I was at my parents home on leave in Michigan when my sister called and told me to turn on the news. It was the moment the second plane hit WTC when I turned on the TV. I thought it was a movie and it didn't dawn on me until I got a phone call from the Navy saying that I might have to cut short my leave and report to the ship right away.

This event has single-handedly changed a lot of things especially in the military.

I was in 2nd grade walking down the hall in a single file line led by the teacher. The line was headed to music class or something.. We got stopped in the middle of the hallway and someone explained to us the world trade centers were attacked. We went back to the classroom and watched the news..

All I remember is not being able to believe what I was seeing. I watching a movie on TV when they cut to the special news broadcast with the first tower on fire. I was not really shocked because it just didn't feel real. I was just numb. Then I got to see the second tower get hit live and that was the point where it became real to me. I still wasn't sure what was going on but I remember thinking "God I hope those planes were not passenger planes". As the rest of the day unfolded it just got to the point where I thought that it wasn't going to stop. I didn't even end up going to work that day. I was glued to the TV. Couldn't believe how easy was for a few terrorists to take so many lives.

I was at work in a factory building DC electric motors. One of the engineers came out and started telling a few people and soon enough everyone knew. At 9:30 break everyone was at their car listening to the radio, some people l;eft to get their kids from school and most of us stayed at work as there really wasn't much we could do from where we are, 4 hours away from NYC. I had brought money with me that day to work planning on stopping at the store on the way home to buy my first rifle, when I got there they where not making any gun sales for the day because of the events. I was able to purchase the gun the next day. I wound up just going home and watching tv all night. The following weekend a few friends and I got together and came up with a plan. I layed out an American flag in scale from white line to white line across the road in front of my friends house, we stayed up all night spray painting the road between cars. We kept the flag up for a few years, until his father wanted to try selling the house. When the state DOT came through repainting the lines on the road they skipped over the flag until we stopped keeping it up. Everyone knew about the flag and we where all proud to have taken part, the cops even came by once when we where doing it because someone complained about us painting the road, he just told us to stop and do it later at night. I'm very proud to be an American and I will never forget 9/11/01

I was living N of NYC at the time. Actually just moved there from CO w/ my (future) wife. I just graduated college and was job hunting. My wife (GF ATT) was gone to work in Rockland county, and I was home. (living w/ her parents then.)

I was just in my room just waking up/reading when my Dad called and asked if I saw what was going on. I asked what he was talking about, he said the WTC (1st tower) collapsed. I flipped on the TV and just saw the clouds of dust. I asked WTH he meant it "collapsed." The other building was there on fire, and the rest was a dust cloud. I thought maybe he meant part of it or something else, and the other building was just hidden by the dust. Not the entire building was gone. Soon the other tower collapsed and I was like "holy sh!t!."

My wife, mum and dad (in law) and a co worker came home later. The coworker was from Brooklyn, and couldn't get back due to the bridges being closed and the choas. We ate dinner later and watched the smoke clouds from the WTC rise in the sky over the sunset. Pretty surreal.

Where we were was a big bedroom community for commuters to the city. Lots of NYC firefighters lived there, as well as the other local companies who responded. They had memorials outside a lot of stations for quite a while for all the guys who fell. Lots of local guys were lost, and it wasn't hard to find someone who lost a relative or a friend there, or one who was caught up in it.