Thanks for this Billy, and for reminding us of our personal stories. I was at a meeting in Rosslyn, VA when someone said a plane had hit one of the towers. We went on meeting. Then a secretary came into the conference room and said there was another hit and it looked like an attack. We went to the Communication Director's office to watch his TV.

Someone in the meeting was a White House staffer. She was paged and came back saying that they were evacuating the Old Executive Office Building, that there was concern about a plane headed to the White House. I decided it was time to head home to Maryland.

Then the plane hit the Pentagon and nothing would ever be the same. I drove down the GW Parkway listening to the chaos on the radio and seeing a black plume of smoke to my right. The roads past the Pentagon were immediately closed off and I was trapped. I couldn't get across the Potomac River and I started panicking. My kids were in school 40 minutes away and already they were starting to send Northern Virginia and DC school children home. My 40-minute drive turned into a 4-hour drive. Cell lines were jammed and I couldn't get through to the school. When I finally got there it was nearly empty. A few children, including my own, were in the gym playing games and looking terrified. My oldest ran to me but my youngest stood quietly in the corner. He looked at me and said, "we didn't know where you were today. We didn't know if you would come back."

When we got home I stayed outside with them waiting for my husband to come home, playing with the dogs, keeping them from the TV. My oldest son noticed that there were no airplanes in the sky. It was a gorgeous day, not a cloud in sight and no contrails.

I found out the next day that I lost a friend in NY and a colleague in DC. And, like Billy, we feared our mail after the anthrax attacks. I wouldn't let my boys bring the mail in anymore when they got off the bus.

Sometimes we forget how raw and terrifying those times were. We shouldn't forget. Ever.

I often wonder what it is about these kind of days, these horrific days of infamy, that years later, leave us only able to talk about where we were. As if the whole of it, and all the pain and empathy is too much, and we have to remember it as it happened in our world. This is always the first thing people talk about when 9/11 is remembered, it seems. Where were you that morning?

I was in college. As was the norm, I had stayed up till about 4 am the night before. I was tired. The phone rang in the distance. Pounding on the door. It was my sort-of ex-boyfriend. I remember opening the door pissed off. "Turn on the TV." It was after the planes had already crashed. I don't remember if it was before or after the towers fell. But it was all on instant replay, an endless loop throughout the day. The morning at least. I think I grabbed my cell phone and tried to call someone. "All Circuit are Busy." My mom had long instilled in me a distrust of cellular technology. I picked up the land line and called my Dad. He flew into NYC all the time. No one on the news knew where the planes had come from. He was fine, thank God. Called my Mom in Ct. She was freaking out. The plane had crashed somewhere in Western Pennsylvania. My grandparents lived in Davidsville. It's about 20 miles or so from Shankesville. I finally got through to them later that afternoon. I remember going to my friends' apartment down the street - I couldn't get in touch with them because no cells were working.

The sky was the clearest blue I think I've ever seen. I remember looking up and thinking of the smoke.

The rest of the day is really a blur. TV. Noise. Hugging. Crying. Walking back and forth to use my land line to check on other loved ones.

I didn't go to class that day.

I remember walking down Beaver Ave later that week. It's a street lined with apartment buildings, and balconies. It was unusually warm. Flags were draped everywhere. Someone was blasting Born in the U.S.A. I remember wondering if the person blasting it really understood it.

Not long after that, one of the balconies was blasting "Bombs Over Baghdad."

I was working as a temp for Seagrams just as it was being bought up. I had left my 10-year job with a major Japanese electronics firm.

I showed up that Tuesday morning at my temp job, just as usual, only to find everyone left in the office was sitting in the conference room, glued to the television.

The receptionist tells me, "A plane just hit one of the Towers". So I expected to see a small biplane stuck in some glass.

When I saw the television, I knew things were much worse. And then, within the hour, the screen goes static for a moment, and then we see another plane has hit the other tower. And I said aloud to everyone in the room, "Something is wrong. This isn't normal". And everyone looked at me, but said nothing.

Within moments, all the Seagrams people were trying to contact their family members, and within an hour, we were all told to go home and stay safe.

I drove home alone in my old broken-down Chrysler New Yorker, with no radio in it, and just as I got near my apartment, I heard jets overhead.

Needless to say that after reaching my other sister in NY, and hearing that she was safe, I did what any other sane alcoholic in NY would do. I hit the bar, and stayed there, glued to the television, with a bunch of strong guys around me.

And cried.

Sorry, Billy. Didn't mean to step on your post. You did a better job with it than I did -- just didn't see it on the list when I wrote

I would highly recommend reading 102 MINUTES

http://www.amazon.com/102-Minutes-Untold-Survive-Inside/dp/0805076824

which gives a minute-by-minute account from the time when the first plane hit to when the 2nd tower went down.

I would enjoy sharing my memories of the day -- but for a variety of reasons, can't.

But I can say this: 9/11 did much to change my career. In a real sense, I live with the memory every day -- and it gave me a serious sense of urgency that I didn't have before: about our time on this planet and how fragile all we know really is.

I was deep in a canyon in Utah, about as isolated from civilization as one can be in America. I woke up a little before 6:00 AM, MDT. As I lay in my sleeping bag, gazing through the screen of our tent at the perfect morning sky, I remember thinking that I could happily spend the rest of my life living in that desert canyon, far, far away from everything. After a few minutes, I crawled out of the tent and stood outside, stretching in the morning chill. I fired up the stove and started brewing some coffee as I waited for my wife to wake up. (7:59 AM, EDT - American Airlines Flight 11 departs Boston's Logan International Airport bound for Los Angeles International Airport with 92 people on board.)

After a short morning hike along the stream that ran next to our campsite, we decided to make the drive into Moab to pick up some supplies and enjoy the supreme indulgence of a breakfast cooked by someone else and served up on a plate instead of in a steel cup. (8:14 AM, EDT - United Airlines Flight 175, carrying 56 passengers and nine crew members, departs from Boston Logan airport.)

As we drove into Moab, we talked about life and where we wanted ours to go, and we marveled at the beauty of the towering red rocks and the river and the brilliant, endless blue sky. The sun had risen over the edge of the canyon wall and the day was already getting warm. All the the windows of our car were rolled down and I was looking forward to another day of soaking up the dry desert heat. (8:24 EDT - Flight 11 makes a 100-degree turn to the south heading toward New York City. A radio transmission comes from Flight 11: "We have some planes. Just stay quiet, and you'll be okay. We are returning to the airport.")

By the time we reached Moab, both towers were gone.

---

The restaurant was eerily quiet as we entered. No morning coffee talk. No happy greeting. Just an overpowering silence. My wife and I sat in our booth, quietly wondering if we had accidentally wandered into someone's post-funeral breakfast gathering. When our waitress came to the table, I asked her if something was going on in town. She said, "Hon, haven't you heard? The United States has been attacked. The World Trade Center is gone." It was as if someone had flushed the contents of my mind down the drain.

Hours later, on our way home to Boulder, I stood in the Loco gas station in Grand Junction, Colorado, sobbing uncontrollably as I finally watched what had happened on the black and white television set at the counter. Over and over, I stood there. Over and over, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Over and over and over...

That night in Boulder, I had a dream. Across an endless plain, for as far as my eyes could see and stationed every few feet, mammoth, 20-foot-tall beings, standing silent and severe, all the way to the horizon. Grey and still and frightening. They looked like statues, but I knew they were alive. They weren't there to judge. They were simply there to stand guard. Prevent. I remember they had swords in their hands and wings on their backs. The next morning I got out of bed and did some Googling to see if I could understand what I had seen. From what I can tell (and I know little about this sort of thing) they were what is commonly known as Archangels. They seemed to be there to prevent what had happened from happening again. They were fierce and angry without being hateful. Guardians.

I remember that morning and how amazing it was to see a perfectly empty sky. No airplanes. No signs of man. Only clouds and birds. I hadn't seen that since I was a kid.

I haven't been back to New York City since the attacks. When we lived in lower Manhattan, on the Lower East Side, my wife and I used to wander down to the Battery on hot summer evenings to ride the Staten Island Ferry. We often paused at Trinity Church to look at the headstones in the cemetery, and we always, always stopped at the bottom of the World Trade Center to stand between the Towers and look up. It was the most amazing feeling. Like you could feel the earth spinning beneath your feet.

http://digitalextraordinaire.com/images/canynld6mix.jpg

http://digitalextraordinaire.com/images/panoramaBlueCanyon2.jpg

I was in St. Martin packing for my flight back home to NYC, when my grandmother's neighbor yelled over for us to turn on the news - something was happening in New York. As we got to the TV, we saw the impact of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center. And even in the horror of watching what was unfolding on TV, we were trying to call home to touch base with friends and family, make sure people were okay. There are those who tell me I was lucky to not be in the city that day, but at the moment there was nowhere I wanted to be more than home.

My godmother worked in the World Trade Center. As the Towers fell, I thought of her children who went to grammar school in Staten Island. I always wondered how they paid attention in class because outside of the windows was the most beautiful view of New York city skyline. I prayed that the teachers had closed the blinds.

My godmother took the late boat into the city that morning. Her train had been stopped at the station when the first tower was struck and when she got out she could see the towers on fire. I remember being grateful that the attack had not happened later when the towers were filled with even more people. It was hours before our family knew that she was okay. Eventually we were able to contact her and I can't imagine the pain of the families that went days, weeks not knowing.

The first flight back into the country was on Friday into Miami. We had no idea how we were going to be able to get home then. Having an Arabic name, I was selected for special screening at the airport ticket counter. Questions of how long my father had lived in the country, had I ever been to my father's homeland, etc. And I understood without a bit of anger.

My first day back to work I took the ferry into the City and you could see the hole in the skyline, smoke still smoldering. Getting off the ferry there were Armed National Guard with assault weapons at the ready. The trains to South Ferry weren't running so we walked to the nearest train station. We'd come home on the boat with relief workers, fire fighters, construction workers from Ground Zero that just seemed dazed.

Everything had changed. You could see that people were barely keeping it together, but somehow we did. More than anything else, being a New Yorker defines me. And I've never been prouder of my city than in the days after 9/11 when we all came together in grief, sorrow, determination and community.

The south tower fell at 9:59 a.m. on September 11. The north tower collapsed at 10:28 a.m.

Billy, you say that you were in the Eastern time zone on that day. So I wonder how you can say, "By that evening" [emphasis added] "the full extent of the tragedy was beginning to be apparent."