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#1: Norma Dee (norm0908) on Sep 7, 2018

17 year? Hard to believe it's been that long.

Easy peasy, a literally less than a min solve. even with the blots...but I think it's more for a conversation-piece. that date shook the modern world...and most of us, I think, reckon time by it. You remember things by before 9/11 or after. Before that, the Challenger explosion was the landmark item. and though I'm not old enough, my mum always said JFK's assassination was the thing for her. You knew, and know exactly what you were doing and where you were at the time. For me, I just-so-happened to be on an army base. The Melvin Price Army Base was essentially closed. Some military family still lived there, but that was it. And they had a 9-hole course for the officers that went into ruin due to neglect. I was working for Vatterott at the time...they own several golf courses, properties, and the college for that matter. They wanted that course up and open for business, and I was the guy to get it back in shape after years of neglect. Every day I went there, there were 2 guards at the entrance who didn't really care, and the rest of the complex was a ghost town. That day however, it went from ghost town to fully staffed and functional base in no time. I'm amazed still at how fast things got in order...and there was no lazy drive in or out of the gate anymore. They wanted to know who you were with ID and what exactly your business being there was. It took less than an hour to go from dead to area 51

Just the other day I came across a puzzle asking "Where were you on 9-11?". (Unfortunately I don't remember the number.) I "enjoyed" -- if that's the right word -- reading the comments where they were, what they were doing, etc.
My dad called to tell me what had happened -- I turned on the TV and watched in shock for the rest of the day, and probably the next two weeks. (I was between jobs at the time.)
Yes, this is one of those events by which we reckon time. Others -- for me, at least -- are the assination of President Kennedy and the first moon landing.

I was in math class, 4th period, in 6th grade. The teachers wouldn't tell us why all the adults were in a panic, figuring we wouldn't be able to handle the emotional trauma, but I didn't understand what the significance of it even was. You know how when you're a kid, you don't realize just how fleeting life can be? That is, you may not understand how precious it is and that if you lose it, you don't get it back? Years later I realized it wasn't about the building, it was about the thousands of precious lives that were lost so quickly in a few short hours. I've never met anyone personally who lost someone on 9/11, but I heard an interview made at least ten years later of a couple who lost their young adult son that day. He was in one of the twin towers when they went down. They still weren't over it. Really, who could be?

@ Susan...I made a puzz about it some years ago, maybe that's the one you think of...if memory serves, it was at the 11th anniversary, so me-thinks I titled it "11 yrs ago" or some such thing....

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I live on Long Island...a train ride into NYC. A lot of people from LI lost loved ones in the towers. I was birding yesterday with the Audubon and one of the women in the group said it still felt like yesterday rather than 17 years ago that she lost her husband. Today would have been her 40th wedding anniversary. Such a horrific day.

On a different note, last night there was one of those This Is A Test of the Emergency Broadcast System interruptions during a TV show we were watching. I said to my husband that I don't remember seeing the Emergency System aired on the TV on 9/11. If there was ever day to use it, that Tuesday was the day.

Kurt -- You have an excellent memory!! Puzzle # 19762 --"11 yrs ago". Thanks for the heads-up!!

Good.

Yep! I was very pregnant in 2001, and the events of 9/11 put me on bed rest, from the stress. My son turns 17 next month!

I was in Manhattan and still are ... so sad.

I was at work in Florida

I had made an early stop at a grocery store and since AZ is several hours behind New York I hadn't heard about it yet. I asked one of the employees in the the store why all the long faces and when she told me I felt really terrible.

Kristen -- I was pregnant on 9/11 too! I was right at the cusp between first and second trimesters that day, and my son too is 17 now. And my oldest was in preschool. For his whole life until then, we had listened to the news in the car and around the house, figuring that it was educational for him. But on 9/11 we stopped listening to the news where he could hear it. The events seemed too terrible for a preschooler to handle. It was years before we started again.


When I myself first heard the news, I was sitting at my computer in the basement of our old house, when Jan told me that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. At first we thought that it was a terrible accident, but then a second plane hit, and we realized that it was not an accident. I grew up in NYC, so I had lots of friends and family there who I was worried about. I remember calling and calling, trying to get past jammed phone lines to reach my mom and my cousins to make sure that they were all okay.

My husband had just started a new job in Kalamazoo (moving from MS to MI at 7 months' pregnant--when you have to drive one of the vehicles--is no fun), and he was attending orientation when I heard the news over the radio at the laundromat. I rushed back to the hotel and watched CNN for the rest of the day. It was awful.

Got in my car to go to class at the university and had the radio on. took me a bit to realize that it was really real and happening. sat in the parking lot listening until i had to go in for class. the professor was from NYC, took roll in a stupefied haze and we all left somberly.

Great illustration of a never-to-be-forgotten day. Very clever.

About to be 22 years, now. . .

I was in college, but unlike David, I was asleep, skipping class as I so often did back then. My roommates (I had 8) woke me so I could watch the news.

Being an Islander like Carol, the chances were indeed high that I'd soon learn about someone I knew who didn't survive the day; it was a friend's father.

Yonah, I'm so sorry.

I was in the car driving to the courthouse, listening to NPR news, when the interruption came that a plane had struck a twin tower. I visualized a little Piper or something, but then by the time the second one struck, they said they were airliners, which immediately froze me to my core. Going in to the courthouse, the marshals were trying to figure out what if anything to do, and the rumors started flying ...
They closed court for the day, and I rushed home to watch TV. My then-girlfriend was a flight attendant who lost 2 co-workers, and a childhood neighbor was lost.

Terrible.

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