I remember it so clearly. I was in a coffee shop, settling a dispute between disgruntled employees and the CEO. They wanted him out. Once we found out the first planes hit the North Tower, there wasn’t much of a dispute any longer.
What others said to my twitter question:
@lizstrauss I was on a plane on the tarmac in Dublin waiting to fly home from a 31 day biz trip around the world. It certainly offered a different perspective and an irony … Dublin airport is fitted out for bombs from the IRA.
@smartstartcoach I was driving to the office in tears as my husband had just told me he was leaving me and the children. Bad day all around..
@shannvanderleek I was working at a television station watching in horror as the second plane hit the WTC.
@davidrflanagan At the MBTA in Boston en route to a State House event
@shadowcoil Working in a kiosk listening to the radio. The radio host had no idea what to say when the news broke, and cut to music.
@entmagazineKym working in an after school program in SoCal, fielding questions from kids about what was going on
Where where you?
(True to 9-11 form, Business Insanity Radio had technical difficulties due to a software upgrade this morning. We will reschedule Anita Campbell and Rieva Lesonsky)
I was in the Back Bay of Boston, across the street from the Prudential Center, the second tallest building in the city. Where my office was, I could see planes from my window heading west. Did I see any of the planes leaving Logan that morning that were hijacked? Maybe, maybe not – it was like me saying I see the L trains going by today.
When we got news, it was like everyone did – choppy, continuously retracted, and then we couldn’t get anything on the Web and we hovered around the few TVs in the office to hear the news. Around 10 am ET they closed our office.
When I walked out the door, I realized there was nothing below me – in the Back Bay, there are all kinds of tunnels – subway, highway and train, and started walking towards the South End to get on “solid land” and then started calling friends. For some reason I drove into the city that day, and gave a few people rides back out.
The day before I had flown home from a wedding into Logan. The next time I flew through there, the airport was dramatically different. What looked like slapped-together dividers was the new security setup, and State Police had automatic weapons, which looked extremely awkward. Every time I fly through there I always think about what it was like before.
I had 3 friends affected by the terror attacks. One missed his bus for a meeting in one of the Towers and that’s why he is still here today. A friend worked in tower 7, the 3rd building to go down, and was working from home. Another had transferred to the PATH train to NJ at WTC and when they hit Hoboken they were told to get off, and when he got outside he saw the second plane hit the Towers. Also, someone with whom I served on an advisory board with, though I had never met, was on one of the planes out of Boston.
When I got up this morning and started my day I didn’t think of it right away. When I went to an office building today in the Loop and saw elevator banks wide open, aka not protected with security as all buildings in Boston became after 9/11, it then hit me.
A month and a half later my (then) fiancee ran the NYC Marathon. She had to be on the buses to Staten Island at 6am for a noon start due to the increased security. I recall walking around Midtown and there were very few people, even at the Today Show. We went down to Ground Zero and saw some of the cleanup that night. The subway only went to Canal Street and we had to walk from there. I’ll never forget the smell, not to mention the sight.
It is something I’ll never forget, and I know from what was done to us that day, it has made impacts on many things I do, great and small, everyday.
mp/m
Wow Mike, thanks for recounting your experience in detail