J's Cafe Nette

It was a beautiful late summer morning in my town. Sometime between 8:30 and 8:45 I put my then four-year old granddaughter into her booster seat to take her to pre-school.

As I turned on the ignition I heard the morning drive co-host say she was going to give some medical updates on 9/11 about 911.

Sometime during the short drive a news bulletin interrupted and said that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center building. I remember wondering if it was a large plane or a private plane that lost its bearings. The radio cut back to the regular program and I figured it was a small plane and felt bad for the people who surely would have been killed in this “accident”.

Just before I got her out of the car at the pre-school I heard that a plane had hit the Pentagon and I knew then we were under some kind of attack.

I told the director and she moved a TV into her office and the workers stood around watching the news.

I drove back home and my telephone was ringing. It was my neighbor, telling me to turn on the TV because something terrible was happening. I told her I had turned it on as soon as I walked through the door.

Confusion was all over the airwaves and in my mind. Almost as soon as I walked in and turned on the TV I saw a plane slice through the second World Trade Center tower. I didn’t know if it was a replay of the first or a new one. Then I heard the reporter say it was a second plane.

I’ll never forget seeing that plane slice through the building. I’ll never forget the horror I felt as I watched what seemed to be so surreal. I saw the buildings collapse and saw dust clouds following and then overtaking the running crowd. I saw a dead priest being carried out in a chair, but I thought he was just unconscious. I heard about people jumping to their deaths, including a man and a woman who held hands on the way down.

I saw people, covered in cement dust, helping each other and running, running as fast as they could to escape the great cloud of cement dust overcoming them. I saw firemen vomit from all the dust they had inhaled.

I saw Pentagon workers and military people running for safety, helping their comrades.

Then I heard there was a runaway plane in Pennsylvania and we were considering shooting it down, but it went down before we could force it down. Another planeload of heroes met their Maker that day.

A year later I watched the French documentary. French photographers were working with one of the Fire Engine Companies when the first plane hit and they got into the building during rescue efforts.

It was then that I heard that horrible thump of human bodies landing outside the building. They were determined to die their way if they had to die. Heroes. All of them.

For days people stood with photos asking if anyone had seen their loved ones. No one had and no one would.

I started to go to the Red Cross to give blood, but then I heard there was no need for blood because there were not that many survivors.

That day is seared in my memory just as the assassination of President John Kennedy is. Those are two days I will never forget and will never forget what I was doing when I heard about each horrible tragedy.

Below is a series of photos documenting what happened that awful day in New York.

We must never forget what happened that day and we must always remember the almost 3,000 people who lost their lives for a senseless religious act. A religion of peace, they call themselves. This is not peaceful. This is cowardly and murder.

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.”

May all these souls rest in peace forever and ever. And may we never forget, lest this happen again.

Written by Jeanette

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