I doubt anyone will ever forget the events of the September 11 attacks, where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news:
• At 8:46 a.m., AA 11 slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
• At 9:03 a.m., UA175 slammed into the South Tower.
• At 9:37 a.m., AA77 crashed into the Pentagon’s west side.
• At 9:59 a.m., the South Tower imploded and fell, raining debris and ash on the city.
• At 10:03 a.m., UA93 crashed into a field in the Pennsylvania countryside.
• And at 10:29 a.m., the North Tower collapsed from the top down. A
cloud of ash turned day to night in the narrow streets of lower
Manhattan.
In those terrible moments between 8:46 a.m. and 10:29 a.m., nearly
3,000 men, women and children lost their lives. The youngest was two. The oldest was 85.
Where
I live in Australia, the clock is 14 hours ahead of New York. So at
the time of the first attack, it was 10:46pm my time. I was already
asleep. Like much of the rest of Australia, I woke up to the news of
the attacks.
My family heard the
news on the radio at 7:00am - there had been a terrorist attack in the
US and the World Trade Centre in New York had been hit by a hijacked
plane. We rushed to turn on our TV. As the picture came on, the first
thing we saw was a replay of the second plane hitting the south tower.
For several minutes we weren't sure if this was live, or had happened
several hours ago.
I was late for work that day.
In the
library where I work, we dug out an old TV from our storeroom and set it
up out in the public area of the building, keeping the news on all
day. People spoke in more hushed voices than usual. Everyone was
shocked.
While cleaning out the family home after my parents
passed away, I found an thick notepad filled with writing. It belonged
to my mother, and in it she had recorded the entire first Gulf War,
starting with the September 11 attacks. It is her record of those
events and another important document in my family history.
It
reminds me that we are all living through history, and how important it
is to record the major events we have lived through, and pass our
memories on to those who come after. Because some events should always
be remembered.
