Let us stop and share for a moment what we were doing 6 years ago on Sept 11. Please do not post about the war or your opinion or about bush or anything else on here, just pause and share what you were doing on the day our world was changed.
On That morning I was sitting on my computer finishing up some notes for my programmers in England on some code changes for a project we were working on, the phone rang and it was my girlfriend’s friend Sue. She asked me it I was watching CNN and I said no.
She said "ha, I finally got to hear about a big news story before you, a plane has crashed into the world trade center in New York"
I turned the TV on and put on CNN. I said to her "wow that must have been one big plane to put that big a hole in that building!"
We were chatting for a min or two and she was bragging how she had finally got news of something before me. (This was a game we played with each other about the news). At that moment the 2nd plane crashed into the building and I said to Sue "oh my God Sue, we are at war, did you see that. she responded with, "I better go to work, this is not good" (she was an EMT).
We hung up and I called my mother in Kansas, she was already at work so she missed my call. I then woke up my girlfriend and told her to scrub out the tub and fill it full of water. I filled every container in the apartment with water and set them aside.
I then sat down and watched in disbelief what was going on on TV. When the first tower fell, I remember thinking "God, there must be 10,000 people still in that building".
The rest of the week is kind of jumbled, but on Sept 16, i was in New York with Sue delivering a truck full of supplies from the Philadelphia regions fire departments to the Ft lee NJ office of emergency management at the base of the George Washington Bridge.
I was back again on Sept 23rd with another truckload but this time they had us drive it to a staging area just outside of ground zero. I met several of the firemen who were working at ground zero and had an opportunity to go in. As I was getting ready to walk over with the group that was getting prepped to go in one of the firemen grabbed me and said "you don't want to go in there, we have already been in there and this is our job, you do not have to go in there. Do yourself a favor and don't go. You will gain nothing by what you see but it will change you forever and not for the better if you do" I looked into the eyes of the other firemen who were there and their eyes said it all, they all said "don't do it". I decided to listen to them and said ok. They all sighed with relief, I spent the next 2 hours talking with them as they shared with me what they were seeing down there. Many of them cried as they were telling me what they were seeing.
It took months for the taste and smell to get out of my nostrils from that day.
