C. Leonard Schlamp’s 9/11 Memory
As secretary of the USS ESSEX Association I was registering attendees at our reunion in Atlanta, GA when I received word of the attacks.
C. Leonard Schlamp
As secretary of the USS ESSEX Association I was registering attendees at our reunion in Atlanta, GA when I received word of the attacks.
C. Leonard Schlamp
I was lying in bed watching the today show with Matt and Katie when all of a sudden they showed a plan flying into the tower, I thought I was dreaming or it was a simulated trick of some kind. That day did and will always remind me of how life can change so suddenly, the innocent lives that were lost, families torn apart, children without fathers or mothers and mother and fathers without children. Such a senseless act. I learned that America is no longer viewed as a super power and that we too are vulnerable. Let’s learn a lesson and never forget 9/11, let us all be prayful, mindful, steadfast, watchful and do all we can as individuals to keep us all safe.
Terri Croxton
I was at home on that fateful day. I was in the kitchen doing dishes and my then husband called me to turn around, as I did, I saw the plane hit tower two. I couldn’t move. I started crying and shaking and thought to myself why is this happening? My phone started ringing like crazy, friends were calling, family was calling, we all discussed what just happened. A lot of my veteran friends and I started talking about going back in or being possibly recalled back to active duty. I thought of my family, could I leave them again? I was scared but if my country needed me I would have gone back in. All we could do was pray, and pray we did.
Ms. Audy Woodham
The news of attack by terrorists on 11 September 2001 came and startled me awake. I had worked nights in a labor and delivery unit in Cartersville, Georgia. My husband, a newly retired Air Force executive drove the 8th grader and 10th grader to school. My bedtime habit was to go to bed with the Today Show on and “sleep-time” the remote. Typically I fell asleep somewhere in the first thirty minutes or so, the TV went off at some point and I slept until about 2:30 in the afternoon – to make the pick-up at school. On September 11, 2001 I had that I had drifted into a sound sleep when an urgency in the voices of the news team at NBC studios in New York woke me. The experience was truly terrifying. I left the bedroom to find my husband in the kitchen making himself breakfast and oblivious to the events. I told him briefly what I knew and turned on the television so he could make some sense of it.
He knew nothing, of course. We could make no sense of it. I knew I wanted my children home – right then. I dressed and went directly to the school to find traffic all around the school and other parents with the same idea. Parents were hugging kids, kids hugging kids, parents hugging parents. We had a common enemy, but we could not positively identify them.
The patriotism and consuming nature of the tragedy gave me something on which to focus my attention. I was glad to put some of those feelings of fear to rest. I hope to never forget the circumstances and to be involved in change that focuses attention on patriotism.
Susan Spencer, MSN, RNC, IBCLC
Yes I have memories and plenty of thoughts. I am a seventy-five year old Marine. You know the theme…Once a marine always a marine! My first thought was “How dare they!” then…Ok, find out who, then dig them out! Hit them so hard they will be remembering what they did a thousand years from now. We remember the Revolution, the Civil War, the Spanish American, WW1 and WW2, Korea, Vietnam and all the brush wars from the Banana Wars to the Sand Box. Lets never forget the Americans who gave all they had on 9/11. B.C. in Washington State.
Bill Cundiff
I was reading the morning news when I got a call from Berlin, Germany. “What is going on in New York?” “Turn on your TV.” which I did and just in time to see the second plane hit the tower. My thought at the time was, “Lets take these nit wits out!” My President, George Bush, did just that. Thank God for him.
Cammid Arrendell
I took off on a flight to Miami from Washington Reagan at about 0730 on 9/11/2001. While in the air the pilot told us a plane had flown into one of the World Trade Center Towers. He didn’t say what kind of plane so I thought maybe a small private plane. A little longer he said a second plane had hit and I immediately knew it was a terrorist attack. Shortly after we were put quickly on the ground in Charleston SC. As I got off the plane I saw the TV showing the collapse of the twin Towers. It was surreal. I rented the last available car and drove back to DC. I could smell the smoke from the Pentagon as I turned off of 95 onto Rt 1 through Old Town Alexandria. As I pulled into the parking lot at Reagan Airport to retrieve my car and I was met by heavily armed police who told me to come back tomorrow. I drove home around midnight right past the still burning Pentagon. My thoughts were how easily I could have been on one of those planes. As it turns out I lost two of my cousins who worked at the top of the Twin Towers, a classmate from Annapolis who was the pilot on one of the planes that hit the towers, and the plane that hit the Pentagon hit the Navy Command Center that I had commanded just 6 years before. Since then both of my sons have volunteered to serve our nation in the war to bring those responsible to justice. My oldest was an Army Ranger who served in Afghanistan and Iraq as an Army Captain, and my youngest is a 2nd LT in the USMC. We will never forget, and I will never forget how what started as such an ordinary day would change the world we live in so dramatically.
Tom Flanagan USN Retired.
I has just gotten up, watching our local news show while I was getting ready for work when the towers were hit and I was so shocked. I called my bosses at the pharmacy and told them to get the TV out, that the towers were hit. I think the rest of the day was so solemn, we didn’t fill to many prescriptions. I cannot even imagine what I would have done if I was there and survived. And now it’s 10yrs.
Sheri
I was stationed at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) in Washington, D.C., as an USAF enlisted pathology technician. My rank was Master Sergeant. I recall stepping outside earlier that morning and noticing what a clear and delightful fall day seemed to be shaping up.
Once word got out something was going on, Army, Navy, USAF and civilians came into the break room to monitor the TV; initial consensus was that some idiot had flown his plane into the WTC. When the second plane made contact, I looked at the Navy Senior Chief and we both nodded to each other; at that point everyone knew what the deal was.
A couple hours later, we were all in the auditorium, being briefed. The Pentagon had also been hit, and there was word going around that the Department of Labor building had too been hit. The Director asked for volunteers; I was then detailed to the command post where we went to work coordinating the recovery, post-mortem examinations, identification, and forensic evidence gathering for the Pentagon and Shanksville, PA.
Lastly for that day, I noticed that it was relatively easy to drive away from the District, but the DC police checkpoint for vehicles coming in evidently was deliberate in its security procedures; the line coming in was backed up well into Maryland, foreshadowing future airline security procedures. Two weeks later, the detail ended, by then we had relocated to the Dover AFB Port Mortuary.
Chris Sepulveda
MSgt, USAF (Ret)
I’m french and on 9/11 I was travelling in Vietnam. When I saw that horrific attack on TV it was unbelievable, I thought it was a movie, a very bad movie. Then I realised it was real and I was so shocked that I can’t find any right word to describe my feeling. I felt guilty to be so far from our western countries in a former enemy of USA but most of the Vietnamese people around me were shocked too. I had to continue my travel but for the first time I phoned to my family from a stay in a foreign country, I needed to share my pain and sadness. I’ve been loving USA since I was a teenager and even after 10 years I still feel a pain that’s like a scar in my hart. In 2007, I’ve been in New-York and the first place I wanted to go to, was Ground Zero. I needed to be with American people around that place, watching pictures and testimonies in the little church, I cried, I felt very bad but it was necessary for me, I had to go there. Still, each time I see videos about 9/11, I feel a great injury and I can’t help crying. I ‘ll never forget all those victims, what our enemies did to us and how precious are freedom and democracy. I thank so much american soldiers who fight to protect our freedom and our way of life, I also think to their families who know the expensive price of democracy. Next 9/11, I’ll be with you in thought.
Anne Garbe-Cadart
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