Remembering...

I can't help it. For some reason, this year it is hitting me like a ton of bricks. As far as I know, I didn't know anyone who was killed. And yet I have been the biggest baby this week.

And I've been a bit obsessed. Reading articles, watching videos, listening to 911 tapes, etc. It's awful and horrifying. But it's reminding me of the feelings I felt that day, and the weeks and months afterwards. And I am learning plenty from this obsessiveness that I didn't know before. And however dismal, I am sharing some interesting tidbits I have learned in all this focusing.

On Flight 11, the first to take off, get hijacked and to crash, the hijackers thought they had informed the passengers in the back that the plane had been hijacked and to not attack. The wrong button had been pushed however, and they were talking directly to Air Traffic Control. There is a good chance many of the passengers didn't know until they were flying over New York that there was something wrong. Apparently some thought a medical emergency had happened up wrong. The flight attendant in the back of the plane had been on the phone with American Airlines personal for quite a long time, knowing some of what was going on. At the end, she kept saying 'we are much too low'.

On all the planes, either a flight attendant or two or a passenger had been stabbed. It was really easy to enter the cockpit and to take it over.

The South Tower, the second hit and first to fall, was the only tower where first-responders made it to the damaged floors (as far as I could tell). The plane made a direct hit to the 78th floor, which was a lobby where many were standing, looking at the North Tower and being told to go back to their upper level offices. Few on that floor survived.

In the North Tower, as fire-fighters were rising up into the stairwells, they heard and felt a terrible noise...over their radios they heard 'tower down, tower down' and responded 'what tower?' although they knew...they just couldn't believe it. They thought it was their own tower. At that point, they realized the same fate would meet the North Tower. They sent out an all out evacuation order. They did a quick search of every floor. Some made it to the 7th floor when that same sound came again and the tower came down on them. A small pocket of them survived and walked out on their own feet.

Phones in some cases were still working above the crash sites along with electricity. Some people were on the phone with 911 dispatchers up to the point of the towers falling.

One reason why so many in the North Tower died while less died in the South Tower was because when the first plane hit all the stairwells above it became impassible. In fact, the fireball streamed down at least one of the stairwells and made it down to the bottom of the building, more than 80 floors below, and plumed out on certain other lower floors. In the South Tower, only a few of the stairwells were impassible. And by that time many had started exiting the building anyways.

The Air Force had scrambled a few fighter planes to escort and possibly take down the planes...the problem was that either their transponders had been turned off or they were flying so low they could not be seen on radar.

The passengers on Flight 93 are the most amazing heroes and Americans this country has seen in years! And I can't wait until I can go to the memorial in Pennsylvania to pay my respects.

The morning after, when some returned to Ground Zero, there were hundreds of tiny alarms going off. They were locators for firemen. Firemen who were under the rubble and by that time were all dead. What a terrible, awful sound it is to listen to.

When President Bush arrived in New York and visited Ground Zero, he did an impromptu speech. He started to speak when one in the back said 'We can't hear you'...which at that point President Bush said 'I can hear you!'. I never realized it was a response to one of the workers.

The New York Philharmonic was stuck in Germany. They were on one of the first flights back into the city once the air was reopened for travel in the US. They changed much of what was played that season. That first concert, they play Brahm's Requiem. Today, they are playing Mahler's Resurrection Symphony. Truly fitting.

I associate that baseball season with that terrible day. I didn't realize it until today when I watched some of the videos MLB has put out as a memorial to those attacks. Games were stopped until the 17th, partially due to the fact that the teams couldn't fly anywhere, like the rest of the world. Mike Piazza getting that first home run and the crowd at Shea Stadium going nuts. It wasn't even a Diamondbacks game.

President Bush throwing the first pitch at Game 3 of the World Series from the mound and NOT bouncing it. Couldn't BELIEVE he stayed for the entire game! The Yankees winning those 3 games. I was mad and so glad they did at the same time. Mad because our closer stunk it up in ALL THREE GAMES. Glad...because New York City needed that series to be partially in New York at least. Needed something good to rally around. And in the end, Arizona one in such an amazing bottom of the 9th inning...

We had an American astronaut at the International Space Center at that time. He called down later that morning to do a routine medical check-up. That was when he heard that we were not having a good day on Earth. In the next minutes they were over New England and were able to focus in on NYC and watched the North Tower collapse, although he couldn't really tell from where he was. He saw the Pentagon and it's awful scar.

There are some truly incredible, wonderful, amazing, brave heroes who died that day trying to save others and in a lot of cases being successful.