Woke up 9/11 turned on the TV and thought I was dreaming as I watched the second tower get hit. Was at church today the first half was a guest speaker she was the lead chaplain flew to NY from here talking about the day so many years back, lead a great prayer for our first responders.

I was working midnight shift as an aircraft mechanic for United Airlines at Newark Airport, NJ. I had been home sleeping for a short time when Terri (my wife) woke me and told me a plane had crashed into one of the towers. We watched it all unfold on live tv. I went to work that night to find that the towers we could usually see from the hangar were no longer there but had billowing smoke in their place. Nothing was allowed to move at the airport so it was eerily quiet! Many of the mechanics offered to go into the city to help look for survivors, but United would not let us go unless we clocked out and did it on our own time.  I also found out that Flight 93 (the one that crashed in Pennsylvania) had departed from one of our gates. United Airlines closed that gate for a year and flew an American Flag from the top of the jetway. At the one year anniversary, United took down the flag, folded it and put it in a framed display and hung it on the inside wall of the jetway and reopened the gate. 

Terri was supposed to have a meeting that day with Canter Fitzgerald in tower 2 but had other commitments so she rescheduled it for September 12th. Canter Fitzgerald lost the largest number of people of any single company that day. Everyone Terri had been working with was killed. She would have been too it she hadn't rescheduled the meeting. She then had to work with the survivors of the company from the New Jersey offices to restore all the data that was lost in the tower collapse to the database in New Jersey. Terri also lost clients from a few other businesses in the towers.

My uncle was and still is a Firefighter in Brooklyn, NY with Rescue 2. He swapped shifts with a co-worker because he had things to do on the 11th. He lost most of his fire company including that co-worker as well as most of their trucks. He went in as soon as he heard about it to look for survivors. We didn't hear from him for days and didn't know if he was ok or not. We found out he was ok after they forced him to go home.

I have an Aunt and Uncle who both worked in Manhatten who were amongst the many who walked out of Manhatten across the bridges. It was also days before we knew they were ok.

I know the attacks on 9/11 affected the entire country, but those of us that lived in the NYC and surrounding areas as well as those who had personal ties to the events are emotionally scarred from those events in ways that are very difficult to put into words. Terri and I still tear up and sometimes cry when remembering events of that day.

I offer my prayers to everyone who still struggles with their emotions and memories from 9/11/01. May you and you loved ones find peace and comfort!

Thanks for sharing your story Rich.  What an incredible chain of events and perspective.  Many of my friends in NYC and Long Island said the biggest shift was seeing the sky where the Twin Towers had once stood.  Incredibly hard to grasp and understand.

For some reason that week, I was working a swing shift and started later in the afternoon.  My wife called to say there was something happening in NY and to check out the news.  I turned on the TV just as the second plane hit, and watched the day unfold until it was time to head to work.  It wasn't until I stepped outside, that I began to grasp the magnitude of the situation.  It was quiet, Soooooo quiet.  No road noise, no construction noise, no airplane noise, just quiet.  The roads were clear, and as I drove by San Jose International Airport, all you saw was a parking lot of planes.  Work was more of the same, we continued to watch TV and ended up shutting down early.

Thoughts and Prayers to those impacted