds so that operations could continue and be managed from home. Then I gathered my belongings and began what turned into an all day effort to get out of the city.

September 11 began as an incredibly beautiful Fall day. I will always remember how the beautiful morning made me feel so good and how hours later how sad I was. No trains were running so I had to walk from the Bronx back to my apartment in Harlem to gather a few things and then head downtown to see if I could get a train to Providence. As I walked towards downtown with a lot of other people, we started to encounter people walking uptown. A lot of them were covered in ash and appeared to be in shock. It was so eerie because it was so quiet. Hundreds of silent people. It reminded me of the scenes in movies of the refugees fleeing war torn cities.

I got to midtown and found that no trains were moving. One of my co-workers called and said she had heard that a train would be leaving that evening but it was not being publicized. She said she would call me back and let me know more details. So I turned around and started back to my apartment in Harlem. When I returned, I turned on the television and watched the unbelievable over and over. Finally she called and told me the train was making one stop on the east side of Harlem that evening around 6 or 7. So I started walking again. I asked one of the ticket agents if a train was really coming. He said it was but that it was not going beyond Connecticut. I bought a ticket and called a friend and asked that she pick me up. Finally it came. A lot of people were covered in dust and again it was eerily quiet on the train. As we progressed toward Connecticut, each stop was filled with people looking for their loved ones and the press taking pictures.

That day in New York was horrible and how it changed this country is horrible. Everyday people came together, but other forces like Cheney and Rumsfeld used the pain of that day to justify attacking and destroying a country and its people that had nothing to do with the attack. They have turned us into the most surveiled people on the planet.They should be tried for crimes against humanity.

Like a lot of people, I thought it was a joke at first. My girlfriend at the time ran into my dorm room, said something about a pilot losing control and hitting the World Trade Center, and ran back out. I thought she was being silly and turned over to go back to sleep.

The commotion in our dorm's TV room got to be too loud to ignore, and I walked in there, pajamas and sleepy eyes and all, to see my hallmates crying and staring, scared, at the tv in the middle of the room.

Whenever you see a bunch of people all looking intently at the same thing in a random place, you can get that undeniably creepy feeling that something is wrong.

I had a feeling things wouldn't be right again for a long time.

I was living in Los Angeles. It was still 6:00 a.m. maybe? I was 8 years old, I was still sleeping (like the many kids my age). It was a school day. I do remember waking up hearing my mom tell my dad "Should we even turn on the tv?" In a worry tone ... I guess they had seen what has just happened. Like every other person who woke up to a nightmare, they were scared. They wanted me and my sister to hurry and get ready for school. We didn't even bother to think what just happened. Then in school none of my peers seem to know either. Later the announcement: "There's been a tragic accident in N.Y." That day, there was this feeling of emptiness. We didn't do much work. I guess there was fear of more attacks.

I came home to see my mother still watching the re-runs. I still remember the first thing I saw in the tv. A falling man, I ask my mom what was going on. Her reply, "Alguien atac? a Los Estados Unidos." (They attack America) That day I spent my time watching the news.

19 years old now and I can proudly say I love my country. But it shouldn't take a tragic moment in our lives to come together. We will never forget the lives that were lost that day. Come 9/11/2011 I will pause to remember not the attack but the lives lost.

I was sitting reading the New York Times at an outside table of a caf? just north of Prince St. on Sullivan St in the Soho part of Manhattan. A plane flew over my head. I thought that it was too low, too loud and out of place. I heard a bang. I heard someone say "oh my God!". I stepped into the street and looked to see what appeared to be a small hole in the north tower and soon enough smoke started coming from it.

I don't know when I became very aware of what was happening throughout the world. I walked toward the buildings. I reached Chambers St. a few block North when I sensed the tide of people coming from the buildings were traumatized I stopped moving forward. It was then the second building was hit. By then the word "under attack" phrase was being shared among those in the street and I remembered what I heard from an employee seated next to me when I first worked in the WTC after the attack in 1993. "If they really wanted to bring the building down... all they had to do was fly an airplane full of fuel into it."

I was working right across the Westside Highway at the World Financial Center during the 93 attack. I remember looking down onto the highway and seeing cars zigzagging over the shredded metal that had blown out from the garage. A motorcycle messenger ran from the garage entrance with his helmet on and with out his motorcycle.

I arrived in Manhattan in 1973 reversing a urban exodus trend, the WTC was not yet opened. Seeing the flames and smoke coming from the towers I knew their very existence was now threatened.

I returned to my apartment on Thompson St. The neighbors had gathered at the rooftop. It is there I watched the buildings evaporate.

I was scheduled to leave Manhattan after almost 30 years the next day. This did not happened, the new tenant needed to delay his arrival as he was to work on Maiden Lane. I was unable to bring a van because the neighborhood was closed off to all but essential traffic. Proof of identity and place of residence was required below Houston Street. I really had nowhere specific I was headed other than to leave so I waited for things to change. I did go closer later. It was cold and rainy, I brought dry socks an clothes as instructed. They were needed. From Franklin street and Hudson I was asked to move away as building number 7 collapsed filling the street with ash and smoke again.

I remember reading about the "bomb proof" "command center" that Mayor Giuliani had proposed to be in that building and how it was to be an essential tool during a catastrophe. Those articles can be found in online archives. I do remember reading the center was finished just months before 9.11.2001. I cannot find any reference to this. I saw no mention of the "command center" in the 9.11 report.

I remember reading how Mayor Giuliani saw a priest heading toward the buildings for the last time as the Mayor walked the other way. I have long wondered where was Giuliani headed then?

I remember the day vividly. On September 11, 2001, I was in my second or third week of the 5th grade. My alarm woke me up, as usual, at around 6 a.m. Pacific time. I am not a morning person, and I usually stayed in bed, listening to the radio, until my mom would come in and threaten me to get me out of bed.

This day was different. It didn't seem out of the ordinary at first, but I could tell that my mom's tone was more somber than usual. I was a very sensitive child, and had a tendency to worry about things much more than I should have. My mother, concerned about what would happen if I heard the news on the radio, came in my room when she heard my radio start playing. She turned the radio off.

"Eric, you need to know something. It's not a big deal, and I don't want you to get worked up, but something bad has happened. I know you're going to hear about it eventually, so I'm just going to tell you. A plane flew in to the world trade towers in New York. I think part of it is sticking out or something, but it sounds like the firefighters are already there. It's not a big deal, but it's all over the news, and you're going to have to hear about it eventually, so I just wanted to warn you."

At that point, the scope of what had really happened wasn't fully clear to my mother. She knew that it was much more serious than what she had told me, but she had only heard initial reports from the radio - she hadn't turned on the TV yet. I had images in my head of a small, single-engine plane, sticking out of the buildings, hanging precariously above the Manhattan skyline.

When I finally walked out to the living room, to the TV that was now on, I couldn't comprehend what I was seeing. My mom was staring at the television, speechless. My sister was going back and forth between her room and the living room, getting ready for school. When I saw the TV, I couldn't believe my eyes. Huge stacks of smoke, billowing from both towers. Reporters, at a loss for words, that had no idea what was happening. None of us could have known that right then and there, we were watching our world, and our way of life, change.

I remember several other moments from that day: The tears of confusion and worry covering my glasses and blurring my vision. The nauseous feeling that consumed me when the source of the thuds on the pavement was revealed, after the revelation that not all of the falling objects were debris. The protective hugs from my mother, trying to shield me from the brutal, horrifying reality that had come bursting into our house through the television set. The sickening, sinking feeling when the first tower fell. The countless replays of the towers falling. The feeling of dread when I had to leave for school, not wanting to take in any more of the horror, but not wanting to leave it. Listening to my substitute teacher try to explain what was going on. The anger that came with the first rumors that terrorists were responsible, and that it wasn't an accident. The endless footage of the cleanup and relief effort, of firefighters covered in soot and ash, picking their way through the mountain of wreckage.

Of all these memories, though, nothing will ever compare to the shock that accompanied that first glimpse of our 27" Panasonic television, seeing the pitch-black smoke quietly billowing into the clear blue morning sky. The memory is so clear, and so close, I feel like I might wake up tomorrow in that same bunk bed; just an innocent 10 year old kid that can't even define the word "terrorist."

I was a teacher at South High School in Torrance, 12th grade government. It was the second day of the semester. I rushed to school that morning and grabbed a television for my students to see the events unfold.

I will never forget driving home that afternoon. I lived north of LAX and there were no planes flying. That was when it hit me.

Several students from the class of 2001 enlisted. One was Phil Chung, whose tank battalion was one of the first over the border in the Iraq war. Phil died in a car accident in 2003.

Another was Edgar Vargas, who served his country with honor.

And then there was Matt Ferrara, who attended West Point. Matt died in Afghanistan in 2007.

Even though I now live in Colorado, I think about that day all the time. I hope I provided the leadership, as well as the comfort my students needed. It was a privilege to be a teacher with those wonderful kids.

I will always hold a special place in my heart for my students. I cherish the ones who lived, but I am still sad for the ones we lost. Two kids from one class period just seems like too much to bear.

I was feeding my 4 and 2 year olds. Sesame Street was playing in the background on a television and I was putting butter and syrup on waffles. Working on my second cup of coffee when my mom called all upset and said, "Don't worry your sister is ok" (she worked in NYC). I thought she was mugged or something. My mom was surprised I didn't know what was going on but PBS doesn't cut in on Sesame Street with announcements.

I switched the channels then called my spouse after footage of the pentagon. I told him to come home (he was working in CT). Watched in horror as the second plane hit - very numb. My 4 year old thought it was a movie, and I was wishing it was too.

We rounded up water, supplies and cash then I started calling friends until the cell lines were tied up. Heard ambulances running down I95. I remembered all my visits to the towers - having dinner at Windows, taking friends to sight see. I am still in disbelief that an event like that could happen in my lifetime.

On September 11, 2001, I was in Ft. Benning, Ga going through Basic Training to become an infantryman in the U.S. Army. We were doing different drills to prepare for our M16 qualification that was coming up that Saturday. As we were practicing, our Drill Sergeant walked in with a face that expressed anger. He went into his office and rolled out a T.V. We all looked surprised because we weren't allowed any T.V. time. He turned it on and the first thing we saw was a replay of the 2nd plane hitting the tower.

At first we thought it was some type of movie. The fact that we didn't have any type of communication to the outside world didn't help. Our Drill Sergeant explained to us what was going on and instructed that anybody who had family in New York or the D.C. area could go downstairs and call home to make sure their family is ok. I got chills and a lot of different emotions were felt. I was angry, scared, and confused. Our drill Sergeant gave us a speech about how our training would change from that point forward. He guaranteed us that the U.S. was going to catch whoever was responsible for this and that we were going to be part of that mission. He guaranteed us that we were all going to see combat because of this. He wasn't lying.

I'm proud that I served with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division that was part of the invasion on Iraq. Even now, when I see the images of 9/11 I cry. I cry because I'm proud to be an American. We were able to overcome this tragedy and continue living our lives. We should never forget the Americans that were lost that day and the ones that we're still losing in the war on terror. God Bless America.

I was driving west on Wilshire that morning listening in disbelief to the radio. At each stoplight, every driver around me had the same expression. It was as if time had stopped.

It was the first and only time that I thought that I might not be coming home tonight.

It was crazy -- no one knew how many planes were involved. When I arrived at work, as I walked to my office, I looked up and saw the largest flag of the United States I had ever seen flying from the top of a construction crane and thought, "Let it persevere."

September 11, 2001 was the beginning of a 3 day CCPOA (California Crime Prevention Officers Association) conference in Oxnard. Since it was within cycling distance of our home in Rancho Palos Verdes, we decided to bicycle to the conference. We knew nothing about the 911 disaster until we reached Point Mugu Naval Air Station, where they notified us of the disaster and that the base was closed to cyclists. The only way around the base was the freeway - illegal for cyclists. Without an alternative, we entered the freeway and were soon stopped by a Highway Patrol officer, who was ready to write us a ticket until we produced our CCPOA registration. He told us to hightail it fast to the next turnoff, which we did.

The locale was in shock, and that night at a local restaurant, we were the only diners. Several conference speakers coming from New York and Washington didn't make it. One died in the disaster. No matter what the subject matter of each class, the subject turned to 9-11 and the impacts on all of us - crime prevention people, police officers, residents. It sowed the seeds of our Rancho Palos Verdes Emergency Preparedness program, even though we later realized, we were far more vulnerable to an earthquake than to a terrorist attack. But the attack completely upended the traditional roles of law enforcement.

Suddenly they were responsible for intelligence gathering, transportation and infrastructure security, domestic terrorism, surveillance of all kinds including Internet and social websites, and the biggest challenge of all, educating the public. From local law enforcement to the Dept. of Justice Assistance, citizens who never dreamed America would be the victims of a terrorist attack were being taught to report suspicious activities and participate in a country-wide anti-terrorism Neighborhood Watch program. For most people it was the loss of America's innocence that may never again return.

I had to make a trip to Indonesia. The trip took me from LAX to Tokyo to Singapore to Balikpapan, Indonesia (east coast of Borneo). I left early Saturday from LAX and arrived Sunday evening in Borneo. I was to tired to think straight and went directly to bed.

Within about 30 minutes in bed I got a call saying I needed to come down to the lobby of my hotel. It was an odd request - we all had traveled a long way and were all extremely tired.

When I got down to the lobby I began to see what was happening. No one moved. Everyone felt the sense of loss and of being so far from home at this important time. Confusion is common when jet lagged and this layered onto the reality of what we were seeing. Being in the most populous Islamic nation in the world also caused us to consider our situation.

I traveled regularly to Asia from California. I never carried a satellite phone because connections back home were generally always available. However, for no specific reason, I had taken one on this trip. I called home to express the same feelings everyone else felt. I had never felt more concern for my country.

I had just started first grade, and my mom was getting ready for her second day at her new job. Applying her makeup, as usual, in the morning, she suddenly dropped her compact and with frightened eyes, gasped at what she saw on the screen. I ran to see what she was looking at, and then saw the repeat clip of one plane crashing into the twin towers, and then another.

"Mommy, where's New York?" I asked.
"It's on the east coast. I lived there before nine years before I moved to California" she replied. And then, all she could say was "Why..."

As I grew older, I began to understand the significance that that day had on all of our lives. My mom and I cherish every day we still have together, and continue to pray for the families that lost loved ones on 9/11.

I remember being in high school on that tragic day. I remember my teacher putting on the news so we could all watch events unfold. He told us if anyone wanted to leave the room and go outside they could.

I wanted to leave but how could I take my eyes off what was happening. I remember that day and for weeks to come thinking about everyone who had been a victim in this senseless attack and I could not get the images of the people running away trying to escape the collapsing towers. Its just hard to process what your seeing when your a boy wondering what kind of world you will live in as a man after that day.

I still think about the families and what this has done to them and our country. It is inspiring to see a society come together and stand as a bright light in a world with darkness and evil and declare we will not forget and we will face it with courage.

Hard to believe it has been ten years. This day will be in history books and discussed well into the future in hopefully a much more peaceful world.

I served as a responder at the WTC after receiving permission to report to the scene while on military leave. The moment I'll remember most was arriving at the make-shift triage center and morgue at 1 Liberty Plaza.

Even though it was early afternoon, the air was black with ash and soot, turning day into night. As I walked into the triage center to help, my eyes met those of FDNY Firefighter who was covered head to foot in ash. I'll never forget the look in his eyes -- sadness, anger, confusion.

I wish to this day I'd taken the time to speak with him and learn his name. Though I spent the rest of the week working on the pile and have many other memories, that one moment remains with me even 10 years later.

I was at home in Chinatown less than a mile away from the site. When the news came on reporting the first plane striking the Tower at about 9.30 I swiftly ran up to the roof to see the unbelievable.

Back to the telly. News reporting stranded aircraft, an accident. Nah ha, I said to myself, this is deliberate action.

Second plane struck.

First tower went down. Woman started screaming. Absolute chaos on tv screen and cloud of smoke and dust on the roof view.

Second Tower goes down.

I phone my friend and colleague to grab his camera and meet me at my house as he did. I grab mine and we're off to the site to offer a hand and document the destruction and tragedy.

As we got closer the police in chaotic manner tried to block streets off. Knowing my way around city I took a detour and approached Ground Zero from The World Financial Centre side the whole picture unveiled itself. It was absolutely mad site, incomprehensible.

Then as press we joined the grieving firefighters as nearly 400 of them were lost in rubble and locating whistles still going off.

No one quite new what to do.

Next day I came back to volunteer and found that we were far more organized and orderly. The search and rescue resumed and debris were hauled away. I helped with water and food distribution as shifts switched. More photos.

The firehouse block away from my building lost an engine and several of their mates.

Improvised wake took place in a local pub. Big boys were crying.

I cried two months later.

I remember the phone ringing just after 7 a.m. It was a friend telling me to turn on the TV. My wife, our 9-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter couldn't believe I was watching television at that hour. Once it became clear what was happening, all semblance of a routine school day went out the window.

As I watched history unfold before my eyes, I began thinking about our 21-year-old son. He was an art student at New York University. Because all phone lines were jammed, there was no way to find out where or how he was. That's when my father's intuition kicked in. "He's alright," I kept telling myself and family. Thankfully, that turned out to be true. By the time we connected with him late that night, he and his neighbors had been evacuated from their apartments.

Three days after 9/11, I turned 53. I was scheduled to fly to Seattle that day, but couldn't because all the airports were closed. Instead, my wife and I attended a candlelight vigil on Main Beach in Laguna. It was one of the best birthdays I can remember. Not because we celebrated, but for the sense of community ... of belonging to something bigger than myself. I remember thinking, "This is where I live and these are my friends. I am battered but proud to be an American."

I am an Australian, who was working in Portland,Oregon as a designer for a freightliner.

On 9-11 I just got dressed and drove up the I5 to work. My favorite radio station was not playing jazz, but describing people jumping out of windows and planes crashing into buildings. I changed channels and again more horror stories. I thought it was a new version of Orsen Wells "War of the Worlds." I turned the radio off.

When I entered the office people were just standing round looking at the TV. I assumed it must have been some sporting event. I walked past thinking they might get in trouble if the boss was to arrive. I went to my desk, then down to the canteen to get a cup of coffee. The canteen was full of people staring at the TV, it was unusually quiet.

Then the second plane hit the building and people starting crying and saying no, no. It was surreal at first I thought it was a movie, as that sort of thing just does not happen in real life.

Then as it was played over and over again. This was real, this was history in the making and the world as we knew it would never be the same.

It was a beautiful day, clear blue skies and wispy clouds, bright warm sun that made me grateful to be alive.

I was between classes when a classmate stopped me, blurting "A place just crashed into the World Trade Center!" I thought he was joking, but skipped homeroom to run to the library and pull up the news. I watched live, frozen in horror as the second place hit. Before smartphones, before owning a cellphone myself, I scrambled to contact my parents, to check on my family in NYC.

The phones were down. I couldn't contact anyone. Each class was held, six after the beginning of that hellish morning, but the students were suspended in shock. Each class I was glued to the computer, clattering at the keyboard desperately trying to find new information, or any information once the news sites started going down, providing my classmates and teachers with whatever news I could get.

Classes ended before I had word from my family. The towers were down, bloodied dust coated the streets of Manhattan, and I could see the plume of destruction rising into the horizon from my home. I found my mother at home, slamming number after number into the keypad of our house phone.

My aunt who worked across the street from the WTC was safe. She had been on the Staten Island Ferry when the first plane hit, and the ferry stopped, and reversed, returning to the Island. Another relative was out of town. But my uncle in the NYPD Bomb Squad was missing. It had been his day off, and after the first plane, when people ran out of Manhattan, he ran in.

He came home that night. He had been between the towers when they started to fall. A good friend of the family had been next to him. My uncle made it. His friend didn't. My family was lucky. Many others were not. My classmates almost all lost someone. Weeks of empty stares, red eyes, and broken shuffling filled the halls of my school. We weren't there. We were with the lost, the fear soaked into our skin, our tears run out.

Blue skies never seemed so ominous as in the years after, as if the beauty of the skies deceived and betrayed us all.

My story certainly doesn't compare to those booked on the doomed flights. I was driving to San Diego Airport to fly to Seattle. I was listening to Howard Stern describe the tragedy. I called a friend in New York who told me to turn around and go home. After watching the news, I decided to gas our car up and pick up some canned emergency food. It's one of those moments in life that I will always remember where I was, when I heard the news...where I was when I saw Jack Ruby shoot Oswald, Beatles on Ed Sullivan, when the OJ verdict was announced, etc.

I used to ice skate every morning before going to school. On my way to school, my dad and I would listen to the radio. A radio station was talking about a plane flying into a building. We couldn't believe it so we changed radio stations and would hear the same thing. It was a scary day to be out on 9/11.

When going to our classes in the morning, many were quiet and scared about what could happen in Southern California. We were thinking, "Can we be next?" During one of my morning classes, our whole school took the time to have everyone take a moment of silence. During history class, we watched CNN for the class period.

It was agonizing to see planes flying into buildings, buildings crumbling down, and NY in chaos. It was my first time seeing all this, and I kept thinking to myself, "Is this really happening?" I was hoping this was all fake, like some special effects from a movie, but it wasn't. At that time, I felt like I couldn't really do much, so I visited the chapel after school to pray.

I was in Manhattan -- I made a short film from the photos I took that day and submitted it to my documentary filmmaking class as my semester project last fall (2010). You can watch it here:
http://www.goasp.org/pages/assets/flas/VIDEO_OTE.html

If only the biggest problems I had had before were those of either my gas card working, which my parents paid for, or to hang out with my girlfriend or on my own, or which Abercrombie shirt to wear.

I woke up in my daily routine the same way as always with my dad playing human alarm clock. I took a shower and listened to Dave Matthews Band in the shower, then put my contacts in right eye first, then left eye. For some reason I switched for the first time in months? I don’t know why.

I got in my sports car and went to go pick up my girlfriend. The traffic was not too bad, but still a struggle to get out of my neighborhood by a Serbian Monastery. I picked up my girlfriend and we went to school. My life was complete, everything was in order and I felt as most did my age = fine. No real problems ... I loved the life I lived. I kissed my girlfriend goodbye and went on saying hi to those I passed in the halls, with an occasional “What’s up?”

I went to 1st period gym where me and Keith Campbell did aerobics. We left the class at the end and I went to my locker. Lars Tygen came up and said that two planes have hit the World Trade Center. I thought, what the hell, how does one plane even hit it?maybe terrorists? Could just be an accident after all -- who would use planes to attach a building? I went on to trig and no one had any knowledge of the events which I had just heard of, and I paid some, but little attention to it. Then a notice came in and the teacher, Mr. Jones, read that two planes had hit the WTC and one had hit the Pentagon.

The walls of my world began to crack ... still this was all the information we had. Kids in class joked about how crazy you’d have to be to attack the Pentagon and other things. I was in a state of alert. Then next period Lars came back up to me and said they’ve collapsed, that they just are not there anymore, and I then realized my worthlessness that amidst my minuscule problems and classes maybe 100,000 people had just lost their lives. How many people are no longer living, walking the earth, because of these planes? I went to lunch out to Char-coal Delites where the seniors were talking about it, but all I could do was think about how many people are no longer living, how the world has changed in 3 periods, with the collapse of the WTC also came the crumbling of my life, my walls?my security which was taken.

My life will never be the same. I fear the worst in the future and feel saddened that my children may never age in an era where my security and meaningless problems existed. That this new horrifying, terrifying world will all be all they will know.

If only I had gone left to right.

I was only 8 when 9/11 happened, but I remember it pretty well. We just started school when a high school student came in and told my teacher that America was under attack. My teacher just looked at us and didn't want to do anything that would scare us.

We were let out of school early and I called my dad, who is a Marine, to make sure he didn't have to go to war. My aunt Carrie and her friend were staying at my others aunt's house. They were suppose to fly home that day. My mom called my aunt and it was 6 a.m. California time. My mom started yelling "turn on the tv fast!!" When my aunt did, they just watched and they felt bad for those people even though they were on the other side of the county. My dad did two tours in Iraq, glad he did come home. Even though I was only 8, those memories and the things that I saw will forever live in my brain. That lets us remember the people who died who didn't have to.

I'm from a town in New Jersey from which most people commute to New York for work. I was in seventh grade, and we were shuffled into the auditorium and told we weren't allowed to leave until our parents came to pick us up, since the school needed to make sure we all still had parents who were alive to come get us.

For some reason school officials let us watch the news, so we saw the towers go down in real time. I was too young to be able to fully grasp the severity of the situation, so I don't remember crying, I just remember thinking my dad, who worked in New York, was probably going to come home later than usual.

My family ate dinner with all the neighbor families because my mom said we all just needed to feel closer to one another. Our town only lost a couple people; we were lucky. "

"Algo terrible est? sucediendo en Nueva York" was the first thing I heard when I woke up on that fateful day. I was only 13 at the time and my mom and dad were watching TV that morning, something they never do. It was the first time I had seen them break their regular morning routine. Something felt odd -- it was early in the morning and they didn't have coffee. They just sat their and watched TV. As I walked over, I caught a glimpse of what looked like an action movie on TV. "Que pasa?" She replied with, "Something is happening in New York. I don't understand" I, at that age, couldn't completely understand either and had no idea what was going on.

The entire morning was marked by awkward silence, mostly due to shock and disbelief. My mom, I could tell, was a bit scared, which made me very uneasy after she dropped me off in school. It wasn't until I was in class did our teacher explain to us the magnitude of what had happened. "Why did they do it?" asked one of the kids. The teacher didn't answer.

Hanging from a wall in the grocery store
I saw images on a monitor
A airplane carrying my countrymen
Had been piloted into a tower

I held my tears until I left the grocery
They find greater freedom in solitude
While in shock, I staggered back to my home
Puzzled as to how it could have happened

I entered the door and flicked on the light
And watched the tragedy proliferate
As another plane slammed into its twin
I imagined hearing the call to war

I witnessed the towering siblings burn
But they had no legs to drop and roll
Even if they could, it'd not been prudent
For my brethren were trying to get out

My distant tears could not rain on the fire
It even seemed God was taken off guard
For the only clouds that reigned in the sky
Were blackened one that carried no moisture

I watched siblings of skin and cement
Fall apart and tumble to the sidewalks
I wish my arms had been long enough
To catch the angels who had lost their wings

I never thought the towers would fall
It seemed the two structure were like mountains
But faithless murders had preyed for blood
That is not why God gave meditation!

I watched as our man-made siblings crumbled
I knew they held up as long as they could
I believe even they, too, were wailing
As echoes of terror filled their stairways

I am glad God gave us so many heroes
That favored life so much they gave their own
I still weep for all their sacrifices
Ensuring nobody need die alone

To all their loved ones, who got left behind
I wish beautiful words could bring them back
If God would ever give me that power
My pen would not rest until they all returned

To the mercenaries who forged this plan
Who's self-hatred sought outward expression
I'll pray that you all experience love
And stop leading people to death and tears

To everyone of my siblings in arms
I pray you'll never see battle again
That every weapon gets jammed in the field
And you smother your enemies with hugs

To all of my brave brothers and sisters
With whom I share this mystical planet
I hope someday we'll all be united
And stop taking each other for granted

The Greek philosopher, Plato once said
"Only the dead have seen the end of war"
But it was because of the walking dead
That the idea of killing had been forged

Since we have power to guide our future
Let's surrender our fears for a moment
And imagine a world of love and peace
For every sibling- both skin and cement

I was in a business meeting in Stockholm, Sweden when my company president rushed into the room and said the World Trade Center in New York was under attack. I'm from the New York area and after checking the Web quickly for more information, I left work to go home to my family. I felt very confused and all I could think of was a failed bombing attempt in 1993 that had injured a friend of mine. My twin girls were only 12 years old and we had spent many nice times on the observation deck at WTC. They hugged me when I came through the door.

It was a beautiful September morning in New York. I had gotten up early to vote in the primary and remember jogging back home to get ready for work, thinking how perfectly clear and blue the sky was.

I got onto the subway to ride into Manhattan from Queens and the train stopped dead in the tunnel under the East River. In typical NY fashion, no announcement was made to explain the delay. Word of an attack on the Trade Center got out, however, and again typically NY, as in any crisis, people got friendlier. The mood changed from a group of surly individuals annoyed at the subway system to a group united with respect for each other's humanity.

We finally arrived at the Lexington Ave. stop, the first one in Manhattan. We needed to evacuate the train since train service had been totally suspended in both directions. I walked up to the street and started towards my office. Many people were rushing around, more than usual. But it was when I got to Sixth Avenue and started heading downtown (note that my location in midtown, at 51st Street, was far north of the World Trade Center), I saw that the Towers, formerly always visible in the distance down the avenue, were no longer there. Just clouds of smoke. And that's when full realization of the extent of the disaster started to hit. Of course the news only got much much worse.

A few days later I had joined a friend to go to Jones Beach. Normally crowded even in September, there were only a few beach walkers and the eerie sounds of helicopters patrolling the coast. I felt that this was to be the beginning of the end of carefree days and the safety that we have always known. I guess a little like Armageddon.

I remember that day as very sad day. I was working in my job in Guatemala city when my dad called me and told me something had happened in N.Y. CNN News was talking about a plane hitting LAS TORRES GEMELAS, in this moment I thought that it was an terrible accident and returned to work but minutes later my dad called me again and he said it was not a accident. Another plane hit the other tower. In this moment I turned on the radio and begin to listen all the things that was happening. The local news said a plane hit the Pentagon and other plane is lost and it could have gone the way to the White House.

I remember when I returned home for lunch time I called to my family that live in Los Angeles and I talked with my uncle and I said "It's terrible too many people have died " and my uncle listened to me crying by the phone and told me this country is beautiful and all the things will be ok. My mom told me by phone: "Don't cry, son. U.S.A. is a great country all people that living here are praying."

I think that all people that lived this tragedy of one way or another never will forget this sad day.

I remember thinking: Our foreign policy has finally come back to haunt us.

I was eating breakfast and watching the events unfold before going to work and I had a sense of resignation that we should not be surprised that the people we were responsible for dragging into war after war would finally strike back.

Since then I have often felt that it's too bad 9/11 hasn't taught us the most important lesson -- we can't expect to export war, ravage third world countries, support dictators in the Muslim world, and NOT expect them to fight back.

What gives us the right to take the moral high road when we have slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese civilians, tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, and an untold number so far of Afghan civilians?

9/11 should help us take a longer look at who we really are, defined by our actions, not by the romanticized view we tend to measure ourselves with.

We are a great country, not because of our guns but because of our HEART, and we should be spending more time exporting THAT rather than the guns. Then foreign nations will begin to respect what we profess to hold dear, and perhaps we will begin to live in peace with the world instead of constantly being at war with the world.

I have voted in every single election since I became eligible to vote nearly 50 years ago and feel that I am a patriot in the full sense of the word and pray that our nation as a whole will begin to move in that direction and stop justifying its war policy and start acting like the compassionate caring nation we really are.

By seeking to live at peace with our neighbors, we will need not fear any more 9/11s.

I was a freshman in high school, still nervous to go even to even set foot in high school. I was getting ready in the morning wondering what I should wear, when my mom came in my room and said to come to the TV. At that moment I walked over to the television. My mom and I watched the second plane hit. She put her arm around me and we both started crying. Both in complete shock and both knowing life would never be the same. At that point, figuring out what to wear to school became completely unimportant and downright silly.

It was at 6:45 AM the morning of September 11th, 2001. I was getting ready for school and my mom was preparing the house for the kids she watched. Our next door neighbor came in panicked and told my mom she thought me and my younger brother were going to be drafted for war. My mom was puzzled and concerned. My mom then turned on the television and we saw the news of what had happened in New York. I was shocked. I later got a call that day from my manager at the Orange County Permit Assistance Center telling me not to show up for work the next day since our office was located in a federal building and they were keeping the building closed.

For two days all I could think about was the unimaginable loss of those people whose lives were stolen from them and how their families would have to feel that burden for the rest of their lives. Such a absolutely tragic event.

I was working in WTC1 on the 40th floor, but staying in the Marriott (WTC3), which was where I was when the first plane went in. I lost my luggage, my phone, but luckily none of my friends and colleagues that day. I will, however, have the haunting memory of running out of the hotel, dodging falling debris, and then hearing the thundering sound of jet engines, only to turn around in disbelief and watch the second plane accelerate into the second tower.

I have never felt so much fear.

All I can say is thank you to all the service men and women from around the world who put their lives on the line every day to make the world a safer place - and for often facing this fear day in and day out as part of your jobs, it is greatly appreciated!

My kids and I woke up late for school that morning, having slept through our alarm. My brother called and told us to put on the television because there was something bad that was happening in New York.
We put on the tv, and saw the towers already engulfed in flames. I told my kids to get dressed quickly, but they were riveted by what they were seeing.

I see 9/11 as innocence lost for my kids who were just 8, 3, and 2 at the time and could not comprehend what was going to come as they grew up.

As I drove to school at Cal State Fullerton, my 3-year-old son warned me to "be careful around tall buildings, mama, because they might fall like the big building on tv."

I would also come to find out that two friends lost acquaintances in both NY and the Pentagon. How does one reconcile the degrees of separation then?

On the 10th anniversary, my kids now realize that the country was different before that day, but will it EVER really be the same again? The way life was before some sick b**tards made us scared like never before?"

I was a native New Yorker living in Venice, Calif. at the time. I had gone to sleep the night before after making plans with friends to surf that morning as there was a large, late-summer swell hitting our shores.

My cell phone started ringing in the later part of the 5 a.m. hour on the morning of Sept 11th, 2001. At first, still half asleep, I thought it was my friends calling extra early to go look for surf. But the phone kept ringing ... When I picked up, it was my younger Brother calling from mid-town Manhattan telling me to turn my tv on.

I knew instantly that it was an attack as WTC '93 was still clear in my mind. Sadly I was not surprised when I watched the second plane hit the South Tower.

I knew my older brother, Anthony, would be at his desk on the upper floors of the North Tower at 8:30 a.m. as he was every weekday. In the minutes and hours after the attack and collapse, none of my family could reach him on his cell.

I remember picking up on some chatter about the possibility of a dirty bomb being aboard one of the jets. My mind raced as I looked to find out if there were any forecasts of the winds shifting to the north as my whole family lived in mid-town.

I had never felt so powerless, angry, sad, or distraught before or since. I never wanted anything more then to be on that pile digging that night. They had hit my country and they had hit my home town.

As it turned out, my brother was 20 minutes late to work because of a subway fire in Brooklyn and emerged out of the subway exit as the first plane hit. His cell phone died after he had stayed on the phone with his assistant until her death when the building collapsed. He was the only one in his company that survived the day. Seven hours later, after walking up into the 70's to find an open phone booth, did he let us know that he was alive.

After I knew my family were "safe." I began to try and get my head around the fact that thousands of people were not. And thousands more were still wondering and searching for information as I was hours earlier.

That was the second of so many waves of grief that I experienced that day and for days, weeks, and months after.

I was in a hairdresser's shop in Tel Aviv waiting to get my hair cut. But I am from New York City (the Bronx) and my father worked, until his retirement around 1995, on the 83rd floor of the World Trade Center, in the offices of the former Ebasco Ltd. (South Tower, I believe). I had visited him there at least once. The hairdresser had a radio -- I think that there was no TV there -- and the terrible news came loud and clear. I think I must have heard in in Hebrew. I listened for a few minutes, burst into tears when I realized what had happened, promptly went home and turned on the tv, and phoned my elderly mother who was in the Bronx. She was okay, of course, but in shock like the rest of us. A good family friend, Stuart Weinberg, was a match teacher at that time at Stuyvesant High so my mother tried to reach him that evening. He was also okay.

I was third for takeoff on a United flight to Denver when the first tower was hit. We never took off. My parents learned how to text message that day, as I was able to send a message that read simply "not my plane." We got back to the gate, couldn't get out of the airport. Spent night night at the Marriott with five other people I'd met, all of us wondering if we could ever get back to our city. Hitchhiked down the NJ Turnpike the next morning to a Path train that got us to Penn Station. Walking out onto 8th Ave, it was deserted. I saw the gravity of the situation. I walked home and found that Rescue 1, next door to my apartment, had suffered a massive loss of life. Devastation was everywhere.

My story is not specifically about 9/11, it is about 9/9. of course I experienced the same horrors as my fellow Americans that day, but two days earlier, I had an event take place that will always horrify me.

I lived in Newton, Mass., and as many of you may know, the hijackers stayed in Newton so they could board planes in Boston. My mother and I were at a Borders, picking out some magazines and books, when I turned the corner and bumped into a man, I said "Sorry." I looked into his eyes and they were cold, piercing, those of a troubled, dangerous man. They scared me.

I told my mom a few minutes later when I found her. I said to her "It was almost as if you could tell he was a killer." It bothered me, and by Tuesday (9/11), I had mostly forgotten about him.

The news was frantic. I was very afraid of what was happening. I was only 15, and all of a sudden, the picture of Mohammed Ata came up on the screen. My heart raced. It was the man from the bookstore. I will never forget that detail.

My wife, 5 month-old son, and I were visiting my sister's family in Alexandria, Virginia, to celebrate my niece's christening on September 9. My brother-in-law had left on business, and the rest of us were planning a day of sightseeing on the 11th. We were trying to get out the door when the first plane hit. This didn't slow us down much, until I stopped in front of the tv, with my sister, and watched, jaws to the floor as the second plane hit. Then some booms in the distance from the Pentagon.

Has there ever been, collectively, a worse day we have lived through?

We had two fussy infants on our hands, but couldn't do much besides sit in front of the tv and watch. Eventually we walked outside and were nearly run over by military vehicles speeding through downtown Alexandria, spooked by booms in the distance, at the Pentagon, and amazed that businesses were or were not open, that the streets were empty, and that all to be heard were endless sirens and very low-flying military jets. Eventually, we all went to Christ Church to pray at a noontime service. We spent the afternoon making anxious phone calls and trying not to yell at each other because of the stress.

That night, we ordered a pizza from the only place open. When the pizza finally arrived at 10:30 that night, 2 hours late, I chewed out the manager who delivered it to us (and gave us the pizza for free). He apologized and told me, "Mister, this has been a really lousy day," then left.

I was upstairs in my bathroom getting ready for school. I was in the 9th grade and still remember wearing my yellow shirt and baggy blue pants. My mom had just come home from dropping my sister off at the high school and had tears in her eyes. We listened to the news in silence all the way to school. I went straight to my first period class where students were already in class, once again in silence.

Our teacher told us that there was nothing he could teach us that was as important as what we would watch on the news during his class that morning. There was a couch in class that 6 of my friends crammed ourselves on as we watched the towers collapse in horror. We realized that our lives were changing right before our eyes.

On 9/11/2001 I turned 50, woke up to watch the World Trade towers fall and was diagnosed with breast cancer either that day or the next, I can't really remember. To me it is all one horrible blur. This year I will be 60, cancer free and I still can't look at pictures from Ground Zero 10years ago.

My 7th grade class and I watched the second tower fall that morning. Stunned into silence together, we couldn't understand...it was the most shockingly real thing we'd ever seen. I felt like we all grew up that day.

I remember getting ready for my second day of my 6th grade year. I walk into the kitchen and see my parents watching the news in shock. I look at the screen and asked, "Mom, what is going on? What happened?" My mom told me, "Two planes hit the World Trade Center." She then told me to not talk about it at school and to act like I don't know what was going on. It wasn't too long after that when we all heard about the Pentagon and Flight 93.

I went to school and heard everyone talking about it and saw my teachers trying to hold back tears. I didn't really know what the WTC was, but from that day on, I will forever remember it. And since September 11, 2001, I endured some of the worst racism and discrimination as an Arab Muslim.

9/11/01 is a day no one will ever forget, and 10 years later, I look at images, footage, documentaries, movies, and just cry because of what happened. And now that I am working in Law Enforcement, I appreciate Police/Fire so much more for what they have done and what they continue to do for the community and this country.

On 9/11/01 I was working at the most popular radio station in San Diego, Calif., filling in for the Jeff & Jer morning show while they were on vacation. I was not an on-air DJ. Rather, I played "best of" tapes and coordinated traffic reports, music and commercials during the morning.

When I arrived for work just before 6 a.m. CA time, I turned on the 3 TVs in the studio. All were set to different local TV stations, all were muted with no sound, and ALL of them had the same image of the first building on fire. Big news, I thought ... What would the building look like tomorrow after the fire was out?

I spoke with the traffic reporter by phone, who, watching her own TV monitor, filled me in on the missing audio saying that they thought an airplane had hit the tower. We talked every 10 minutes off-air before her traffic reports, and we were talking the moment the second plane hit. I saw an explosion on the TV Monitors in the studio, thinking it was a secondary explosion caused by the initial fire, and the traffic reporter yelled "Another plane just flew into the other tower!" I tried to calm her, saying it looked like a secondary explosion, but she said she saw the plane fly in and hit the building. Moments later, the TV replay confirmed it, and I told her: "This is more important than playing funny bits on the radio. I'll call the station manager and call you back."

I woke the station manager at his home and simply said: ""There's a terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York. Two planes have crashed into the towers. Turn on the TV, then call me right back and tell me what to do. I think this is more important than playing funny tapes on the radio."

He called back just a few seconds later, and asked me to stop playing bits, switch the FM radio station over to the feed from our AM News sister-station, and call everyone on the contact list to come in.

Although I wasn't an on-air DJ, I was part of the behind-the scenes production, so people who listened to the show knew my name. I now had the responsibility to stop the tapes, break-in and say to a million listeners (I can't remember my exact words, but something like) "Hey this is Rick, the computer guy, there's been a terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York City, and we're switching Star 100.7 FM over to our AM station for the news."

I called every daytime DJ and producer the list, and asked them to turn on the TV and come in, per the station manager's orders.

The incoming phone lines exploded when the listeners realized what was going on. I answered the studio lines, trying to calm frantic people looking to our radio station for guidance. They asked if they should get out of their 5th floor apartment, or take their kids to school or drive to work. For the next 5 hours, all I could do was answer that it was up to them, and that no attacks had happened yet on the West Coast.

As the professional DJs arrived and took over the airwaves, I remarked "I guess this is no longer the 'summer of the shark'" - as the media had dubbed it due to a spike in recent shark attacks. The DJs then said "Yeah, and Gary Condit is off the hook for now too."

Looking back, Gary Condit and a few shark attacks seem so insignificant, but until that morning they were the biggest stories of late Summer 2001.

The magnitude of that Tuesday morning didn't really hit me until a couple months later, when my wife and I were in Las Vegas, and viewed the spontaneous memorial of firefighter shirts, notes and photos around the Statue of Liberty at the New York, New York hotel. I had been so wrapped-up in working through that morning as a news event, that I never took time to reflect on the personal side of the people it actually happened to, 3000 miles away.

Gap Teeth

The harbor gapes in unnatural haze, its two front teeth knocked out--
it cannot chew the ash that shades a mourning moonscape.
Triggered by lack of light, eclipsed streetlights so faint
we cannot see spirits who haunt the zero ground--
where terrorists jettisoned their souls.
We put our hardheads into hardhats--
searching for shadows lost and found--
smudged eyes damp not only from acrid soot.
Missing firefighters and cops still search--
their winking headlights in the rubble--
they will seek the peace forever.

We seek the light--
to understand the sight that's jumbled through the smoke--
Love leavened justice will hug hate till it ooze away.
The blood shall mulch the soil--
out of mass murder, peaceful accord--
the peace will heal us, every living thing.
The peace You bring will grow again.

After 10 years, I feel compelled to tell my story. Just a few days before 9/11/01, I flew from Dallas (my home) to Michigan to spend time with friends and family. I was fishing on one of Michigan's many lakes, when another boater pulled up beside our boat and reported a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Looking back, I thought (just as President Bush did) that it was a light plane, and we didn't give it another thought. My uncle and I never spoke of it again until we got to the shore. I was in a very remote area of Michigan and the solitude of being outdoors and on a lake gave us a sense of security. By the time we got back to shore, I witnessed what the world also watched on television -- something incomprehensible -- not only had the commercial airliners hit the buildings, but the South Tower and eventually the North Tower collapsed.

I remember well night skies in Northern Michigan after 9/11 were eerily quiet, except for the occasional sound of military fighter jets piercing the clear night skies. That's when I began to realize what the terrorists had done. When I finally was able to return to Texas, the Detroit airport was deserted except for the many armed military security personnel. There were only around 20 passengers on the plane, and I realized that our world had changed on 9/11.

Until now, 10 years later, I (along with the rest of most of the world) now realize I've been in denial. The tragedies of 9/11 has affected me more now than on that terrible day and I don't know why. I believe that I can can no longer stay in denial. There are many many more brave heroes that need to be recognized since 9/11. Of course, we can't forget the tireless men and women who searched for survivors for many days and weeks. But beyond that, we now have the men and women who have now dedicated themselves to completing the new towers, and, more importantly, the memorial.

I hope to one day to visit the memorial and be able to feel the presence of the many souls that can finally rest in peace.

I was 13; My birthday had just been a few days before. I'd taken too long getting ready because I was still cycling through the new clothes I'd gotten for my birthday and by the time my mother had piled my brother and I (plus backpacks, lunches, musical instruments, and sundry) into the car, we were late for school.

We'd just pulled out of the driveway when the radio, which was playing CNN radio instead of music, cut away from a reporter's frenzied and confusing story of survival to announce that "the second Tower" had started to collapse.

At first, I assumed this was a radio play, like War of the Worlds. I think I said as much, before what was happening on the East Coast actually began to sink in. Then there was more confusion. My mother heard the words "World Trade Center" and assumed that the World Trade Center here in Los Angeles was the one that had been targeted until someone announced that they were reporting from New York City.

My middle school principal came on the intercom during homeroom a couple of hours later to announce, briefly, that there had been a great tragedy and that teachers were welcome to talk about the events but needed to keep their televisions off. Classes were to proceed as usual.

However, my history teacher (who was also in charge of my homeroom) didn't obey this instruction. He gave the intercom a one-fingered salute and turned on the television in the front of the classroom.

"This is a US history class," he said, "and today you're watching United States history."

I woke up to the sound of the CNN morning crew discussing what sort of plane had hit the building and dozed awhile until one of them said "World Trade Center." That got my attention.

As I watched the second plane hit I knew it was a terrorist, and for some reason I knew it was Osama Bin Laden. After the towers fell, I went down to my office and turned on the TV and the computer to check with the people at work -- I work from home as a medical transcription editor. Then the news flashed about the Pentagon, then the news about Shanksville.

My God, would it ever end?

An e-mail from my supervisor asked us to stay close to our desks and prepare to help work on the increased volume of transcription they expected would come in from our east-coast client hospitals given the mass casualties. Only there was no flurry of extra reports because there had been so very few survivors. I spent the next few days alone as my fiance was out of town for work. I spent most of it glued to the television, feeling guilty for not being able to do anything to help, empathizing with the helplessness of the people being interviewed, who were begging for news of some beloved person who was missing. I remember Elizabeth Cohen of CNN in tears on a dusty street corner after yet another such interview, and for the first time I started to cry, and I didn't stop for a long time.

I wondered how I would possibly be able to get married with any sense of joy in a month when the country was mired in the sadness of the senseless death and sorrow delivered from such a glorious, innocent, blue September sky.

Ten years ago, I was working at Atlantic Records, with offices up in Rockefeller Center, NYC (about 3 miles from the WTC). The first thing I remember about 9/11/01 was what a nice day it was ? it was not quite Fall yet, and the sky was clear, the sun was out and it was still pretty warm. I took the Midtown Direct train from Lyons Station (Basking Ridge, NJ) to Penn Station, and I got to work around 8:10 a.m., just like any other day.

I did my usual routine of eating breakfast at my desk, running my accounting reports, and just checking various news sites and the like, before really starting my workday. Around 8:47 a.m., I had just finished my oatmeal, and clicked to CNN.com to check if anything was going on, and at that point, they had literally just posted only a picture, no story, of a hole in one of the WTC towers, spouting smoke.

About a minute later, they said it was a small plane, which sounded weird given that it was so clear outside ? how could a pilot make that bad of a mistake? I was listening to Howard Stern on my office stereo, and he wasn’t saying anything, but about 2 minutes after that, his producer came in and said something was up downtown at the WTC. I ran down to the hall to tell Lynette, one of my coworkers, to call her brother (who worked in one of the towers) to see what happened, and to see if he was OK.

By the time I got back to my office, the second plane had hit.

One plane, could’ve been anything. TWO planes, it became clear that this was intentional. By this time, my coworkers had started to arrive. One woman in my department had just finished up her commitment to the Air Force, and when the news came in of the Pentagon getting hit about 40 or so minutes later, she was very rattled, as she had several friends on active duty who were stationed there. Then we heard about the plane in Shanksville, PA. All I really remember, the rest of that morning, was when the towers fell. I couldn’t believe it, when they said the first tower fell. “It fell down?!? You mean part of it came off, right?” “NO ? the WHOLE BUILDING just collapsed”. At that point, everyone pretty much knew the other one was also likely going to collapse.

Once the towers came down, it affected some cell phone service and radio signals, I think because the antennas on the WTC handled a lot of volume (not to mention everyone trying to call everyone else at the same time). I got most of my news after that from the web, and I blasted out an email to everyone in my address book, telling them to call my parents and let them know I was all right. (My parents said they suddenly got a bunch of calls within minutes)

Once the gravity of what was going on set in, I nearly threw up. It was one of those moments where you knew the whole world, probably for the rest of our lives, was never going to be the same, and that the world was going to potentially be a much darker place for a long, long time to come.

I couldn’t quite figure out how I was going to get home, but read on the web that NJ Transit was doing “load and go” out of Penn, so I figured if I could get to NJ, I’d worry about the rest later. Ever been on the NYC Subway system? I was the only rider on a downtown B&F train, at 4:00 in the afternoon. That is surreal. I saw a police officer on the way to Penn, and told him I was sorry to have heard of the loss of cops and firemen. On the way into Penn, I picked up around 5 or 6 day-trippers from Jersey, in to the city for the day, who had no idea of how to get home. I told them to follow me, as I knew the train lines back to Jersey. When we got to Penn, we all got on a standing room-only train bound for Newark, and when it emerged from the tunnel on the Jersey side, all we could see was the huge trail of grey and black smoke coming from lower Manhattan. The NJ Transit train line out of midtown follows the coastline for a while, and the entire time, on the packed train, you could’ve heard a pin drop. Everyone stared silently at where the Trade Center used to be.

Upon my arrival in Summit (NJ), I stepped off the train and immediately saw a HazMat tent set up on the train platform. The workers said, “If you were caught in the dust cloud, you need to be cleaned off immediately."

I got off in Berkeley Heights and went to my parents’ house, around 8 p.m. Everyone was stunned and glued to the TV. I can’t even remember eating dinner, and once I got home, I left my bedroom tv on all night and periodically woke up to see what was going on. When I got my Star-Ledger (the main NJ paper) the next morning, in like 30 point type, it said “TERROR BEYOND BELIEF." I still have that paper. In the days that followed, I stayed home at my condo in Basking Ridge, NJ, glued to the tv, and it was surreal. The prevailing atmosphere was of fear and uncertainty ? were there more attacks coming? What was the government’s response going to be? Is there any chance anyone could’ve survived that? We were in uncharted territory. When I went back to work in Manhattan the next week, everyone was on edge ? it was like returning to the scene of a crime. There was dust and a hard-to-describe thick odor in the air.

Back at work, I learned that a co-worker lost 11 friends. We found out that a consultant who once did work for us was on the plane out of Boston that hit one of the towers. But what I’ll remember most about the return (whether I took the train or the midtown ferry into the city) was the wall after wall of pictures everywhere: flyers with names & photos & birth dates and phone numbers, from families hoping against tough odds that their relatives and friends would be found alive, somehow. What really put the hook into me was the diversity of those among the missing: men, women, old, young, every race, ethnicity, every walk of life, you name it. One flyer was of a guy my age ? I looked at his birth date, and he was three days older than me.

My uncle, who fought in WWII, told me that this was a lot like when Pearl Harbor happened. But what was different this time was that though there was a lot of unity, no one seemed to be asked to make any sacrifices. We were told to go shopping. Within a month and a half or so, he passed away at 86.

The night of the day we buried him, I went to Madison Square Garden to see U2 ? the encore was “Walk On” (if I recall) and they unfurled these huge banners onto which they projected the names of the lost ? I think it was somewhat cathartic for NY and the city really needed that concert (I know it was very emotional for me ? it was the same motif they used months later at the Super Bowl).

A lot of people thought that 9/11 would refocus America on what was really important, and make us stop caring about frivolous and superficial things. That mindset seemed to last maybe six months, and now we have "Jersey Shore" as a top-rated show. But I still think about 9/11 every day, and probably will for the rest of my life.

I was 25, getting ready to head in to work at the 27th floor of the twin towers in Century City. I got a call from an aunt in Phoenix to turn on the tv. A plane had flown right into one of the towers. It was complete shock and sadness watching the horror, but I needed to continue to get ready for work. Then the second plane flew into the remaining tower.

I felt my body grow weak, and a phone call came in from my boss in Century City, "Don't come in to work" because they thought financial towers of large cities were being attacked. I cried and felt completely helpless watching the horrific scenes happening at that very moment on the other side of my country. Then we heard of the Pentagon, then PA. I wanted to help, I wanted to go fly to NYC and help all the hurt people in the hospitals as that is what my first career involves, Respiratory Therapist. But for that following week, for the first time in my life, I saw the skies with no airplane in sight. We will never forget.

On September 11, 2001, my best friend called me and told me to turn on the television. It was only 7:00 a.mm in California, and the rest of my family was asleep. I flipped on our TV and sat on the couch with my slippered feet tucked under me. The same video clip of smoke and planes and people crying was looping. The volume was loud from the night before and before I could turn it down, the sound woke up my mom, and she came to sit next to me. She immediately began to cry, and she woke up my dad.

I skipped school that day, and it was only my second week of my freshman year of high school. I went to church with my family in my school uniform, and I never took my slippers off. I am 24 years old now and living in Boston, and I fly on a fairly regular basis to visit my family in Southern California.

Ten years later, I still have a gripping fear of planes. I often ask the person next to me on my flight if I can take her hand. My fear is irrational, but the images on the news that morning burned into my brain. And so I remember my freshman year of high school: the memory of new, itchy, wool uniform skirts; the excitement of attending my first football game; that electrifying moment when the boy I liked tousled my ponytail outside of my algebra classroom; and photographing a thousand American flags with my disposable camera as they crept out of their closets and lined the streets of my suburban neighborhood the day after the Twin Towers burst into flames.

I woke up before the alarm that day and was in the kitchen doing the usual routine of making sack lunches for my family to take to work and school. It was very quiet in the house and all of a sudden I felt and heard an internal sound/disturbance. My cat felt it as well and we both stopped and stared at each other. I was instantly scared and shaken and started looking around the house and wondering if an earthquake was about to strike. This was about 5:45 a.m. L.A. time. (In New York it was 8:45 a.m. and something very terrible was occurring that I didn't know about until later.)

Since no earthquake happened I went about the morning routine until my husband got a surprise call from my mother-in-law to turn on the tv that something dreadful was happening in New York. Then my life felt turned upside down and surreal. I remember the sense of gravity while waking up my children, then ages six and nine, and having to tell them about the unfolding events happening in New York and they might hear about it from friends at school. Realizing with utmost certainty that this was a day that would be the dividing line in my life. There would be the life I knew before 9/11 and a very different reality afterwards. What shape that would take I had no idea.

Taking my kids to school and seeing the flag at half-mast and seeing "traffic-control moms" wiping their eyes, driving with the radio on and hearing radio announcers with panic in their voices saying "another" plane had crashed and other planes were not responding. What did this all mean? Getting back home and my husband deciding to not go into work in downtown L.A. because who knew what would happen next. Keeping the tv on all day. Watching people trapped in the top floors of the WTC. Seeing them waving out of the top windows. Television camera zoom lenses so good that we could see them holding up s.o.s. signs and strips of white fabric and seeing their business suits and ties. Seeing some of them jump to their deaths. Some flailed, some held hands. One person falling to his death had his hands crossed over his chest and his eyes closed and he looked so peaceful as he were falling. I felt sick.

Remembering telling my husband the people on the top floors looked scared and wondering if helicopters will be able to get them out in time. Seeing the twin towers collapse. Seeing my husband cry at the images on tv. Realizing my husband had been there for a meeting on the 104th floor just a few months prior. Calling my sister and telling her to buy a lot of toilet paper and water because who knew what supply lines might be cut off.

In the weeks following hearing about the person who my husband met on the WTC 104th floor and his near nervous breakdown over the fact that he had left the building and ignored a fireman who told him and his co-workers to return to their floor, that it would be safer, and his secretary and others HAD returned only to find themselves in a building that would collapse and kill them. Survivors guilt had been devastating for him. Hearing about a co-worker at my husband's L.A. job knowing someone who had been on one of the doomed flights who was traveling with her husband and she was pregnant and they had crashed into one of the WTC buildings. Even though we lived at the other end of the U.S. it all seemed so personal.

The days following when everyone had mini flags flying from their cars. My neighbor stating she couldn't understand what all the fuss was about and she had trouble feeling sad because she didn't know anyone involved - my total incomprehension that she could even say such words let alone not understanding the impact this event would have on the world as we knew it. My uncle sharing that even though there was so much death and destruction we need to focus on the fact that so many people from all walks of life rushed to New York to help. A general feeling of apprehension but also a general feeling of philanthropy displayed in the days and weeks following. Extreme feelings of pride when I was at Disneyland a month after the attacks and hearing the national anthem and everyone stopping on Main Street to cover their hearts and sing at the top of their lungs.

A terrible time for our nation and a time to realize that only together are we strong and can overcome and can prevail to retain our freedom and our liberty.

On September 11, 2011 I was unemployed. So, to have some sense of normalcy in my day each morning I reported to my living room recliner. I needed to have a place to go and my recliner was my job each morning. Before beginning my job search I would spend an hour meditating after my son went to school at 8:00.

At 9:00 a.m. I would turn on the computer and begin my next task of job searching. But this particular morning I turned on the television. Good Morning America (GMA) was my choice and they were talking about a dishwasher that was being recalled. I phoned my mom to let her know of the recall, hung up and continued to watch GMA.

Suddenly Peter Jennings broke in with the report that a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers. As I watched the explosion I was witness as many were to see another plane hit the second tower. Immediately I knew this was an act of terror.

Admittedly, my first thought was that we in the United States had very little thought of such an act reaching our country, but we were and no one is untouchable. At one point I stepped outside and looked into the sky to witness a beautiful day. The blues were bluer, the green greener. The sun was brighter and the birds reminding me of children on a playground?free. They didn’t have to share the sky. Their space was their very own that day. The contrast of watching the complete devastation in New York and the warm, sunny quiet day I was experiencing at the same time was eerily peaceful.

When the Twin Towers were hit, I was getting out of my dad’s car in the circle drop off line at school. The phone rang and it was my mom hyperventilating on the other line. Brushing off my dad’s gasps and “Oh my Gods” as standard parental drama, I waltzed right into class to see the TV on and everyone dead silent. I assumed I walked into an early AM documentary until a friend quickly told me this was happening live. My ears started to ring and I sunk into my plastic chair in disbelief with the rest of my classmates.

Ironically enough, I was in my 7th grade history class and we were starting our next textbook chapter on the Middle East- learning about Mesopotamia, the early eras of the caliphate, and Islam. I couldn’t have imagined a better setting to wrap my brain around the large-scale atrocity that is 9/11. Our teacher spent the next few hours dialoging with the class about our emotions surrounding the collapse, and for the remainder of the month, he grounded us in the history and culture of the region.

All the while, I fervently gathered as many clips surrounding 9/11 as possible and compiled them in a binder scrapbook-taking notes, commenting-and this exercise certainly contributed to the line of work I’m in today. I consider myself one of the lucky ones who came into deeper understanding without bias, hate, or a lick of fear, all at the age of 13. I’m curious to hear how many others feel the same.

I was in New York's West Village, about a mile due north of the towers, part of the vanguard of a group of family members gathering for a pilgrimage to Ellis Island in honor of my grandparent's arrival there exactly 100 years earlier, on September 11, 1901. My son was already in New York for a work assignment, accompanied by his wife and 3 month old daughter.

Our windows faced north, so we had seen nothing until my son, leaving for work, shouted up to us, words I have never forgotten: "there's a hole in the World Trade Center, it's terrible". My daughter-in-law, the baby in her arms, and I rushed downstairs to the nearby corner. Everyone knows what we saw. What couldn't be conveyed in any of the television pictures was how animate the towers seemed, like living things clutching their breasts as they stood dying.

I remember Wednesday evening, when a shift in the winds brought a noxious cloud into the apartment. My son and his wife left with their infant, heading uptown on foot, hoping to find some sort of a ride, and get their child to safety. I stayed alone, listening to the sounds of military planes overhead. Though now we know that the attack on the towers was the only terrorist act in New York, at the time those of us there had no way to predict what awaited. With each plane, I asked myself, "Ours or theirs?"

On Thursday, I walked down to the barricade at Houston Street, clutching a mask someone had wordlessly handed me along the way. For an eerie moment I stood there all alone, staring into hell, still unbelieving, still imagining that somehow the clock could be re-wound.

That morning my husband was still sleeping and I was getting ready for a job I was starting that day. I was watching the Today show and I heard Matt and Katie talking and live footage of the first tower burning, I woke up my husband and told him he had to see what was going on.

We saw the 2nd plane hit and I couldn't believe what was happening. I went to take a shower and all I kept hearing my husband shout was "OH MY GOD!" after each subsequent happening.

I drove to my job, it was eerie, not as much traffic and nothing in the sky. At work I stayed 1 hour, and then we decided to close and be with our families. It was all we could watch on tv and all everyone wanted to talk about. What a terrible time in all our lives.

I was in a hardware store in a small town in Costa Rica minutes after the first plane hit. The small black and white TV was showing an image of the World Trade Center with smoke billowing from it. The sound on the TV was off and I did not pay much attention because the kid who worked here in the morning was always watching sort of action movie. After I ordered my material and was waiting for it to be packed I became transfixed by the continuous footage of the burning tower. With eyes transfixed to the screen I asked the kid what he was watching. Before I could finish the sentence the second plane hit. It was too real to be anything else. I ran to the internet cafe to get the news from a TV with sound and tried to contact all of my friends that worked in and around the Towers.

Growing up in southern NY most of my childhood friends were cops or firefighters and my college friends were accountants and bankers.

It was surreal being out of the country during this event. I would not return to NY for another 1.5 years. Flying into NY 900 days after that day was still eery. It is still eery today when I go back. My first stop when I returned was Manhattan to visit as many of my friends as possible. I'll never forget their stories of that day of watching people jump, watching the towers fall, the dust, and the aftermath. It was difficult enough to watch the events on TV from a small village in Costa Rica. It was all the more sobering to hear my friends recount these events in real time from their vantage point.

That day sucked for everyone. It did not matter if you were in Costa Rica, Goshen, or downtown. We all lost someone or something that day.

I was in the 8th grade, living in a little New Jersey town 5 miles from the George Washington Bridge. Our English class was interrupted by lines of cars of parents coming to pick up their kids in panic. They turned on the TVs in every classroom and we watched countless hours of footage of planes flying into the Towers.

When I came home, my mother was crying. Neighbors were walking home across the Bridge because transportation was shut down. You could begin to smell the smoke from across the river. My father told me it was a day we would never forget, and made us turn off the telelvision and go to bed.

I was sitting in my ninth grade biology class when a kid ran by the classroom yelling "Someone bombed the Pentagon." I lived outside of the Washington D.C metro area in a Maryland suburb. My mom, a retired Air Force Master Sergeant, was at the Pentagon for training. She was also five months pregnant with my little sister. The world stopped moving, everything in slow motion with students crying, CNN on the classroom TV showing the tower footage on repeat. Finally they showed the Pentagon - how was I supposed to know where she was in that building?

Four hours later the school buses pulled up to take us home. I don't remember the ride, getting off or the walk home. I don't remember anything from the time the Pentagon footage flashed on the television screen until I walked in my front door and there was my mom, waiting for me to get home. Her training had been canceled at 4:30 that morning. She was never there. The training room was on the west block where the plane crashed.

It was a day like any other, that September 11. I was listening to the 4 p.m. radio newscast (in Israel) when the broadcaster said that a plane crashed into the World Trade Center. That made no sense, so I turned on CNN on television and saw the second plane crash live. The broadcasters, confused as everybody else, theorized that the radar was malfunctioning. A malfunction? The pilot couldn't see that tall building, on fire at that?

Nothing but a terrorist attack.

I thought about the people in the buildings. Like everyone else, I was shocked. Magnitude, audacity, implications, death and dying. I was also surprised that the buildings didn't collapse immediately.

I started to think about the people I knew in that area. A few relatives living in New York, but nowhere near. And my cousin moved from Montreal to work a block away from the Trade Center, starting that very week. Seemed like hours before we heard from him, that he was OK, shaken and scared, but unharmed.

Later on, I thought it was just the beginning of the day, that California, where I used to live and where most of my American friends are, is still asleep. Who knows what will happen on the West Coast. Turned out, nothing.

I said back then that this was the new world order. President Bush said it was us against them. Simplistic, but true.

Back then, we were all Americans, even those of my friends who weren't. Many Israelis placed Israeli and American flags on their cars. These days, we are all remembering. Each in his or her own way.

Living in Delaware with my husband. He . . .was in Boston for biz. He flew out that morning on American Airlines, one flight before the terrorists. He flew over the WTC, looked at it out of habit and all was well. He landed in Philadelphia, completely unaware of how our world had changed. He heard about the attacks on the radio but I don’t think he understood what had happened. Who could understand it without seeing the enormity of it all? He drove to work. He was at work that day and I wanted him home but neither one of us wanted to over-react. It was all so surreal and confusing.

I watched tv non-stop. My brother-in-law’s girlfriend emailed me some stupid thing and I emailed back, “Is this REALLY the day to be sending me this??”

We lived in DE so we were really afraid. We were halfway between DC and NYC. I remember the anthrax scare and advice to tape windows, get food/water supplies, etc. I remember our DE skies being filled with military aircraft from nearby Dover AFB. I LOVED (and LOVE) our military. The presidential plane, complete with the escort planes, flew over our house enroute to and from NYC to DC sometime during that week. Our skies were filled with our beautiful military . . . thundering helicopters . . . planes. It was a horrible, scary time.

We were all on hyper-alert mentally for the next terror attack. One night at 1:00 AM, I woke up and turned on the tv. Nothing worked. I looked outside and it was complete black for as far as I could see. No street lights. No house lights. Nothing. At the time, I thought . . . what better way to paralyze us all than to cut off our electrical supply? No one could get any communication.

I emailed George Bush at the White House a lot. I felt he did SUCH a great job. It all was SO overwhelming. I do remember that at about Day 10 . . . I walked out to get the mail. A neighborhood mom was strolling her baby girl. I stopped to play with the baby girl and realized . . . I haven’t smiled in ten days.

I was in the hospital birth center with my one-day-old baby boy. I called my boss that morning at the school where I teach ESL and told her the great news: my baby had been born! She congratulated me, then there was a pause. She asked carefully if I had watched the news. I hadn't watched any TV since checking into the hospital several days previously. My boss mentioned something about terrorist attacks, and that our students, who were from abroad, were very worried and upset.

After talking to my boss, I found the remote attached to my hospital bed and turned on the news. Footage was being played and replayed of a plane hitting the second tower, with the news update scrolled at the bottom of the screen informing us of the number of fire and police rescue workers "missing." First, I wondered how TWO planes could accidentally crash into the towers, and then I wondered how hundreds of firefighters could somehow be missing. The truth dawned on me, and I watched for several more minutes. Then I looked over at my newborn baby and turned off the news.

The TV stayed off. A maternity nurse approvingly told me I had done the right thing. She said that a new mom in the next room had been watching the same TV news compulsively for a very long time, until the nurse turned off the TV for her -- and the new mom thanked her for that.

I started September 11th 2001 unlike most in that I was watching the towers before sunrise. An amazing beacon across the harbor, I recall staring at Lady Liberty and the nearby Twins. It was about 4 am and I was headed home from Red Hook, Brooklyn after enjoying a Monday night out. Working for the NYPD, that Monday and Tuesday was my “weekend.”

Glancing passively at the skyline, I enjoyed feeling as one with my great hometown. Today it chills me to think how that thought was my first “Never Forget” moment. Though still enamored with my hometown, the missing link in the skyline still hurts me to this day.

I remember hearing stories from Grad school, during the Crown Heights riots some ten years earlier, the police were mobilized in riot gear and left on duty for days at a time. I took a shower and headed out the door wondering where the next few days would lead me. And as most of the world sat glued to their televisions, and most New Yorkers tried to get home to their families, I was getting suited up, and anticipating how to safely navigate my way to what would soon be called ?Ground Zero’.

Being one of the first of the evening shift to arrive, I was immediately deployed not to Manhattan, but to Bensonhurst for a street evacuation. At the busy shopping district on Bay Parkway and 86th Street, in the midst of the greatest crises in modern times, some genius decided to place a suspicious package, complete with a duct taped aluminum foil box and exposed wires, on the front car of an elevated subway train. Evacuating the busy stores, rerouting traffic, bus routes and diverting others from the perimeter of this bomb scene takes an enormous amount of personnel. Sadly I was sent there instead of to Manhattan where my later-arriving colleagues were deployed. I will also never forget the snowflake sized white ashes peppering my uniform as I argued with Chinese fruit vendors to close up shop on an otherwise clear and beautiful day.

Soon after clearing the fake bomb I was sent to secure another subway hub until well after midnight. After a 16 hour day, hearing reports of tens of thousands possible trapped victims, and a confirmed report of another nearby building collapse, I was tired and angry. I felt powerless in what my assigned duty was. So I went home, slept a few hours and immediately raced to Ground Zero to help out on my own time before my next scheduled shift. Angry and exhausted, I maintained this for a few days before I was finally assigned to the bucket brigade. By his time, I think the job understood that asking for volunteers was preferable to sending scores of police officers to stand witness to the atrocities being unearthed. Some people just can’t handle that kind of exposure?I guess none of us can without some traumatic results. But the assignment finally made me feel useful. After all, I was one of the few that had access to the area, and In the back of my mind I was still hoping to find the remains of my friends who perished.

I gasped for air as I saw the plane hit the tower on my television screen. I knew my friend was down there and she was in danger. I found out a few days later she died.

I was a disaster mental health volunteer with the American Red Cross and on call on September 11. That evening, long after all the bridges had been closed, two fire fighters in full gear asked me to drive them from their station house in Brooklyn to the WTC site because all of their colleagues and equipment were already on scene.

Before we could cross the Brooklyn Bridge soldiers questioned us and searched my car thoroughly. During the trip over we were silent. I imagine the fire fighters were trying to anticipate what they were about to encounter. I wondered too but also found myself being stunned by the complete stillness surrounding us as my car was the only car on a bridge that 100,000 + people drive over every day. And, it was covered in ash.

I spent two months responding to the events of that day. It was an honor and privilege to be able to help in what ways I could but I don't ever want to have to do it again.

I was working a film set in Long Branch, New Jersey. We saw the towers fall from 20 miles away. We had to keep working because, as the producer put it, "L.A. hasn't woken up and I can't get permission for us to shut down."

The actress we were working with finally said enough, how was she to perform with everything going on? When we heard the island of Manhattan was shut down, nothing in or out, our first thought was how were we going to get the 250 crew members home.

The police said we weren't even allowed on the highways. We doubled up nearby hotel rooms and then all made it home the next day. I couldn't sleep in my own home that night. Others had it worse, no doubt, but that hurt ... not to hug my 3 month old ...

I was working a contract position in the corporate offices of Alpharma, a pharmaceutical manufacturer in Fort Lee N.J. I was at my desk and someone said that a small plane had hit the North tower of the WTC.

Everyone went into the office of a VP and we stared out of the window at the gaping wound in the North side of the North tower. Flames and smoke were belching out of it. As we watched, a second plane traversed the sky at a low altitude and ripped through the South tower. We all stood there in silent disbelief then knowing that our nation was under attack.

After what seemed to be forever, the south tower collapsed. At that point we were all sent home. I was staying with my mother in Teaneck, about 5 miless west of Fort Lee. As I drove west on State Route 4 all of the traffic that had been going Eastbound to the George Washington bridge had been turned around and was now going Westbound in the Eastbound lanes of the highway. I was shaking as I was driving.

When I got home I found my mother sitting crying with the television on. We sat there in numb silence and then watched on the television as the North tower fell. We barely slept for two days, instead watching the 24-hour coverage of the attempts to find survivors of this horror.

The greatest irony for me is that I had flown from my home in Pasadena three days before on a red-eye flight and everything was so normal. There were several young people on the flight laughing and carrying on that had gone to Las Vegas before departing from Los Angeles.

The Sunday before that Tuesday I had taken my mother's car and driven down through West New York in New Jersey along the Hudson river. I had always loved the towers because they were an integral part of my childhood growing up in the NY Metro area. As I came down south along the river I remember looking at the towers and thinking to myself how beautiful they were and how strong and majestic they appeared. Little did I know that their brief lifespan just shy of thirty years was days away from ending.

Just three weeks before the attacks I had packed up my NY city condo and made Los Angeles new home. I was asleep in my apartment in Santa Monica and there was banging on the door from a neighbor but I slept through that, so my next door neighbor took her spare key of my apartment and let herself in. She said, "you have to get up.... NY has been attacked and the Trade Center is gone." It did not register. I got up, got dressed, put the leashes on the dogs and went out the door. I think it was about 7 AM PST, and the world had changed while I slept. I got out the door with the dogs and all but collapsed on the sidewalk when I finally realized what my neighbors had said to me.

I lost my friend Laura Rockefeller that day. She was the sweetest woman, with a serene and loving personality that endeared her to all. She happened to have the bad fortune to be a stage manager for an event that morning for Risk Waters at Windows on the World. It was her day job to support herself as an artist. Her family and friends in NY realized she was gone when no one came home to walk her dog JT. Today there is a bench in her memory in a dog park in the neighborhood we all lived in on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

I spent most of the next few weeks tracking down old friends who I knew worked in the financial district. An ex boyfriend happened to go surfing on Long Island and skipped work, another had left his job at Am Ex and no longer worked at the Financial Center. He was no married with two babies. I found friends I had not spoken to in years in looking for assurance that they too were not lost with Laura. But virtually everyone I knew from my NY life had suffered the unimaginable loss of a friend to the murderous terrorists.

Later that week I went to the beach in Manhattan Beach for a memorial. There I met many colleagues of the flight crews from American and United. They were amongst those there that like me suffered a very personal loss, and I imagine also live with the horrid visual I cannot wipe from my imagination of my friend Laura's frightful demise. The image will always haunt me.

Today I live in the South Bay and this weekend I will look for a memorial and hope that I see one or two of those faces from ten years ago so we can comfort each other. This is very personal to me. They invaded the place I will always consider my home. I love NYC. I miss my home town friends and I will always mourn for Laura and her family. I cannot look at my dogs, who traveled back with me that August from NY to Los Angeles to make our new home here, without thinking of JT going to the door looking for Laura, never to come home again.

I was living in a walk-up apartment on Sullivan Street in Greenwich Village, New York City--about one mile from the Twin Towers. My girlfriend at the time was just getting ready to start her first day of an interior-design internship. We had just moved to the Village on the previous Sunday night after spending about two weeks in Brooklyn.

We had moved to NYC from Santa Barbara in late August, so she could study interior design and I had a position as the East coast editor for the automotive magazine Mustang Monthly.

That Tuesday morning, I was sitting on the bed in our closet-sized apartment eating a bowl of Cheerios. Our place was situated back from the street with the window looking out onto a courtyard, so we couldn't really see anything. The shades were also drawn as we were just getting ready for the day.

All of a sudden I hear a huge whooshing sound directly over our building, quickly followed by a loud explosion. As I sat on the bed with my mouth wide open looking at my girlfriend Clare, cereal bowl in my hand, I literally said to her, "What the f--- was that noise? Did a plane just crash into the World Trade Center?" I then sort of gave out a semi-joking laugh, but knew something had gone down that was far from funny. Little did I know that without seeing anything, I had unknowingly said exactly what had just happened by merely hearing it.

By this point, she was scurrying around getting ready for the first day of her internship and had go to right away, subsequently saying, "I am late, I have to go."

So we said goodbye and about two minutes later the landline phone rang. It was Clare calling from her cell phone telling me I had better get down to the street. There is something going on, but she couldn't wait around and had to go.

I walked down to the street and that something was the first tower that already been hit by the Boeing 767 that I heard fly probably less than 1,000 feet over our building. As I stood there on Sullivan Street--which had a straight-shot view looking South to the towers--there were hundreds of other people there and several taxicabs were also around and the drivers had the car radios going in the cabs, playing the news stations.

As we all stood there wondering what was going on, the second plane crashed into the other tower right before our eyes and at that instant, it was clear the first plane wasn't an accident. I subsequently ran upstairs and got my 35mm film camera and came down and shot of series of photos with a 300mm telephoto lens that shows the two towers billowing smoke, followed by one tower, followed by no towers--just a big cloud of smoke against a crystal-clear blue sky. I still have those color slides and they are pretty hard to look at.

By this point I was terrified about Clare. Was she stuck in the subway? Were they going to blow it up, too? Did she make it to the Upper East Side? And on and on. I didn't have a cell phone, so I proceeded to walk to the office she was on her way to, which was on 61st Street right near the Queensboro Bridge. From the Village this was about a 6-7 mile walk and it seemed to take about five minutes as I walked up 3rd Avenue, traffic totally jammed the entire way, wondering what her fate might be.

Turns out she walked back down to the Village and we crossed paths somewhere that day. We were eventually reunited later that evening and we remained in the Village for the next several weeks, until I eventually came back to California in early October.

I still visited her for the next year and a half, going to NYC every month until early 2003. Quite the experience to be sure and, of course, I will never ever forget any of it for probably 100 different reasons that are too numerous to explain here.

I was home in India on 9/11. I came back from school to find my parents glued to the television, furiously flickering between CNN and the BBC.

When the second tower fell and reports of the fate of the other airplanes came through, it really did feel like the walls in my house were caving in on me, like the world was imploding on itself.

I was thousands of miles away and yet it felt like the towers were right down my street. On that day, it was not only America that mourned, but the whole of humanity.

We were on a European vacation and flew to Dublin, Ireland from England. The same day we landed (Tuesday) we drove south of Dublin to visit the Powerscourt Gardens (Slazenger Mansion).

While in line the ticket taker told us the World Trade Center had been struck by the planes.

Throughout the visit our taxi cab driver was keeping us informed from calls to his wife.

We stayed until the gardens closed then the cab driver drove us to our bed and breakfast in Ballsbridge outside Dublin.

We listened to Irish news reports until we got to the B&B then started watching Sky News on the television.

We were all shocked to the core watching footage of the collapse.

We then left the B&B and walked to a local restaurant then onto a local pub.

The entire night the locals came up to us and offered their condolences.

The following day - Wednesday - the cab driver picked us again and drove us to various Dublin landmarks.

On the way he drove past the American Embassy where we saw flowers spilling out into the roadway and a line around the block to sign the book of condolences.

It truly was remarkable to witness such an outpouring.

Needless to say, the following Monday were in Paris, France when the US stock markets re-opened and it was a much different tone.

We were asked to not to display any American flag pins or pendants.

We spent the following two weeks touring France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Holland, Belgium, then back to the UK for the flight home.

By the time we crossed the Channel to Dover from Calais it was evident the world was changed forever and we Americans were once again labeled as the "gun toting cowboys" out to save the world.

Where were we? Having moved from L.A. to New York, my wife and i were in our 2nd year of living in Brooklyn and working in Manhattan. I was taking my brother, who was visiting from San Francisco, to Penn Station where he would catch the bus to Newark Airport. As we got out of the subway station we noticed people huddled outside some of the buildings. It looked like people were either taking a smoking break or there had been a fire drill early in the morning. We continued to walk towards the bus stop and i heard a construction guys radio announce that a plane had struck the world trade center. I immediately looked up at the sky and said to my brother, "it's such a clear day, how could a plane hit the building?"

My assumption was that a small plane had veered into the tower. We said our goodbyes and i was on my way to work. I worked on 37th & 6th Ave and i could always see the twin towers from 6th. This time, when i turned around to see the damage this "small airplane" had done, i was completely shocked to see the amount of smoke coming from the tower and realized this wasn't caused by a small plane! I quickly got into the office and everyone was huddled around my bosses wife's office (she had a small tv in it). We could not believe what was going on and shortly there after, the 2nd plane struck and we were floored!

As Architects, we speculated that the towers could resist the fire and impact, especially since there was fireproofing and ultimately with some serious renovations we'd be able to visit the world trade center again. Then before our eyes, the first tower collapsed and we were waiting to see how much of the tower was left standing after the dust settled. We never anticipated the worst, that the icons of Manhattan would never exist! Then i realized "wheres my brother?" He didn't have a cell phone at the time and we heard the city, the tunnels, airports and everything had been shut down! Even making phone calls to cell phones was difficult because one of the main transmission antennas was on top of the towers and that had just collapsed. Soon after, it got chaotic trying to communicate with anyone and luckily my brother called me from a pay phone at the same time my wife called me on another line.

My wife had evacuated her office building with a coworker and just walked to the Hudson River. As far as the whereabouts of my brother, it turned out the bus never made it to Newark because the Lincoln Tunnel was closed. The driver dropped off everyone and coincidentally, it was close to where my wife and her coworker had walked to and where I eventually joined them. The only person we were able to call was my best friend in L.A. We gave him some of our family members phone numbers to relay to them that we were alright. My wife's coworkers father was close to the devastation and was on his way to pick us up and take us back to Brooklyn. He left his construction job in lower Manhattan and when we saw him, the whole car was still covered in the white ash. A normal time to get from Manhattan to our apt takes about 45 minutes on the subway, that day the ride home took about 5 hours. What impressed us about the traffic was the calm and orderly demeanor of everyone trying to flee Manhattan. No one honked and there was a lot of courtesy given to all! Once we got to our apt, we went to the roof to see what we could and all we saw was the smoke and papers blowing in our direction high above us.

For the next few days, we were glued/hypnotized to the tv set watching what had just happened and the search for survivors. We called the Red Cross to see if we could volunteer for anything but we were turned away because there were too many volunteers and what they really needed were supplies for the rescuers.

The images of that tragic day will forever be ingrained into our brains. Every time we see those images of the crashes, it just feels like special effects from a big budget movie. We still can't imagine the pain and suffering the families of those directly affected feel every September 11th.

The summer of 2001, I began training hard for my first marathons and triathlons, which were coming up in late October. I was feeling great about my progress, so it wasn't uncommon for me to work out from 5-8 am. I stayed an extra hour because I really wanted to perfect my swimming speed; upon leaving the 'Y' I noticed the tv on at the front desk. After working out, I'm sure a lot of you know, you're kind of in a zone - I was thinking 'this isn't happening. No. This is NOT happening'.

I got home and received a call from both my parents, who work at a large scale hospital in Duluth, Minnesota; home to one of the nation's best burn units. Every employee had to report to work, stay there and even be prepared to stay indefinitely. There was so much unknown - it was assumed that, since most major cities' trauma units would be diverting, and Duluth (which used to have a gigantic Air Force Base, therefore a great place to divert patients and large planes) was probably going to see a mass casualty - something our city; 165 miles north of Minneapolis, and just south of the Canadian border - had never seen. I was worried about my parents having to take on this potential unknown.

I am an extremely sensitive, empathetic, feeling person. I sat on the floor, hugged my pillow, watched tv and cried. I watched as frantic kids were holding up pictures of their parents or older siblings begging anyone - 'have you seen (this person)? Please, please help'. I wondered about everyone in NYC and how they were doing, especially nurses, 911 operators, first responders/fire - at some point they were sure to break down. Yes they are heroes, but they're PEOPLE with families and loved ones they're worried about too. I thought about what it must have been like in Los Angeles and San Francisco for those waiting for flights that never showed up, and what it must have been like to be sitting in that terminal and finding out why their loved one's flight wasn't coming. What are the odds? Life is so unfair.

I spent a long time after that wondering about my purpose and the importance of kindness. Watching these events on tv still removes us from being there that day. But look into their eyes, watch the walking wounded. Those of us who were born after 1970 never knew a world where this could happen. I always wondered what it would have been like to have lived from, say, 1910-2010: living through both World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, the 60's, and now this.

I lived in Jersey City and stayed home that day to prepare for a meeting later that afternoon at 1WTC. I awoke to a call from my sister in CA.

Half asleep, I was confused about what she was saying but as soon as I made my way out to my deck her words became unbelievably clear - instead of waking from a bad dream, I was waking up to a horrible nightmare.

As with many, my life changed forever in not so many good ways but I survived.

I had recently arrived in NYC from Argentina to begin my Masters in Performance Studies at NYU. That morning, two days after my birthday, I took some cake leftovers to NYU to celebrate my new year with friends.

Getting from Brooklyn on the F train, I could see the smoke on the towers. People seemed concerned. I thought that a drunk pilot had hit the WTC. Once in Manhattan, as I arrived in the department of Performance Studies on the 6th floor of the Broadway Avenue building, the receptionist, who was on the phone with her boyfriend, asked me in an extremely nervous tone what I was doing there. She said "We are at war."

She added that my mentor was waiting for me at her place. The bridges were already closed. I was not able to go back home. All day, my mentor and I watched the TV coverage of the tragic events. When I finally got home, my roommate was waiting for me anxiously. We had some drinks to calm down. Everybody was out. We needed to be together. Some weeks after, my roommate, a Californian, left NY. She said she was scared of asbestos, too traumatized to stay in the city. At school, professors said we were all going to take it easy. Many of us wrote our thesis on topics related to 9/11.

I was working at the U.S. General Accounting Office in Washington, DC, with a window cube. After hearing of the attacks on the radio, I moved into an interior office and watched television with my co-workers. There were all kinds of rumors floating around, car bombs reportedly going off at federal buildings throughout the day.

Some people left work immediately to meet up with family, pick up kids, etc. My husband and I (no kids yet back then) luckily worked in the same building together, so we waited in the interior of the building until the end of the day and then took the long way around the city to avoid driving anywhere near the Pentagon (which we usually drove past daily). It was still smoking the next day when we drove into work.

that nation we never stop being ourselves.s answer

It was an ordinary Monday afternoon in Denmark. My youngest daughter were at a birthday party and meanwhile I was in Gilleleje, a small city by the sea, with Peter to pick up his new glasses. We strolled down the little shopping street, the weather was nice, people were out walking, just another Monday as usual. I went into a small fashion store, while Peter waited outside.

We had already booked flights and hotel reservations for our first family trip to New York one month later, with the kids and Peter's mom. I had never been to New York before, to me this was a big thing, and I was so excited about finally going to The Big Apple. Of course we had planned to see visit the Twin Towers.

Suddenly his cell phone rang and he was on the phone for a long time. When I came out he was pale and he said: Someone has just crashed into the World Trade Center in NY. And we simply couldn't figure out what this meant. At home we turned on the TV and we sat there and saw the world fall apart. And we cried. I still do when I think of it.