Where were you.........................

[Brat]

JFK: Working in the NY metro area, went out to get lunch to go when reports of shots fired were announced.  Returned to my office where my boss and I watched the day unfold on TV.

Challanger: waiting for a flight out of PDX where they were broadcasting the lift-off live.

9/11: Retired, still in bed with DH listening to NPR.  Woke DH when I turned the TV to watch the rest unfold.  Once it played out my husband said, "This is too painfull for me to watch again, you watch the news conferences and brief me."  He went out to the yard and pulled weeds to vent.

 

[unclemick]

JFK - University of Washinton - Cultural Anthro elective - prof finished her 20 minutes of class. Went and caught the rest on tv.

Challenger - watched it unfold live on Nasa tv at the New Orleans facility.

9/11 - in ER caught it on tv - the women(da SO and Mom were 24/7 tv types).

 

[LRS]

God. Even the recollections of those of you who witnessed it are harrowing. I was late for work, listening to NPR at just after 6 am. pst when the announcer broke into a story to say an aircraft had hit the tower. By 10 am, I was in the director's office with my coworkers watching on TV. We were all floored. America under attack; it was unbelievable. Later I heard of a friend of a friend who worked for the port authority of NY. She survived the WTC bombing in the '90s, and she had managed to survive the plane attack, too, by walking down stairs from an upper floor. I wonder that kind of stress does to your health?

Challenger: Same workplace. My coworker nabbed me and dragged me down to the break room, where everyone was watching. It was a sad moment, but not like 9/11. I was distressed to hear that many children watched it live in their classrooms.

JFK: I was 5. My brother was sent home from school at lunchtime. He knew my mom wouldn't believe him if he said the president died, so he said he had to go to the bathroom and the one at school was out of order. While my mom was yelling at him, a neighbor ran in saying turn on the TV! This was back when our town received only 2 channels, so no one bothered much with TV, especially during the day. As a child, I remember that it was scary to watch the grownups' reactions. I did not understand why this event, which took place far away to someone I didn't know, would make grownups upset. I luckily missed Oswald getting it in the gut. I remember watching the funeral (no cartoons on Saturday morning, dammit) and my mom showed me the caissons going by. Aha! The caissons go rolling along ... and other stuff that didn't make sense, like the horse with no rider, but boots facing backwards in the stirrups. And little John-John saluting. It kind of tied kids in with the whole deal and made it seem a little more personal to me.

Modified to say Oswald getting it, not Ruby. I knew that. Really.

 

[Eagle43]

For 911 and Challenger, I was at Mega-Corp. 

Dont't remember much about Challenger except I came back from lunch and was told about it.  During 911, someone put a tv in Mega's lobby and we watched as the towers came down.  I remember a good friend just started praying.  Know what I did?  I went home and called the kids to ensure all was well with them.  Nobody knew or cared. So I watched tv all day. 

For JFK, I was in Germany at a basketball game.  They announced it over loudspeaker, said we'd have a moment's silence and resume the game.  Well, everybody just walked out.  I was scheduled to work that nite and listened on radio to all the activities. Somewhere in my house I've still got a copy of the Stars and Stripes issue telling us about it. BTW:  When JFK made his famous "Ich bin ein berliner" in Berlin, I was in Ramstein.  And he got it wrong.  It should be "Ich bin Berliner."  Danke.

 

[astromeria]

I didn't mention this in my earlier post, but on 9/11, I felt like I'd had my guts ripped out. I was a native New Yorker, still had relatives in the area, and had spent 40 years listening to the rest of the country deriding my home town and the character of the people who were born & raised there or just went to work there--you know, Wall Street, the NY Times, secular America, Madision Avenue, Hymietown, Hell's Kitchen. I think America suddenly remembered that NY City was also ordinary blue collar workers, office workers, housewives doing errands, firefighters...regular folks. That Caontor Fitzgerald bond traders were rergular folks, too. I wasn't sure the rest of the country would care that much that a few thousand NYers died horribly--I thought the attack on the Pentagon would be more upsetting to the nation. It still surprises me how little emphasis is put on the fact that the Pentagon--the "brains" of our country's defense--was successfully attacked. But I was relieved to know that we NYers were regarded as Fellow Americans after all.

 

[bpp]

Watched some of the CNN Pipeline replay of the original 9/11 broadcast, for a real-time sense of how people gradually figured out what was happening. Even though I knew what would come later, it was hard to believe in the early stages of watching the footage that the fire wouldn't go out and the buildings would collapse.

One hour in, the president declared it to be terrorism, and Bin Laden's name first came up about 30 minutes after that.

"Make no mistake, The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts."
--Five years later, and it still has not done this.

 

[Nords]

It still surprises me how little emphasis is put on the fact that the Pentagon--the "brains" of our country's defense--was successfully attacked.

Considering what comes out of that place, I'm still surprise that the attack came from terrorists instead of the U.S. military...

 

[riskadverse]

I was on vacation in Alabama, watching CNBC and closing out a pretty big daytrade pre-market. I was lucky to be out before the start of it all. I spent the next few hours watching what a market does in crisis.

 

[Meadbh]

9/11: I was driving to work (in Canada) when I heard on the car radio that a plane had crashed into one of the WTC towers. At first I assumed this was an accident. As I arrived at the office, my secretary announced that there had been a second impact. We stared at each other and realized this was no accident. We work in a hospital, and the nearest TV we could think of was at the clinic waiting room. We ran over there and turned it on.  Everyone was immediately glued to the TV and some people wouldn't go in to see the doctor when called.

I then went to attend academic rounds at the clinical unit where I work. Everyone who could leave a patient was in the staff lounge watching TV, very quietly. As the first tower fell one of my colleagues said "there will be a war". We had to do our work; patients needed looking after.

Shortly afterwards there was a loudspeaker announcement that the big auditorium would begin broadcasting CNN live, starting immediately. The place filled within minutes. At noon, the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and some other bigshots led a solemn moment of silence and a prayer. We have a very diverse group of students and trainees, including many people from the middle east, and the Dean emphasized the need to support them too.

Although we are a long way from NYC, our health authority's disaster plan went into effect immediately and senior managers were all called to the "war room", just in case we would need to manage casualties referred to us, or manage without supplies for a long period.

Challenger: don't remember where I was.

Princess Diana's death: It was a summer Saturday and I was driving between errands. Once again, I heard about the accident on the car radio. Knowing this would be a developing news story, I immediately sped home to watch TV. As I channel hopped, suddenly the CBC news anchor stopped abruptly and announced that she had died. I got nothing else done that weekend....

JFK: I was a preschooler in Ireland. My mother was washing dishes with the radio on. When my dad arrived home with the late edition newspaper, they both shed a few tears. Even as a toddler I knew this was a history changing moment.

I guess I'd better keep listening to the radio......

Meadbh

 

[astromeria]

Lady Di's death--I have no memory of hearing about it, it didn't affect me emotionally...mroe like: gee, that's a shame--I hope they didn't suffer--and her boys, how sad--but what an idiot not to wear her seatbelt! (I probably didn;t know that last bit till later.)

But I remember quite clearly watching her funeral coverage all day. It introduced me to a favorite contemporary classical composer, John Tavener. Her casket was carried out of the cathedral to his choral music "Song for Athene," composed upon the death of the daughter of friends. Diana had heard it at a funeral and told her brother or Fergie or someone that she wanted it performed at her own funeral. I get goosebumps listening to it.

 

[Meadbh]

what an idiot not to wear her seatbelt!

And equally stupid to get in a car with a drunk driver!

 

[Brat]

And equally stupid to get in a car with a drunk driver!

She may not have known he was intoxicated. As a royal her drivers would have been well vetted - never driving after anything more than a single cocktail, and she was focused on escaping the photographers. I think she may have jumped in the car and the driver took off before she could buckle-up. It is very difficult to attach a seatbelt when being thrown around in a speeding car.

 

[Nords]

She may not have known he was intoxicated.  As a royal her drivers would have been well vetted - never driving after anything more than a single cocktail, and she was focused on escaping the photographers.

The head ranger of the Arizona Memorial is a historian named Daniel Martinez, who also hosts the old Discovery Channel show "Undiscovered History".

One of the ways they "studied" this vehicle crash was to have Dan raise his BAC (to the level found in the chauffeur) and then "drive" a vehicle simulator down the same road at the same speeds.  He looks fine as far as the camera can tell but Dan crashed just about every time.

When he presented the episode at a local history club meeting, it had additional "director's cut" footage of him throwing up in several of the nearest trash receptacles.  He apparently doesn't drink very much, and the crew refers to that episode as the one where Dan "took one for the team".

 

[cube_rat]

I live in California and I was watching CNN as I getting ready for work. I just thought that a small plane hit the first tower....until the second plane plowed into the second 10 minutes later. I remember thinking: WTF

The company I work for lost two employees, one in each airplane that hit the world trade center. One was a 20 year old college student from San Jose working her way through college. The other employee was with his partner and their 4 year old adopted son.

 

[Gumby]

9/11 - I was in my office in midtown Manhattan. I was trying to figure out how what I asssumed must have been a small plane could make such a big hole in the north tower when I saw the fireball from the plane hitting the south tower. I stood at the window with everyone else (most in tears) watching until both towers fell. I wondered how such evil could occur on such a beautiful day.

 

[Dreamer]

9/11-I was working and our district manager came to the cubicle next to mine and had a small radio and we started listening to it. The security guard had the radio and took it to our manager. I felt really bad about the first plane hitting and then when I heard the second plane hit, I grew very frightened since our country was being attacked and that somebody had declared war on us. As events unfolded, a few of us went to a store in the mall where we worked that sold tvs and watched for a few minutes. I knew I had to get back to work though, since I worked for the gov and our agency served the public, so phones were still ringing and people were in the office wanting service.

Challenger-I was home sick that day. I was asleep on the couch with the tv on and woke up to see it on tv. I did not like being alone when such an awful thing happened.

JFK-I do not remember it at all. I was 10 years old at the time and always wondered why I could not remember it. I always figured it was due to too much partying in the 70s. I just got to thinking this summer, that was about the time when I was in an orphanage and we probably were not told. It made me feel better that it was not my mind!

Princess Di-I was at home and my son called and told me. I felt so sorry for her and her boys.

Elvis-I was on annual leave to accompany my husband to an AFB in IL. He was taking a fire course. I was down at the hotel bar getting a pepsi and saw it on a tv. I kept getting sick and vomiting even though I quit eating. I did not know it at the time, but I was pregnant with our first child.