15th year since

Just typical of truckers. Forum topic asked a question, someone veers off topic and now were discussing immigration and politics.
Start a new forum on that subject if you want, but please stay on topic.

 

I was in 10th grade French class, explaining why I didn't do my homework when we were told.
My father was supposed to be in a meeting in the upper floors of the north tower but had gone to an emergency dentist appointment instead. My mother was supposed to be going to an interview in building 7 and got off the subway and saw the second plane hit.

 

I was in high school.
Had skipped the first hour and a half and was hanging out in the library.
The news was on and saw the 2nd plane hit.

Can't remember if I made it to class that day.

 

I was getting ready for school. I believe I had just started grade 5.

 

I was runnig west on I84 in the Columbia River gorge headed to Portland, OR. Running alongside the bluffs, the XM signal was blocked for a lot of the time. Another driver had come on the CB, talking about a plane hitting a building in NYC. I thought they were talking about the B-25 that had hit the Empire State building in WWII. They then told me what was actually going on.
I had a meat delivery at Fred Meyers in Clackamus, OR that morning, and when i arrived, everyone was in the break room watching the TV. Needless to say, unloading took a while.

 

In Mebane,NC at the Petro booking a load.

 

Ironically i was in the navy. I joined right after the uss cole was hit in Yemen. I was stationed on the uss harry s truman, and we were in dry dock in Portsmouth va having repairs done to the hvac and new arresting gear installed. I had gotten off early that day (845). As i walked into my buddy Clints office i noticed it was very quiet. Asked him what's up, and he pointed to the tv above him. I stood there for another 10 minutes watching. That's when the second plane hit. I looked at Clint and told him i was bouncing because i wasn't getting locked down on base with my wife and kids 1/2 mile from Norfolk naval station and not knowing if it might get hit. It was a 3/4 mile walk from the dock to where my truck was parked. I was walking fairly fast. As i crossed over the pedestrian bridge and through the turnstile, the security locks were engaged. All naval facilities went into lockdown. No one in, or out for the rest of that day. I watched the television news the rest of the day. Scared...upset, pissed off.... after reporting in to my command the following day for phone muster, i learned that we were being put for emergency repairs. They were going to go from 1 10 hours shift to 3 8 hours shifts to get us up and running asap. We were originally scheduled for a 14month dry dock, they shortended it to 10 months. We went through sea trials, in just over 6 months, recieved the battle e, and in December 2002 we went on our second deployment. In February 2003 we were officially stationed in the med running training ops. We had taken on seal team 2, and 2 eod teams. We knew something was going down but hadnt been advised of our orders. Then about 3 weeks prior to march 20 2003, we had recieved our official orders from atlantic command saying that we were to be running operations into Iraq. For the next 3 weeks we were running 2 shifts at 12 hours a shift building bombs, doing maintenance on the landing gear, catapults, turbines, and elevators. The next 4 months was very much a blur.

 

I was waking up in Seattle, helping my wife get ready for her women's golf league. She got a phone call from a close friend.

"Turn on the television!"

Her friend's son worked in one of the towers. It wasn't until the next day he managed to get through the jammed phone system and let her know he was alright. She was with us. We all wept.

Another friend of ours had a very successful retail business next to the towers get destroyed. He and all the employees evacuated safely.

My business took a serious hit in the next couple of years.