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Where Were You?
Reflections on 9/11
8:46 AM — North Tower hit
9:03 AM — South Tower hit
9:37 AM — Pentagon hit
10:03 AM — crash of flight 93 near Shanksville, PA
Every year on this date, we are inundated with messages reminding us to “never forget”. As if we could.
Twenty minutes before Flight 175 hit the South Tower, I woke up late, a carefree college student who only cared about rolling out of bed in time to make it to class. My roommates had already left for the day and for some reason, I turned the TV on, something I never did in my scramble to get to campus on time.
I stopped in my tracks as the image of a flame-engulfed skyscraper filled the screen. What building was that? Was it a fire? A bomb? Creeping closer, I turned the volume up. They were saying that one of the Twin Towers had been hit. Reports early on were that there had been an explosion on one of the middle floors.
None of the information during those first hours was accurate or complete. The usually calm and confident voices of reporters had been transformed into frantic, staccato snippets. Journalists glanced over their shoulders like caged animals, anxiously pressing fingers to their ears in…
