Where were you? My story always starts with – Kylie had pink eye…
Kylie had pink eye.
Where were you?
Andy and I had been married for one month, exactly, and we were living in Hewitt, Texas, right outside of Waco. We lived one block from my office at a small holiday decor company, and I was waiting on Andy to get back. He was already at work, and I called him to come home to stay with Kylie, because I’d just started my new job, and could not really take off.
In our bedroom, I turned on the little portable TV that we had on our nightstand. It was a TV that I somehow ended up with after my grandfather passed away, but it got the local channels. I was watching the Early Show when the first plane hit.
My sister got married on 9/8, and they flew to New York as a layover destination for their honeymoon in the Bahamas (for some reason, I was thinking it was Hawaii, but it wasn’t). I can’t remember all the details now, but from what I remember, they were some of the last people to tour the World Trade Center on the night of 9/10/01. The next morning, my brother-in-law went down to get breakfast, when the first plane hit. They felt the building shake and watched it all unfold.
Here is the rest of the story from last year’s post:
My parents were in Tennessee on a traveling vacation, and it took us several hours to get in touch with my sister.
From what we all understood was that they weren’t going to the Trade Center until the morning of 9/11 before their flight. We thought they were gone, or possibly some of the “jumpers” we’d been watching on TV.
I went in to work, and I spent the day looking at the horrific photos that were congesting the internet. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them, or the news. I was worried about my sister and her new husband. They were eventually able to call us, and we could not get in touch with them because (we never would have thought this) cell towers were jammed and over capacity.
My dad is a very determined man, and at this point, nothing was going to get in his way. He was ready to drive to NYC to find my sister and brother-in-law and bring them home. Except…. no one was being let in, or out, of NYC.
Kim and Sam ended up staying at a friend’s house for the duration of their honeymoon on Long Island, I do believe. There were no flights – especially not to
HawaiiBahamas, and let’s face it, flying wasn’t on the forefront of everyone’s mind at that time.
Do you have a September 11 story? Where were you?
Oh how scary that must have been for your family. I was home with Ethan and about 7 months pregnant with Rowan at the time. Ethan and I were watching Sesame Street together when I got a call from a friend saying I should turn on the Today show. I must have sat there for days watching the news and just bawling. I had friends and relatives that work in NYC, in fact my uncle used to be a volunteer fire fighter in Jersey. I was so afraid that he had been one of the firefighters that had perished that day. Thankfully he had stopped working at the fire station a few months prior, because his new wife didn’t think it was safe and they had 2 kiddos.