|
Forums >
Off-Topic Discussion >
September 11, 2001 - UdoR's Story & Photos
 Sep 11 07 10:18 am Link Just to remind folks, as horrible as what happened in NYC was there were a lot of people who lost folks elsewhere too. My uncle Chris is a former fighter pilot & now naval intelligence officer & he works at the Pentagon. He was out of his office when the plane struck there, which was lucky as his office was right where the plane hit killing his attache & secretary. It was several hours before we could find out whether he was dead or alive. (BTW for all you conspiracy types, he was there AND he saw the wreckage and he's a pilot so he knows what plane parts look like...stick it up your ass if you want to start talking "missile"). For the military & civilian workers at the Pentagon & their families it's been just as much of a wrenching event, not to mention for the Flight 93 families. This isn't to minimize the impact on NYC (and in fact I knew some of the folks from Windows On the World who died) but just to remind folks others were affected too  Sep 11 07 11:00 am Link great work udor..... I lost many friends that day .... i got goose bumps just looking at those images Sep 11 07 11:06 am Link udor wrote: do you feel the event traumatized you Udor? living so close and having even documented the disaster gives a certain perspectave Sep 11 07 11:12 am Link I cried To think I had almost forgotten the feelings from just a few years ago...Sep 11 07 11:13 am Link jonathan ledeux wrote: Yes... it numbed me... I felt violated. For the years to come, whenever I saw images... or when I had to talk about that day or when I remembered scenes like that woman in the car next to me, who was wheeping... well, my eyes filled up with tears (as it's doing right now). Sep 11 07 11:23 am Link I remember everything about that day. It seems like just yesterday. Thanks for posting this. Sep 11 07 11:29 am Link Great Contribution . Sep 11 07 11:30 am Link I'm absolutely speechless. Thank you for sharing these Udor. Sep 11 07 11:30 am Link Thank you for taking the time to share this with us. Sep 11 07 11:37 am Link udor wrote: And I think that means and says so much about you BOTH that you can have opposing views and be such good friends! We need more of this, people having opinions and still being respectful. You can be passionate, intelligent, opinionated AND respectful. Most people forget that. Sep 11 07 11:51 am Link udor wrote: *Selective quotes from Udor's post above................. Sep 11 07 11:51 am Link Thanks for sharing your memories of the day and for your efforst to help in the aftermath Sep 11 07 12:06 pm Link Daniela V wrote: x Sep 11 07 02:58 pm Link 6th grade, it was my friend's birthday... I was all the way up on the 5th floor, and could see the Manhattan skyline very clearly from Brooklyn where I went to school. Last few words of happy birthday, and then you hear the crash...afterwards, the teacher try to calm us down...but even herself couldn't believe what was happening. Next thing you know..we saw it go down...all the way down. I was in pain, I was terrified, worried all mixed up together...I cried so hard, I wanted my mom, and the person I was most worried about was my brother. He worked exactly right across the street from WTC, I didn't know if he was okay, I didn't know anything. Of course parents came, picked us all up. The day was bright and certainly sunny, but the atmosphere seemed so gloomy and cloudy, just like today. Thank god, my brother was lucky, he had to take a citizenship test that day, and took a day off from work. I sat there, flipping through channels and channels, watching the towers fall down, over and over and over again. Now it's 6 years, Senior in High School, even now, looking outside you can see the skyline, but it's still something I can't get used to...not having something that was obviously there. Sep 11 07 06:58 pm Link thanks Sep 11 07 07:21 pm Link I lost a good friend not on that day, but several months later through depression. He was also a first responder, an HVAC contractor by trade working on a job a block away when the planes hit. He stayed to help out on the site however he could but would tell often afterwards how certain sights stayed with him and couldn't get rid of (like a body part landing a few feet away). I think of him often. Sep 11 07 07:38 pm Link bump Sep 11 08 05:54 pm Link Chill Factor wrote: I tried to find this earlier but the Plastic Puppet wasnt helping me. Sep 11 08 05:55 pm Link It still as painful. Sep 11 08 06:02 pm Link I worked at 5 World trade center in 1989, i wonder how many of the people that i worked with died that day. I felt bad when learning that someone that i had a fight with in H.S.(over some stupid girl) had died. He was one of the Heroes of FDNY that gave their lives trying to save others......RIP Sergio Villanueva Sep 11 08 06:03 pm Link Caspers Creations wrote: Some old threads need bumped. Sep 11 08 06:07 pm Link Looking at all the dust in the OP pics . . . I remember talking to one of my models and her mother about 9/11 and they were planning to visit there a few weeks after it happened . . . I advised them to wait a few months, because there was sure to be asbestos and other dangerous pollutants in that dust . . . it turns out I was right and there was a serious spike in the incidence of respiratory ailments in New York as well as mesothelioma (lung cancer caused by asbestos). Sep 11 08 06:07 pm Link Never forgotten. Sep 11 08 06:24 pm Link I remember exactly where I was. I was also in 6th grade is Mr. Rose's math class. We were all just goofing off and excited because it was one of our classmates birthdays when i heard commotion in the hallways and someone came in and told our teacher some and he had a student turn on the tv. I couldn't believe what I saw. I've seen all the movies that have a came out and it just tears me up inside everytime i do but i cant get away from them. I have no one in my family that lives in NY (i live in WA state) but I had friends who had family there and I just cant imagine the pain people went through, and are still going through. The only thing that really upsets me is that it usually takes a tragedy to get people to come together as one. Maybe its just me, being young still and only in 6th grade then, did i never notice so much patriotizm until September 11th? Thank you so much for posting this Udor. It means a great deal to all. Sep 11 08 06:49 pm Link I have some photos of the WTC under construction that I should scan. I was on the observation deck of one of the towers in the late 80s. I shot a photo of the base of the antenna on the other tower at that time. In May of 2002 I visited the site. Sep 12 08 12:55 pm Link This is one of the best descriptions of NYC I've ever read. It is so absolutely true the events of 9/11 have never changed it. Craig Tiffen wrote: Sep 12 08 01:42 pm Link This post brought back all those emotions from that day. From not knowing what was really going on while in 10th grade classes, hearing people get called over the loud speaker to get picked up from school, to going home and watching everything on tv and crying hysterically while watching footage of people jumping out of their office building windows plummeting to their deaths. Sep 12 08 03:21 pm Link I still think of the friends I lost that day (I used to work at American Express) and those subsequently lost to suicide (two of them - rescue workers) who were never able to recover from the trauma of the event itself or the ensuing weeks. I was across the river from NYC at the time, listening to WCBS radio as they reported the second plane hitting and then saw a second plume of smoke emerge from the tower -- it is a combined sensory/visual image that will remain indelibly with me in a way I could never document or describe adequately. I miss my friends. Nov 27 08 02:51 am Link Those are beautiful and heart breaking. I want to cry. Good thing both you and your wife were ok. I thankfully didn't lose anyone (of course a part of the city I worked in and love was lost which was/is horrible but I'm very thankful everyone I knew personally was ok) but I had a lot of friends at the time who did, it was really horrible. Nov 27 08 12:03 pm Link why ? is there some reason Thanksgiving spurred you to seek an old thread about 9-11 Nov 27 08 12:09 pm Link Still so powerful! Thanks for sharing Nov 27 08 12:13 pm Link Daniela V is Retiring wrote: yeah............. Nov 27 08 04:07 pm Link In memory...yes its an old thread but a powerful one. Sep 11 10 06:32 am Link Thank you so very much for sharing. Sep 11 10 08:49 am Link wow, great stuff man. gives me the chills. i was actually goin to school uptown it all that happened. still remember everything to this day. now i actually work down at the financial building and have to walk by that every day. Sep 11 10 08:52 am Link so mad how it really feels like yesterday. every time i see the haunting video footage of the planes / fire / collapsing building i'm left speechless everytime. Sep 11 10 09:18 am Link Its interesting to read this, so many years after the event. Its like a multi-person diary of feelings and observations. I even read a couple of my own comments, written under an old profile name of mine. For me, there is the added element of being both a former New Yorker, who looked at the WTC almost every day for close to 15 years and a now nearly 20 year resident of New Orleans. I lived across the Hudson River, in Cliffside Park, NJ. That location is across the river from about 130th Street, in Manhattan. Because of the close proximity to the WTC, it was something that was present in my life everyday, sometimes on a nearly unconcious level and sometimes very much within my frame of mind. I knew people who worked in the complex and had business dealings there, from time to time. On 9/11, I was in a business meeting in New Orleans. A friend, who knew that I was a former New Yorker, kept trying to get me on my Nextel Direct Connect. After ignoring the beep for awhile, I shut my phone off. When I left the meeting and turned my phone back on, I answered the calls and that is when I found out what had happened. What I remember the most, is what my friend said - "the World Trade Center buildings are down." That description was one that was totally incomprehensible to me, I just couldn't mentally process what he meant. It wasn't until I got to a television set and saw the horror of it, that the enormity of the event sunk in. A little less than four years later, I witnessed the near death of my new home. Once again, the enormity of the event was something that couldn't really be comprehended, until seen. One of my most poignant mental images of Katrina, was driving at night, from we call the West Bank (across the Mississippi River from downtown), into the city at night, about a month after the storm. This was the first time since Katrina that I had done this. The CBD and French Quarter had electricity and lights, but the areas outside of them didn't. As I rounded the Superdome onto Interstate 10, the complete blackness where there always been the lights of a normal city, was devastating. The woman that I was with cried and I couldn't speak for a few minutes. I have always said that the blackness was like a physical metaphor for death. In both incidents, I was lucky. I had been gone from NY for years and all of the people that I knew there, survived. I did have a few friends who lost people who were important to them, but I didn't have to deal with the emotions of a direct loss. In Katrina, I had a similar situation - I lived in an area that did not flood and aside from having the front porch ripped off of my house and needing a new roof, my home survived. I did loose my job and had to commute to northwestern Louisiana until June of 06 to work at a new job, but I was able to survive pretty well. In terms of losing people, the situation was the same - I didn't lose any direct loved ones, but have have friends who did. I also have many friends and acquaintences who lost everything they owned. For people here in New Orleans who experienced Katrina, it can be easy to say that our situation was worse, because it wiped out nearly the entire city and much of the surrounding region. My own view of this, is that they are about the same in impact. One was more widespread, but the other killed more people and the circumstances of it are much, much harder on an emotional level. Suffering from the results of a hurricane is something that you can out in its proper perspective, much more easily than being violently attacked. I like the fact that this thread is being bumped once a year. There is wisdom in understanding the need to move on in many ways, but this is not something that should be forgotten alltogether. Sep 11 10 10:02 am Link Wow...someone dug deep into the archives here to remind us of this terrible tragedy. And yeah, September 11th was a pretty sad event too. Sep 11 10 12:18 pm Link Ed Burns Photography wrote: Udor's story is something I think everyone should read. I've shared it with my children. They understand, and we remember. It has touched my heart. Sep 11 10 12:57 pm Link |
