Significant dates in history: Where were you when? (1 Viewer)

[Cees Alons]

Not all dates are equally important to Europeans and Americans.
Let me try. But first: thanks Andrew, for restoring my faith in your fellow countrymen again. No, you won't be banned from this Forum for that opinion as long as I am a moderator here . I will not comment too much (not being British myself), but let me say that I was able to form a very clear opinion (I think for a good deal based on both my professional training as well as my experience from interviewing a zillion applicants) during the ample interview Princess Diana granted to the BBC, which was aired here too. Since then I always wondered if everybody was either blind or just mad.
December 7, 1941: not born yet.
November 22, 1963: as a three years medical student, coming from college, I turned on the radio - and stood still in our dining room for more than twenty minutes listening to the astonishing news. I didn't understand why personal guns were still allowed in the US. More than fifteen years later I would revive those feelings almost exactly while on a visit to a congress in Germany, we (a colleague of mine and myself) were invited by a fellow scientist to his house and just before dinner my colleague was having a short telephone conversation with his wife, who then told him that John Lennon had been shot in front of his apartment.
February 9, 1964: not that same day, but shortly before that The Beatles paid a visit to Amsterdam and one of the official trips they made was on a canal boat, which passed in front of my rented student room. I sat front row! Their music really grew on me later, after I returned from the army (we had a draft system then, and I served from 1965 - 1967, during which time, as I frequently and correctly told my children, no enemy dared to pass our borders).
July 20, 1969: glued in front of the television, just as Jack said. And on all those other occasions too! I was a SciFi addict long before that, and to me it seemed all my expectations were coming true.
There's a funny story attached to this in my country: a rather well-known brain-specialist was honoured by being a member of the Houston team and on every new mission, he shaked hands with his colleagues, kissed his wife and children, and left for a two week period to Houston Mission Control. He even appeared to be able to phone to the biggest studio (some twenty minutes or so after the ignition) to give some inside information on-air (heart beats of the astronauts going up, and so on). Only after two years or more it was revealed (one correspondent tried to get an interview with him in Houston) that in fact he never was invited on the team, but instead spend two weeks in a Utrecht hotel, every time, with his mistress (who also posed as the Houston telephone operator).
January 28, 1986: learned it from the news paper. I was shocked, and remember almost every detail, but too much was going on in my own life at the moment (just had had my second - a son) to remember it more than that: a very tragic accident.
September 11, 2002: at work, about 16:00 hour, when one of the guys of my department came running to the corridor "It seems that a plane hit one of the towers of the New York WTC". We couldn't believe how something that stupid could occur. While we were discussing the affair, the same guy returned from his room, all pale, and announced the second hit. The truth started to become clear, and I gave everyone permission to leave early for home. That whole night (our time) I sat in front of the television, CNN on most of the time (like we did during the Gulf episode), and switching to local comments only now and then. Having been in New York, I knew the skyline well. It was heartbreaking, and I'm not referring to just the loss of a familiar skyline.
Cees

 

[John_Bonner]

I'm not good at these "where were you when?" things but here are two I'll never forget:
December 9, 1980 - The day after John Lennon was shot. I remember riding the bus going to high school and a couple of other students were talking about it. I thought maybe it was a rumour or a mistake. My first class that day was Literature and our teacher was a huuuge Beatles/Lennon fan. He began the class unfazed talking about the day's reading assignment then after a few moments he stopped and began to cry. He spent the next 45 minutes talking about Lennon and how much his words and music meant.
September 11, 2001 - If I live to be 100 I'll never forget this day. I was at work and the word started going around. I tried to get on the web but no luck. I sat in my office glued to the radio. When I heard the newscaster describing the first tower falling I was in shock. "How many people were still in there?" I wondered. When I heard him describe the second tower coming down I almost cried. It wasn't until a few days later I found out my good friend from high school Pat Dickinson was killed in the attacks. (See my sig). Pat didn't even work at the Trade Center. He just happened to be at a breakfast meeting at Windows on the World restaurant. I attended his memorial service in October, also I day I'll never forget. His wife Linda (who was pregnant at the memorial service) gave birth to a son Patrick Dickinson Jr. on December 2nd, 2001 which was coincidentally my friend Pat's birthday.

 

[Mark Zimmer]

July 20, 1969
Sigh. I was eight, and really into the space program. So I was camped out in front of the television (with my Saturn V rocket model, mind you) when they landed. Waiting expectantly.
For hours.
And hours.
And hours.
And hours, with nothing much happening. Some crackly transmissions that kind of could be made out on the cheesy TV speaker, but not really.
Being eight, my attention span finally started to wander, especially since the carnival (the only local event of any moment whatsoever all year in my little burg of 1000 people) was in town. So my friend and I went off to ride on the Tilt a Whirl, since Walter Cronkite had assured us that they wouldn't be stepping onto the surface for a few hours yet.
Little did I know that Neil Armstrong was almost as impatient as me and he went ahead with the moon-stepping while I was off at the fair. I remember going up to the sno-cone stand and they had a little portable TV going and there they were, out walking around on the moon.
God damn it! I missed it! THE most momentous occasion in world history and I missed it riding on a goddamn carnival ride! Fucking Hell! Fuckfuckfuckityfuckfuckfuck!
So I blame Neil Armstrong for everything that's wrong with me.

 

[andrew markworthy]

Still not barred form the HTF ... will have to try harder.

Crumbs, I'd forgotten about John Lennon. I didn't learn about that til lunchtime the day afterwards. It was the headline news on the TV, and I remember mentioning it to my dad (whose musical tastes stop at circa 1950), who said 'yes, it was on the morning news, but I didn't think you'd be interested'. Strangely enough, I remember being more upset at the death of Keith Moon - in retrospect, I cannot think why.

 

[MikeAlletto]

January 28, 1986: I was sitting in sixth grade. And they came in and turned on the tv. We sat the rest of the day watching it explode over and over again. Thats all I remember from that day.

September 11, 2001: Actually I was still in bed. My cell phone rang but it was on the other side of the apartment so I didn't get up to get it. Then my home phone rang and I didn't get that either. It was my brother and I listened to the message..."Turn on the tv...a plane just hit...oh shit...a 2nd plane just hit the world trade center! I gotta go" I jumped up and turned on the tv, then called a guy from work, he was just getting started in the morning also and hadn't heard yet. Obviously that was a very wierd day. I went into work and was trying to get info on web sites but they were all bogged down. My boss was still at home watching tv and instant messaging me with updates. We got a small group of us together and went over to his place. On the way there he called my cell and told me they collapsed. I thought he meant just a part of it that was hit collapsed, not the whole thing! That was a horrible day. I had a hard enough time dealing with it and I still am trying to cope that I can't imagine how children were dealing with that day.

 

[Peter Kline]

December 7, 1941. I was residing in my mother's womb, comfy and content and looking forward to a September unveiling in 1942. I arrived a month early.

November 22, 1963.

I was employed by Pickwick International in Long Island City. I was working on an upcoming release by singer Gisele MacKenzie who had just recorded an album of French Folksongs including a "cover" of the then popular "Dominique". I left the office early and headed to Times Square on the subway where I would niormally change trains to go all the way uptown in Manhattan to the end of the A Train line at 207th Street. I was still living at home with my parents. I couldn't believe what had happened and walked around Times Square waiting for a newspaper to arrive. I remember a few television mobile units in the area and they were interviewing people. Most were crying. It was a terrible day to say the least.

February 9, 1964.

Still living at home and waiting to be inducted into the Army in April. Watched with my parents. They were not impressed. I was not a real rock n' roll fan prefering jazz and singers like Sinatra and Fitzgerald but thought they were very exciting.

July 20, 1969.

I was now living in Los Angeles, California (and out of the Army) working for the Capitol Record Club. On July 17 I travelled to Houston to be at the Manned Spacecraft Center to produce an LP of the moon landing. I worked with Roy Neal of NBC news on preparing the album. It was released about 45 days after the event. It was a dream come true for me as I had followed the space program from the very beginning.

July 28, 1986.

Still in California, now running my own radio syndication business with a partner who shall remain nameless. I was actually sitting in my office talking to Sammy Jackson, the actor and sometime local radio personality. A secretary came in and told us what had happened. Roy Neal, who had retired from NBC called me. I turned on the TV to watch.

 

[WoodyH]

1,000,000 BC (Fur bikinis)
30 AD (Ben-Hur)
1215 AD (Signing of the Magna Carta)
2 Sept 1666 (Great Fire of London)
1 Sept 1939 (WWII begins)
7 Dec 1941 (Pearl Harbor)
6 Aug 1945 (Atomic Bomb dropped on Hiroshima)
22 Nov 1963 (Kennedy shot)
15-28 Oct 1962 (Cuban Missile Crisis)
9 Feb 1964 (Beatles appear on Ed Sullivan)
4 Apr 1968 (Dr. Martin Luther King shot)
20 July 1969 (Moon landing)
7 Dec 1972 (Apollo 17 launch)
All those were before my time...now, for events since May 3, 1973:
20 Jul 1976 (Viking 1 lands on Mars)
I'm 3. Mars, shmarz. I've got a 2-month old brother to torment. Lemme at'im!
16 Aug 1977 (Elvis dies)
I'm 4. I'm sure I'd heard Elvis by this point, but was much more likely to be cognizant of songs on Sesame Street.
8 Dec 1980 (John Lennon shot)
No cognizant memories of this...must not have been a huge Beatles fan at 7 years of age.
30 Mar 1981 (Ronald Reagan shot)
No real clear memories here, either. At 8, I probably wasn't overly concerned with current events beyond what Transformer toy was coming out soon.
Jan 28 1986 (Space Shuttle Challenger explodes)
I was 13 and in Jr. High at the time. I know some of the classrooms had the launch on, but I wasn't in one. I do remember going into the orchestra room and hearing the news there not too long after it happened, as it was spreading across the school - from then on for the rest of the day, anytime you saw a television, it had the distinctive double-trail of smoke from the explosion.
Nov 9 1989 (Berlin Wall falls)
This is one of the key dates for me. I'd been taking German in High School for a couple years. At 16 years of age, this is the first event I can really conciously remember being amazed that I was able to witness - knowing without a doubt that I was watching history in the making. Sitting first at home, then in German class over the next days watching people take sledgehammers to the wall and finally tear down what had been, until that day, such a powerful and horrid symbol of oppression.
The next two years, in the summers of 1990 and 1991, I was fortunate enough to be able to visit Germany, and went through Berlin on both trips. It was truly amazing - having seen pictures of East and West Berlin for years, then being able to see the newly reunited city so shortly after the fall of the wall. Not just seeing it once, either, but being able to see the changes between the first and second trips. Even in areas where the wall was completely gone, you could still pick out where it had run almost as if it were still there, just because of the sudden shift in architecture, upkeep, and even just the feel of the buildings. Truly, truly incredible.
For me, the fall of the Berlin Wall is probably the single strongest event, even more so on a personal level than the 9-11 attacks, because of my interest and studies in Germany.
11 Sep 2001 (WTC/Pentagon attacks)
Woke up, got ready to go to work, hiked down from Capitol Hill into downtown Seattle. Got to the building a few minutes early, so was standing on the patio of the Norton Building (2nd and Columbia), having a pre-work cigarette and looking at the city, vaguely in the direction of the Bank of America tower at 5th and Columbia - hard not to look at it, it's the tallest building in Seattle. A guy standing next to me calmly looks at me, then the Bank of America tower, and remarks that, "They're sweeping it now."
"Sweeping it?" I replied - seemed a little early for janitors to be out. This guy wasn't making much sense.
"Yeah. For bombs."
"Excuse me?"
He then proceeded to tell me that planes had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, and possibly the White House. No way. This has to got to be a joke, right? I rode the elevator up to my floor and walked in, glanced over at one of the computer screens - and saw a picture on the CNN site of the WTC towers in flames.
It's really happening.
Spent the rest of the day alternating between my job and rabidly reloading every news website I could find that hadn't been overloaded. When I got the chance, I'd visit the other floors in my office, where the TVs in the lounges were on CNN, with people gathered around them, watching in horror.
Spent much of the rest of my day looking out my 6th floor window at the 70-some stories of the Bank of America tower. The hills in Seattle put its base roughly at eye level, just 3 blocks uphill from me. If that ever came tumbling down - it wouldn't collapse in on itself like the WTC did, and I likely wouldn't be around to tell the tale afterwards. Made for a very nerve-wracking day.

 

[Sarah S]

1/28/86: I was in the 6th grade...I got in the classroom a little bit early; class hadn't started yet, they had a tv going in the front of the room about some shuttle launching so I pull out my book of the moment & read; occasionally looking up to see if I missed anything. All of a sudden there's a cloud on the television & I slowly piece together what had happened from the announcer. Can't remember if school was dismissed that day or not.
9/11/01: My husband & I are getting ready to go to work; we might actually leave the house early today to get in some overtime! Then his sister calls to tell us to turn on CNN or any news station & he yells at me to put in a tape to the vcr..ANY TAPE so long as its now. So I grab a (borrowed) tape & stuff it into the vcr & push record...and then look up to see what he is recording. I couldn't believe it, he is crying....after a while I call the hazardous weather line to see if they still want us to come in (we work for a government agency) and they haven't updated it; I call the unit to see if anybody is there, they havn't heard anything....so eventually we go in & start getting ready to work on the phones. As people are coming in for work, eventually management makes the decision to give the rest of the day off & we leave as the section secretary sits down & starts making phone calls to those who havn't already come in.
We had to give a co-worker a ride who was worried about her son's fiancee in Wash DC & I worried about my dad (also works for a government agency, though in Seattle). Not a fun day.

 

[Andrew_Sch]

There were rumors, too--that Camp David had been hit, that other cities might be under attack.

Yeah, I heard that one, I heard that the Capitol was hit, that the mall in Washington was on fire and a bunch of other crap. High school isn't exactly the best place to be when an even of this catastrophic magnitude happens and not everyone is exactly clear on the details.

 

[Ashley Seymour]

March 8, 1971 Ali vs Frazier
I was stationed in Da Nang and called my brother on our birthday. They had a MARS ham radio to a site in the US that called your home. He was born a year and minute after I was, on March 8th. We both wished we could be at the fight in Madison Square Garden.

 

[Stacey]

Ronald Regan Shot - I remember watching the TV and seeing a bunch of people around the Pres and all of a sudden a "Bang" and pandamonium lets loose and people go diving into cars. I was quite young so didn't understand quite what happened until the news reported that one of the Pres body guards had taken a shot.

Challenger Explodes - I remember being in grade 12, going for lunch and moaning that I couldn't find a TV to watch the liftoff. Went to Biology class right after lunch and a bunch of fellow students come in and announce the Challenger had exploded...the rest of the day just crawled as everyone seemed in shoch and disbelief until we could get home and actually see the repeat footage hours later.

Princess Dianna - I remember coming home from work, just getting into my "nightie" and my hubbie turns on the TV and just yells out "Dianna's been in a car crash!"...spent the next 3-4 hours in numb silence watching the news.

WTC - Just woke up in the afternoon (worked the nightshift before) and hubbie yells out "WTC has been hit by an airplane". I wasn't even thinking on all cylinders and he drops this on me. I rush out to see the repeat footage of the plane hitting then the live 2nd plane hitting and the smoke and people jumping...it all passed in a blur. Then they started to collapse and I felt like I fell of the earth.

 

[paul o'donnell]

January 28, 1986:

Would have been 4 years old. so I assume I was in school or something. I remember nothing of the challenger only the numerous documentaries I've watched since.

September 11, 2001:

Had just finished having my hair cut and came online where Dan Brecher told me to get to a TV asap. I did and was shocked. Kept posting in the update thread here on the HTF for anyone who couldn't get onto CNN.com etc.

Also watched TV for the whole day and the next one, and the next one.

 

[David Brown Eyes]

I vaguely remember Reagan being shot. To young to understand what was happening. Not from a political family anyway.

Jan 28th, 1986 - I have always been a fan of NASA and the space program. Even today I vow to see at least one shuttle launch. I was in Jr. high performing a salt water experiment when another instructer came in and informed us that "The space shuttle had crashed" Not exploded but crashed and that a parachute had been seen. It was not untill noon that I went to the office and asked what had happened. It was then that I was told the shuttle had exploded killing all aboard. I was crushed but was spared the images untill I was home and had access to a television. My sister was living in Orlando at the time and she would send me huge manila envelopes full of articles every week for months after the explosion. The sad thing is I have no idea where those envelopes are. My wife, to this day, will not watch the footage.

Sept. 11, 2001 - This story actually starts Monday night with the season opening of Invesco Field at Mile High here in Denver. I was at the Monday night game Denver vs. New York. During the game our star wide reciever Ed Mcaffree whent down with a broken leg. The one sour note in an otherwise great game and night.

The next morning I overslept and in a panic turned on the radio to hear if Eddie Mac was going to be ok. I heard the tail end of a Mcaffree report and then the announcer started talking about how planes had hit the Trade Center and both towers were on fire. My first thought was that it was a joke to keep people from thinking about our football player but then quickly realised that if it was a joke, it was not funny and in very poor taste.

The wife and I turn on the TV. It was not a hoax, not a joke and definately not funny. My wife was away from the tv, trying to work, when I told her the first tower had collaped. She actually got angery with me, not just mad I mean seriously pissed off. It was impossible for her to acknowledge that the towers were gone even after watching the event.

We went to lunch with a friend of ours in the Denver Tech Center. The hiway was deserted, an automatic sign stated that Denver Internation Airport was closed indefinately. The resturant was nearly deserted as well. Really spooky stuff. Spent the next few days just like every other American.

 

[Jack Briggs]

You have no idea how much you guys and gals are entertaining me. That LP which Peter Kline was working on during the Apollo 11 mission: I bought a copy at the time!
December 8, 1980: My then wife and I had just closed the deal on a new car. It was one of those strange days (evenings, rather) where, for reasons I can't explain, I didn't feel right about things. By that, I mean I wasn't happy about a new round of car payments and such. Wasn't in a good mood when we got home. Tuned in to Monday Night Football, and it was through Howard Cosell I heard the tragic, awful news. When Cosell uttered the words "dead on arrival" I went numb, as in I-can't-believe-this-is-happening numb. In a daze, I lumbered upstairs; my then-wife was in the bath. I mumbled, "John Lennon ... John Lennon." After an hour, the "tears [were] falling like rain from the sky." I didn't go to work the next day. How could I write stupid catalog copy and book-jacket copy on a day like that?

 

[Dave Poehlman]

July 20, 1969: I was only 1 at the time... probably taking a nap.
January 28, 1986: I remember leaving my civics class in HS to go to the can and the principle came on to announce the shuttle disaster as I was walking down the hall.
Sept 11, 2001: I was driving to work listening to sports radio talking about Michael Jordan coming out of retirement when they mentioned a quick blurb about a plane crashing into the WTC. I remember thinking "oh cripes, another goofy terrorist in a Cesna". It wasn't until I got to work and saw everyone was in the conference room watching the news, that I realized the magnitude of what happened.

 

[Michael*K]

Great thread, Jack.
December 7, 1941: Heck, my mother wasn't even born yet.
November 22, 1963: Probably hadn't even entered my mom's mind.
February 9, 1964: Not born yet.
July 20, 1969: Three months before I make my "grand" entrance.
March 30,1981: I had just walked in the house from school when my neighbor (an avowed anarchist) came over to say there was "good" news. Reagan had been shot.
May 13, 1981: I attended a parochial grade school and an announcement was made over the intercom that the Pope had been shot and his condition was unknown. The teacher of the religion class I was in asked the entire class to get down on our knees and pray for his recovery.
January 28, 1986: I was in my high school RPG programming class when an announcement was made over the P.A. system that the Challenger had exploded. There were many gasps of "Oh my God." When class ended, most of us went to one of the A/V rooms to watch the footage on a TV monitor. Couldn't believe it.
July 3, 1988: We were on our way to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg when a report came over the radio that an Iranian airliner had been mistakenly shot down by a U.S. warship. The incident cast a pall on over the trip, not knowing if the incident would lead us into a conflict with Iran.
January 16, 1991: After a months long military buildup and rampant rumors that an assault was imminent, I was riding the train home, listening to my walkman as the first reports of the bombing of Baghdad came in. When I got up to get off the train, people in the vestibule were joking about if the attack would occur, I mentioned that it had already started and bombs were falling on Baghdad. It got eerily quiet, except for the occasional "Oh my God."
February 26, 1993: A co-worker came in and told us how someone had "blown up" the World Trade Center in New York. We turned on the radio to listen to details throughout the day. I caught an early train home, just so I could catch the network news, since I didn't have cable at the time.
May 16, 1995: One of my co-workers came in late and said someone had set off a bomb at an office building in Oklahoma City. He said it looked like someone had carved out a big portion of the side of the building. It wasn't until that night that I saw the unnerving images for myself.
October 3, 1995: With word coming the day before that a verdict was forthcoming in the O.J. Simpson case, we pulled out a TV at work and waited for the announcement. As word got around that we had a TV, dozens of people from around the office came into the department to watch. Strangely, the people filtered into two groups...Afro-Americans and Caucasians. When the verdict was announced, the Afro-American people started cheering and pumping their fists, even though most had said in the past that Simpson was clearly guilty. The Caucasians and others just shook their heads cursing. Talk about tension in the office...
September 11, 2001: I was making an ATM withdrawl as the first plane hit the WTC, which I was totally unaware of. As I walked into the office, I heard a co-worker telling someone on the phone that a plane had hit the WTC. Just as she hung up, we heard over the radio that a second plane had hit the other tower. I checked CNN's website and saw the first images. When I saw the still image that showed that the second plane was clearly a commercial jet, I called a friend at Sears Tower to tell her to get out and go home. However, she was already home sick that day. Then we pulled a TV out of the A/V room and started watching the chilling events unfold. Many co-workers' relatives came to the office to gather around and watch. I started calling many friends and relatives, who still were unaware that anything had happened. When the office announced it was closing, most people left. I'm single, but if I was married and had a family, I would have gone straight home to be with them. But I just couldn't leave that day. I was rivetted to those television images. I finally left the office about 1:00 and picked up the "extra edition" newspapers for the train ride home. It was in those papers that I saw the pictures of the people that had leaped from the towers. Those images will stay with me forever.

 

[Thomas Reagan]

December 8, 1980
Eleven years old, watching the Patriots on Monday Night Football. When the announcement came on, I had to ask my Dad who John Lennon was.
March 31, 1981
Home sick from Junior High. Throughout the day, I watched the news reports about Ronald Reagan being shot. People seemed very sympathetic to me and my family for the next few weeks, even though we are not even distantly related to him.
January 28, 1986
Junior in High School. Watched the launch on the TV monitor in my AP English class. Stayed in that classroom the rest of the school day. Remember being angry that the news station lingered so long with a shot of McAullife's parents for their reaction. What did they think their reaction would be?
September 11, 2001
Someone from a cubicle on the other end of the floor, exclaimed "Jesus Christ!" which led me and a bunch of other people to raise our heads over our walls. "Two planes hit the WTC !" I work at the corporate office of a nationwide A/V retailer. Most of us (about 100) went down to the warehouse service department where TV's and other gear are repaired. They had six RPTV's on and all tuned to different news stations. I sat down on an empty pallette and watched the replaying of the planes hitting. When the towers collapsed, the President of the company told us all to go home and be with our families. I spent the rest of the day at home listening to the radio with my wife as I finished painting the nursery for our soon-to-be born son. As I painted I worried about the world he'd be coming into. I'm still worried for him now.:frowning:
Thos.

 

[RicP]

Jack, this is a wonderful thread and I'd like to share my experiences with everyone...especially in regards to the last one.
July 20, 1969: I was 6 months old but from what my Mom tells me, I enjoyed the landing very much by gurgling my approval for Mr. Armstrong.
August 2, 1979: I lost my hero this day. Thurman Munson, captain of the New York Yankees was killed when his single engine plane crashed on landing in Ohio. I cried for a week over this. I truly believe that this was the day that the innocence of my youth was forever taken away from me.
December 8, 1980: I lost hero #2. I was 11 years old and sitting on the floor of my Grandmother's living room when the news came over the radio. My family were always playing Beatles albums and we all just sat there for what seemed like hours, in shock. I visit John's memorial at Strawberry Fields in Central Park every single year and have done so for the last 15 years. There's no place I'd rather be on December 8.
January 28, 1986: A horrible day. I was on my way out the door to head to school when we watched it happen live on TV. Stunned doesn't even begin to describe the feeling...what a National Tragedy this was.
February 26, 1993: I was at work at Banker's Trust which sat directly across Liberty Street from WTC Tower #2 when the bomb went off. The whole building shook and we had no idea what happened until we were evacuated and saw all the people flooding out of the towers.
September 11, 2001: For this day that will forever live in my mind, I'd like you all to read something that I wrote for a local newspaper here. I'd love to hear your feedback on it. You'll need Adobe Acrobat reader...
My Sept 11 Essay
Thanks for allowing me to share my experiences.

 

[LarryDavenport]

Beatles on Ed Sullivan: I was 8 days old. My mom says that we watched the show. I am still a big fan.

Moon landing: I was at my babysitters. I remember that they pre-empted Sesame Street. I was pissed off.

Watergate: I was 8 years old and all summer I watched the hearings on TV.

Lennon assassination: I was at home watching an episode of Lou Grant (the one where they were investigating the dumping of toxic waste) They had just come back from a commercial and Animal was about to take a picture when they cut to breaking news. I was pissed that they couldn't tell us during the commercial break. After the report I went to my room and listened to the White Album while staring at the picture of John that came with the album.

Reagan attempted assassination: had just dropped out of high school and watched this on TV.

Space shuttle blowing up: I was in my car on the way to a garage to have it worked on. I was listening to a wacky morning DJ and I thought he was kidding until I got to the garage and they were watching it on TV.

Desert Storm: I remember being at an I-Hop in Seattle when we first started bombing. It was snowing, I had just met a friend of a friend for the first time (someone who would become one of my best friends). I was in a cab in Tokyo when we started the ground war.

Kurt Cobain suicide: I was working customer service at Eddie Bauer. I was about to take my first call of the morning when the girl I sat next to said "That guy you like is dead." It was 20 minutes before I knew what she was talking about. (A few months before, the day Kurt OD'd in Italy, I got the news that John Candy had died of a heart attack. It was a bad day).

Princess Di dies: had just got back from seeing Sonic Youth and Beck at Bumbershoot (an annual Seattle Arts festival).

9/11: I was watching the Today Show when the planes hit.

 

[Eve T]

RicP said:

September 11, 2001: For this day that will forever live in my mind, I'd like you all to read something that I wrote for a local newspaper here. I'd love to hear your feedback on it. You'll need Adobe Acrobat reader...

I read it and it was a very good article. Nicely written and heart felt. And yes...God bless America.

Peace,

Eve