Where were you on 9/11/01?
I was in my car on my way to law school on September 11, 2001. A friend flagged me down and told me that someone had attacked one of the Twin Towers in New York City. Like many people, I assumed this was a terrible accident until I heard about the second plane.
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Huntington W. Sharp says:
Diary entries from those days
9/11/01
Such horrifying images from New York. John and I have spent the morning alternately watching in the living room or returning to bed, trying to find a way to block out, process, watch, and understand. My school, in the midst of S.F.'s closed-down Civic Center, can't tell me whether classes will proceed. I don't think I could concentrate on Torts today anyway.
Peace. Please.
Later: We just can't keep from turning on the TV to check...for what? There's been no good news all day. The latest tonight is of the preliminary numbers of missing cops, paramedics, and firefighters, and that people are calling from inside the rubble on their cell phones. John and I have gotten out of the house a couple of times today, just to pretend to get away from it, but the haunted looks on the few fellow wanderers thru downtown S.F. provide no distraction. Back home, we amble thru the apartment, trying to think of anything else to do other than turn the damn TV back on. "John, is there anything you want to do?" "Yeah, go to sleep, and wake up to find that none of this ever happened."
9/13/01
Classes back in session today; though I was never able to get thru on Tuesday, I was right in believing that classes had been cancelled. (I have no classes on Wednesdays.) Everyone still was tentative around one another, giving brave smiles of encouragement, but then people have been like that at the school from the beginning (encouraging, not tentative).
Lunchtime at the school isn't called lunchtime, it's called "Community Building," and today they actually did something about it. We had a session where almost the entire first year and a good percentage of the upperclass and faculty and staff sat in a room and talked about their various feelings. One staff member and one student still have friends missing, and there was a lot of talk of the fear, sadness, rage, and "loss of innocence and sense of safety."
This being a very leftist place, it didn't take long for the misgvings of some of the government's more warmongering rhetoric to get a thorough airing; there was one student who expressed his absolute rage and willingness for the military to do whatever was necessary (he was allowed to speak his piece), but the overall tone was real worry that an unregulated war was on the horizon. There were gentle reminders that while this terrorism was off the charts in its audacious and violent scale, the people behind it didn't act in a vacuum. The U.S. and the West have acted in so many reprehensible ways over the years that some sort of retribution can't have been a complete surprise. The consensus seemed to be that someone, anyone, needs to act to break the cycle of violence, not escalate it. I don't know how to do that, and no one else seemed to have too many suggestions either.
Ivory, though she sat thru the entire session, was skeptical and annoyed that people were only now beginning to see the violence and evil people are capable of inflicting on each other. "Where are the tears for Afghan women teaching their daughters to read in the dark?" "Maybe bringing this home will wake people up," was John's response when I told him just now. Maybe.
The brief I wrote for homework for last week was used as a teaching tool in today's writing and research class: life, with all its emotions, goes on, and one of those emotions is pride.
Huntington Sharp, Red Room
Abraham Mertens says:
Keeping a Journal
Huntington,
This response is so touching. Sometimes I think that I'd like to keep a journal again. After reading your post I'm inspired again.
Abraham Mertens, redroom.com
Huntington W. Sharp says:
Thanks!
I don't do that kind of journal-writing anymore, but now I'm feeling a little inspired myself!
Huntington Sharp, Red Room
Lisa Gale Garrigues says:
9/11 in Argentina
I was in Buenos Aires on 9/11. A friend told me on the phone that a plane had just crashed into the Twin Towers. But the magnitude of what happened didn't hit me until I got downtown, and saw a crowd of people gathered on the sidewalk, watching a television behind the plate glass window of a store. I remember getting just inches in front of the television, as if to convince myself that what I was seeing was true.
Reactions in Argentina ranged from people I barely knew coming up to me and offering their sympathy, to jokes about how the Americans had it coming, to people who were devastated because a place that many had dreamed of coming to to escape the problems of their own country had shown itself to be just as vulnerable as any other place in the world. One Argentine woman told me she was still on sleeping pills one year later because of the trauma this had caused her.
Michele Chaboudy says:
9/11---In New York City
I was scheduled to speak at a conference at the Roosevelt Hotel at 11 am, so had time to visit a family friend who worked at FCB advertising. While meeting with Bill, his wife called to say "turn on the TV, now." We were stunned. I hastily left in a daze to walk to the Roosevelt, where I watched the horrific story unfold on a huge TV screen in their elegant lobby, with other guests and conference attendees . Later, I walked down 5th Avenue, saw the smoke and witnessed the big stores--Macys', Saks-- shut down one by one. I found one restaurant opened for dinner and shared the table with strangers who were in shock, like me. Two days later, I met with another friend, publisher of Time Magazine, who handed me his magazine's commemorative edition, hot off the presses. Bruce was supposed to be on the flight out of Newark on 9/11 but canceled at the last minute. I returned home on 9/17 on the first Jet Blue flight out to San Francisco. I still have trouble remembering all the details of of that week because of the surreal state of that great city, but I will always remember many, many NYC people helping strangers and each other get through the first traumatic days.