I didn't see the people jumping, but watched an interview that was going on when the building was burning. In the background you could hear thumping. At the end of the interview, the Fire Chief told the reporter that sound was people hitting the ground. It got real then.
i mentioned this in another thread, but i find it interesting (in sort of that 'wow i'm starting to get old' sense) that for many college freshmen, 9/11 wasn't a significant event in their lives. It clearly changed their world, but they'd never know it because there were too young to remember things before or the moment those planes hit the towers.
That is one reason i liked this story so much, i think. It really shared the event a unique and powerful way.
This should be required reading in every U.S. High School History Class, at the very least. Things got real, and for a whole lot of people. I'll never forget where I was and what I was doing when it happened. When I saw plane #2 hit, I knew we had a real problem. Reading this makes me think how unimportant the day-to-day political trivia we talk about is just that; trivia.
Annual bump. If you haven't checked out the story in the first post, you should. An absolutely amazing, and simple, retelling of 9/11 from a wide variety of people involved on that day
I woke up this morning remembering the day. It’s still fresh in my mind; watching it unfold on TV.
Almost all of this can be traced to the events of 1979, and the Iranian Hostage Crisis. I was shortly after floating around on a ship in the Indian Ocean, just waiting for the order. It never came, and we missed an opportunity to nip the tide of Islamic Terrorism from the start. We sure had a plan, just not the political will and foresight to carry it out. An opportunity squandered is an opportunity never to be had again.