Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]



This is an archived forum, so it is here for read-only purposes only. We are not accepting new members and members cannot post any longer. Members can, however, access their old private messages. Strawberry Fields was open from 2006 until 2011. There is a Strawberry Fields Beatles Forum on Facebook. If you are registered with Facebook, join us at the group there!

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
A 9/11 Remeberance; Can you say LOVE?
Topic Started: Sep 10 2006, 04:03 AM (418 Views)
fab4fan
Member Avatar
Caretaker
I was so moved when I read the following piece that I decided to post it here. I wish I had the ability to write as well as this person. I hope it conveys a side of me that some of you probably doubted existed. And to all of you who rumble with me on the political threads, let me say clearly while there still is time, I LOVE YOU!
Especially you with whom I disagree.
(I left the author's name out to keep this as apolitical as possible. PM if you have to know. :) )

I Just Called to Say I Love You
The sounds of 9/11, beyond the metallic roar.

Friday, September 8, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

Everyone remembers the pictures, but I think more and more about the sounds. I always ask people what they heard that day in New York. We've all seen the film and videotape, but the sound equipment of television crews didn't always catch what people have described as the deep metallic roar.

The other night on TV there was a documentary on the Ironworkers of New York's Local 40, whose members ran to the site when the towers fell. They pitched in on rescue, then stayed for eight months to deconstruct a skyscraper some of them had helped build 35 years before. An ironworker named Jim Gaffney said, "My partner kept telling me the buildings are coming down and I'm saying 'no way.' Then we heard that noise that I will never forget. It was like a creaking and then the next thing you felt the ground rumbling."

Rudy Giuliani said it was like an earthquake. The actor Jim Caviezel saw the second plane hit the towers on television and what he heard shook him: "A weird, guttural discordant sound," he called it, a sound exactly like lightning. He knew because earlier that year he'd been hit. My son, then a teenager in a high school across the river from the towers, heard the first plane go in at 8:45 a.m. It sounded, he said, like a heavy truck going hard over a big street grate.

I think too about the sounds that came from within the buildings and within the planes--the phone calls and messages left on answering machines, all the last things said to whoever was home and picked up the phone. They awe me, those messages.
Something terrible had happened. Life was reduced to its essentials. Time was short. People said what counted, what mattered. It has been noted that there is no record of anyone calling to say, "I never liked you," or, "You hurt my feelings." No one negotiated past grievances or said, "Vote for Smith." Amazingly --or not--there is no record of anyone damning the terrorists or saying "I hate them."

No one said anything unneeded, extraneous or small. Crisis is a great editor. When you read the transcripts that have been released over the years it's all so clear.

Flight 93 flight attendant Ceecee Lyles, 33 years old, in an answering-machine message to her husband: "Please tell my children that I love them very much. I'm sorry, baby. I wish I could see your face again."

Thirty-one-year-old Melissa Harrington, a California-based trade consultant at a meeting in the towers, called her father to say she loved him. Minutes later she left a message on the answering machine as her new husband slept in their San Francisco home. "Sean, it's me, she said. "I just wanted to let you know I love you."

Capt. Walter Hynes of the New York Fire Department's Ladder 13 dialed home that morning as his rig left the firehouse at 85th Street and Lexington Avenue. He was on his way downtown, he said in his message, and things were bad. "I don't know if we'll make it out. I want to tell you that I love you and I love the kids."

Firemen don't become firemen because they're pessimists. Imagine being a guy who feels in his gut he's going to his death, and he calls on the way to say goodbye and make things clear. His widow later told the Associated Press she'd played his message hundreds of times and made copies for their kids. "He was thinking about us in those final moments."

Elizabeth Rivas saw it that way too. When her husband left for the World Trade Center that morning, she went to a laundromat, where she heard the news. She couldn't reach him by cell and rushed home. He'd called at 9:02 and reached her daughter. The child reported, "He say, mommy, he say he love you no matter what happens, he loves you." He never called again. Mrs. Rivas later said, "He tried to call me. He called me."

There was the amazing acceptance. I spoke this week with a medical doctor who told me she'd seen many people die, and many "with grace and acceptance." The people on the planes didn't have time to accept, to reflect, to think through; and yet so many showed the kind of grace you see in a hospice.

Peter Hanson, a passenger on United Airlines Flight 175 called his father. "I think they intend to go to Chicago or someplace and fly into a building," he said. "Don't worry, Dad--if it happens, it will be very fast." On the same flight, Brian Sweeney called his wife, got the answering machine, and told her they'd been hijacked. "Hopefully I'll talk to you again, but if not, have a good life. I know I'll see you again some day."

There was Tom Burnett's famous call from United Flight 93. "We're all going to die, but three of us are going to do something," he told his wife, Deena. "I love you, honey."

These were people saying, essentially, In spite of my imminent death, my thoughts are on you, and on love. I asked a psychiatrist the other day for his thoughts, and he said the people on the planes and in the towers were "accepting the inevitable" and taking care of "unfinished business." "At death's door people pass on a responsibility--'Tell Billy I never stopped loving him and forgave him long ago.' 'Take care of Mom.' 'Pray for me, Father. Pray for me, I haven't been very good.' " They address what needs doing.

This reminded me of that moment when Todd Beamer of United 93 wound up praying on the phone with a woman he'd never met before, a Verizon Airfone supervisor named Lisa Jefferson. She said later that his tone was calm. It seemed as if they were "old friends," she later wrote. They said the Lord's Prayer together. Then he said "Let's roll."

This is what I get from the last messages. People are often stronger than they know, bigger, more gallant than they'd guess. And this: We're all lucky to be here today and able to say what deserves saying, and if you say it a lot, it won't make it common and so unheard, but known and absorbed.
I think the sound of the last messages, of what was said, will live as long in human history, and contain within it as much of human history, as any old metallic roar.


I LOVE YOU!
Mnisthiti mou Kurie!
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
LITTLE LAURA
Member Avatar

Memories Of 9/11

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted Image



On Monday, it will be an astonishing 5 years since that terrible morning. Yet 5 years on, I STILL struggle to comprehend what happened. I'm talking about what ultimately happened to the Twin Towers that day.

I first heard about the horror on the 11am [PDT] local news on my radio. I actually thought I'd imagined what I'd just heard. It COULDN'T be true.! I immediately phoned my Mom, who grimly confirmed it. The Towers were......gone. BOTH of them. It was the 1st time I blurted out, and believed it, that I DIDN'T believe her. It MUST be an error in reporting.

She replied, she knew, she was having a hard time dealing with the news too.

I hung up soon after. I don't remember at all what else we said. I was in shock. It was then I remembered I had CNN. I rushed to turn it on. There it was--right before my eyes. The planes striking the Towers; first one, then only minutes later, a second. The Towers burning. Chaos everywhere. Then the collapse of them.

I don't remember much else that day after I 1st saw that. Except they kept repeating that horrific scene; over & over & over. Every TV Station, every hour. I don't think I moved from the TV for the next 24 hours, frozen by the unbelievable spectacle before my eyes. Those immense rock-solid Towers gone. Crumbling like sandcastles, instead of buildings made of concrete, glass & steel. It was like being told, and/or watching, the Pyramids turn to dust---in 15 seconds flat.

Sometime near the close of that first--and very long--day, I remembered that my Dr. & her Family were supposed to be at one of those Towers that day. They were on a prolonged vacation which included Europe & NYC. She had mentioned they were looking forward to visiting the Towers. My horror was now joined by cold fear. Three days later, I finally learned they had at the last minute changed their mind: they would "do" the Towers at the end of their vacation. They hadn't been there after all. But those were 3 of the longest days I've ever had.

Outside that 1st day, and for the rest of the week, it was eerily quiet. Living less than a mile from a very busy Harbour, I was used to the sounds constantly a part of it. The several times daily Harbour seaplane flights, the sounds of the Bridge going up, the boats of all shapes & sizes constantly arriving & departing. The to Washington State & back Harbour Ferry.

The Heliport nearby was also very busy, it's flight paths, like that of the seaplanes, carrying them directly above my apartment. But as of that morning, all was deathly quiet; as every conceivable transport had been grounded. Including the Ferry. That is a silence I never want to "hear" again.

Speaking of sounds, there is another sound I still can't bear to hear. That is the sound of the personal alarms of all those Firemen buried under the monster rubble of what was left of the Towers. The sound of those high-pitched two-tone alarms, still working long after most of their owners were dead, are burned into my memory so deep, that just hearing one, takes me right back; filling me with dread.

Today, I still find it hard to get my mind around the seemingly impossible reality that those great big iconic Towers are not only gone, but, literally, crumbled to a gigantic heap in under a minute. I don't think I ever will. And I can't even begin yet to think of all those people in them.


Posted Image
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
JeffLynnesBeard
Member Avatar
Administrator & Moderator
It doesn't feel like five years since the Twin Towers fell - it only seems like a couple of years. I remember being at work at Victoria Station's control point (I worked as a station controller at that point) and the Driver Manager came into the office from next door and told everyone to come in and see what was on the television. I went in and it was 'breaking news' that a 'plane had crashed into one of the towers. A couple of seconds after being in the room, the second plane crashed into the tower - that's when believing that a terrible accident had occured turned into what could only be a deliberate act. I have to be honest - I was terrified. If this could happen to a major landmark in New York, nothing and nobody was safe.

We were called back into our office to do our job, but all of us were shell-shocked and kept on nipping next door for updates. I was in the office next door when the towers collapsed and I just felt utterly sick. I knew the immense scale and enormity of the catastrophe I'd just witnessed and the potential loss of life a disaster like that would cause. After that, the world went crazy for a number of weeks. Security was stepped up, people were paranoid and generally placid, liberal people wanted revenge for the American people who had lost their lives that day. Pacifists, including myself, supported military action in Afghanistan to capture those responsible for this atrocity. I still find it difficult to believe that those terrorists pulled this off - I think that, as far as security issues and restriction of people's freedom is concerned, we're still living with the fallout of 9/11 today and perhaps nothing will ever be the same again. It was a day to change history and one I will never forget.

...and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Bill
Member Avatar

fab4fan
Sep 10 2006, 02:03 PM
....
Something terrible had happened. Life was reduced to its essentials. Time was short. People said what counted, what mattered. It has been noted that there is no record of anyone calling to say, "I never liked you," or, "You hurt my feelings." No one negotiated past grievances or said, "Vote for Smith." Amazingly --or not--there is no record of anyone damning the terrorists or saying "I hate them."

No one said anything unneeded, extraneous or small. Crisis is a great editor. When you read the transcripts that have been released over the years it's all so clear.

....

Board rules be damned - this deserves a bump back up to the top.
Put a puppet on it.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Dorfliedot
Member Avatar
Beatlelicious
Posted Image
Posted Image
Add Glitter to your Photos
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
mozart8mytoe
Member Avatar

I live in New York. I watched it all. Since I have talked about it a million times I will simply say this:


Posted Image



Posted Image

WTC RIP
(1973-2001)

Nurse, I spy gypsies. Run.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
BlueMolly2009
Member Avatar
LOLcat Freak
God bless those who were lost that awful day. :( I'll never forget it.
Molly
Myspace
My Twitter
My FriendFeed
My Facebook
Posted Image
Boston Chihuahuas (I took this while at a Starbucks)
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
modgirl1964
Member Avatar

I just came back from mass today honoring my fallen friends and those who are still alive. I'm just an emotional wreck today. Seeing these posts are just beautiful and touching, making me think of my own call from my best friend Mike. Mike and I were thick as theives when growing up, driving everyone in the nieghborhood nuts with our highjinxs and pranks. When my family moved to Detroit, we kept up the friendship as I was sent back east every summer by my mom to visit my family out there. He was the guy who went after my first boyfriend when he broke my heart, he used jokingly tell me if we weren't married by the time we'd hit the age of 25, he'd marry me, lol.

He was only on the force for just about 6 months when 9-11 came. Mike was all ready in the city, on the job when the attacks took place. As he got over there and knew how bad things would be, he called me on my cell and I was able to talk to him briefly. I remember the whole conversation from word to word, never ever forgot it.


Mike: hey, it's me. Just calling to see how you are

Me: Well I'm scared sh*tless and worrying about you and everyone else down there, other than that I'm ok man (laughing nervously)

Mike: (laughs softly) yeah....uhhh..listen, just in case I don't come home, I want you to know this, I love you more than anything. I always had and always will. And if I make out of this all right, I'm marrying you, no f*cking joke this time, don't care about the guy in England too. But know that I love you. That is the most important thing you need to know.

Me: I do know that and I love you too. Thank you for being there for me too. I love you so so much. You will come home, I know it.

Mike: I hope so. sh*t...I gotta go, it's getting worse..I love you and I'll try to make it home to you!

(line cut)


This is the first time I've ever shared the full conversation and just the hardest thing for me to type up. Thanks guys for letting me share this and having a place to get my feelings about this day out.
Bridget

Posted Image

Imported from Detroit
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
maccascruff
Sing the Changes
Bridget, you are making me cry.

I shall never forget, but the constant news coverage today will be too much for me. I've got a DVD, magazines, etc. that I saved and I don't need to relive that horrible day. It's all so sad.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
BlueMolly2009
Member Avatar
LOLcat Freak
OMG Bridget, I didn't know. I'm crying while reading what you wrote. That was very moving. :hug:
Molly
Myspace
My Twitter
My FriendFeed
My Facebook
Posted Image
Boston Chihuahuas (I took this while at a Starbucks)
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
BeatleBarb
Member Avatar

Thank you for sharing, Bridget. Your post, Moz's and Fab's puts it all in even greater perspective.

Take care.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Rose
Member Avatar
Well, here's another clue for you all, the Walrus was Paul...
Such powerful posts...thanks for sharing your memories.

My memory of 9/11 is like so many others...disbelief in what was happening. I had no idea what was going on until my husband called me and told me to turn on the TV. When I did, I tried to comprehend what I was seeing...was that an airplane crashing into one of the Towers? It must be an accident...but then the 2nd plane made a deliberate turn and crashed into the second tower. The chaos....the confusion...the fear. Then the Pentagon...another plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania...WHATS GOING ON? My next thought was my family. My son had just gone off to college the week before. All I could think was COME HOME NOW. I sat and watched the TV all day long...crying...wondering...waiting. Then all the stories started coming in. The bravery. The heroics. The incredible strength that NY and its people showed on this horrific day. The courage of the doomed people on the airplanes. It made me proud to be an American.

It still seems so surreal. The next day I went out to get the paper...and looked up into the sky and there were no planes. So unreal. And I knew that life as we knew it would never be the same again.

Posted Image Posted Image

"I'm in awe of McCartney. He's about the only one that I am in awe of. He can do it all. And he's never let up... He's just so damn effortless." ~ Bob Dylan
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
theonlyfab4fan
Member Avatar
I AM THE BIGGEST JOHN FAN!
My heart is broken today as it has been since that tragic day in 2001. This is the day that I lost my cousin Peter. I will always remember him as that young good looking charming man who was years older than me and taught me so many things. I suppose I was considered by some as the backwards younger kid cousin from the south. Not worldly at all, and especially not sophisticated. Yet I remember my summers in Brooklyn with my Italian cousins who were much older than I and all the sights, sounds, tastes and smells that I was exposed to when I got to go and visit. Peter taught me how to play all kinds of card games and board games and never allowed the others to exclude me from anything that was going on in their lives when I was there. When one of our cousins married in a huge lavish Italian family wedding with all the trimmings, Peter was the one who escorted a homely fat 13 year old wall flower (me) onto the dance floor. He looked like he could have been the brother of Al Pacino. How strange it is on that day horrible day back in 2001 that I was worried about my cousin Mary who I knew was near the Pentagon. I never gave a thought to Peter as I was watching the second tower of the World Trade Center being struck by the plane. I did not know that this of all days he just happened to be there on an errand in that particular building. An errand that meant the end of his life.


Peter I love you and I miss you.
You say you want to save humanity but it`s people that you just can`t stand
John came to me in a dream and this is what he said. "I had a vision of a man on a flaming pie, and he told me that Betsy with a B not Lisa with a L is the biggest fan of mine". John trumps 'the boss' !

I WAS ROBBED BY THAT DEVIL WOMAN

Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Big Beatle Fan
Member Avatar

It makes me re-live how p*ssed off I am that we let them do this to us. All those emotions come flooding back. God be with those still trying to cope and especially with those kids who lost their parents.
Every night I just wanna go out. Get out of my head. Every day I don't wanna get up. Get out of my bed.<a href='http://eapr-1/@0@Bradley@1@Georgia@' target='_blank'></a>
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
beatlechick
Member Avatar
In Paul's Arms!
Lots of tears are flowing with the stories being told. I have no one that lives anywhere near the Pentagon or the Twin Towers and some family in PA but nowhere near Shanksville. I do know of co-workers who had friends and/or family in and near the twin towers but just the same we all lost someone that day. We all lost a sense of innocence, security, and life but through it our resolve has never gone away. For those that are still angry, good be angry but for those whose heart has become blackened with hatred I can only hope that someday your hatred goes away. Being out in California, our world was just waking up to greet another summer's day. I used to have my tv be my alarm clock and woke up to see the news report stating the first plane had just hit the towers. Since I wasn't fully awake at 545, and didn't need to be for a few more minutes, I fell back to sleep thinking I was dreaming. I woke up just in time to see the second plane hit and Charles Gibson (our local ABC affiliate had gone national by then, a rare occurence) exclaiming that was no accident we are under attack. I don't think I stopped crying as I got ready for work (yes we were one of the few businesses who didn't give a damn about the need to be with family) contemplating about staying home. I was a temp then and could ill-afford to stay home but I wished I had. I wrote my roommate a note as to what was going on. She later told me she thought I was writing about some cartoon until her son called and told her to watch the news. At work, a normally bustling somewhat noisy insurance office, it was eerily quiet with the few of us who had radio reception being asked what was going on. The muslim employees were genuinely scared for themselves and their families. People who had nothing to do with the terrorist act were absolutely frightened of what would happen to them. We all huddled by the radios not caring if the bosses reported us or not. We all hugged each other, we all cried with each other, we all mourned together longing to be with our loved ones. Going to my little Church that night was very sad and heartbreaking hearing from people who hadn't heard from their loved ones in NYC fearing the worst but hoping for the best. Regardless of male or female, tears flowed that night.

I watched Flight 93 the other night, hard to watch but well recommended. I can't imagine what they must have gone through knowing about the towers and the Pentagon. I can't imagine how their loved ones felt getting the phone calls from the plane. I especially can't imagine how the supervisor of United Airlines felt hearing everything including the crash. I know that even though I knew the outcome, when the passengers stormed the cabin a little piece in me hoped they would be able to control the plane. I thank God that they all became heroes. Through their deaths, no count on how many lives they saved that day.
Posted Image Posted Image
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
beatlechick
Member Avatar
In Paul's Arms!
Such a beautiful, sad song but one that is so well done that I can forgive it being a country song:

By Alan Jackson:

Where Were You

There go the tears again. :cry:
Posted Image Posted Image
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
scottycatt
Member Avatar

May they all rest now in peace . . . . . . . :cry: :cry:




Why?
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
JeffLynnesBeard
Member Avatar
Administrator & Moderator
Thank you to everybody who shared their experience and memories of that day - I know, for some of you, it was difficult and my heart goes out to everyone who lost someone that day.

...and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
ZetaBoards - Free Forum Hosting
ZetaBoards gives you all the tools to create a successful discussion community.
Learn More · Register Now
« Previous Topic · Things We Said Today · Next Topic »
Add Reply


"Treasure these few words"