Where were you, eight years ago, when you heard about the 9/11 attacks?
I was at Carnegie Mellon. I checked my morning news feeds and saw one of the early notices of the 1st plane crashing into the WTC. I forwarded it to several of the campus electronic bboards (several people later told me that message was the first word they had of the attacks). I was watching the news in the Old Student Center when the second tower fell. I spent much of the day in Roselawn 6 with APhiO brothers watching the news - I remember the heart-stopping moment when we heard a plane overhead, and everyone in Roselawn slowly went outside to stare up at the sky.
For my parent's generation, it was the Kennedy Assasination; everyone remembers where they were when they first heard the President had been shot. For ours, it is 9/11.
Where were you?
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Yes, I will always remember.
I was working at Whizbang! and I got to work late as usual to find that nobody was at their desks. Instead they were all gathered in the conference room watching the news on a big screen TV.
I came in and saw one of the WTC towers in smoke and the other one standing fine. I thought to myself... this has got to be some kind of joke right? Nice CGI. Why is everyone taking this so seriously? I started thinking about the initial release of War of the Worlds on radio. Then right as I was standing there in denial, the second plane hit right before my eyes and I thought - there, I knew it, fake as hell. But the people on the screen and in the room were reacting like it was real and then we heard a plane had hit the Pentegon and one crash landed in the middle of PA not far from us I believe. And I thought "oh my God, it's the end of the world."
I was stunned and I went back to my desk and read an email from IVCF saying that they were praying on the lawn at CMU so I just walked out of the office and went to CMU without telling anyone. They had given us the day off but I didn't find that out till later, I just walked out because I couldn't cope.
I went down and saw a group standing around the flagpole where we were supposed to be meeting, but they weren't praying. Nobody was saying anything. And I thought - what the hell is this? What are they doing? Should *I* start praying? I found out later it was a "silence circle" But luckily I soon saw the IVCF group praying within view. I went and joined them and they were praying and it was very calm and very good.
People were running around us in a panic because apparently there was this rumor going around that CMU was a target due to some military stuff we had on campus. I didn't get it but I actually believed them that we could be a target and I was afraid. I determined I was going to stay there and pray no matter what. No less than 3 different people told us to leave. They had no authority or anything, but they were just students - one said that with all this chaos going on we should stop praying and DO something! We didn't budge. Our leader kept praying, she said we were putting our trust in God for protection and looking to him for guidance. Another person asked us to leave and go indoors for our own safety. Then a third person shrilly demanded that we leave because we were going to be next! I admit that I started to get up at that point along with several others.
But our leader didn't stop praying. I had this image in my head of the end of the world and of the 3 men in the furnace. And I sat back down and kept praying. I realized at that moment that I do trust God with my life.
I wanted to tell the leader how much her courage and faith meant to me. But I was too shy.
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