i was at college watching the second plane crash into the tower on live tv

at the time I thought it was a hell of a coincidence

Living in VA. It was my first day on the job with my neighbors business. When I found out I called my hub who just got home from the night shift on the Naval Weapons Station at Yorktown, VA. He got a call saying he had to go back due to the base was going on lock down for a few days. He was a security guard at the time.

That's one thing they wouldn't do here. Because so many people from this area worked in the towers or nearby, they wouldn't even talk about it to the kids. There were lots of kids whose parents didn't come home that night.

I picked up my daughter at school that day and she asked me if something bad had happened at my work. At the time, I worked in a 21 story office building. I told her that I was fine, and she said that mine was the tallest building she knew and that she heard two of the teachers saying that something bad had happened in a tall building.

The Giants play the Broncos this weekend. That was the same Monday Night Football match up that took place the night before 9/11. Brian Griese led the Broncos to a 31-20 win in a game that ended past midnight on the east coast and might be remembered as the game where Ed McCaffrey broke his leg.

A couple other trivia bits: The Number 1 song in the country on 9/11 was "I'm Real" by Jennifer Lopez and the top movie was The Musketeer.

pizzaboy- Thanks for your interesting commentaries and Marycas thanks for the great photos. I hope everyone took a few minutes of silence yesterday in honor of our lost brothers and sisters. I still get sick seeing video of people jumping from the towers.

SB - your description of your daughter's fears perfectly epitomize a child's perception of their world. Every building seems enormous to a child. I remember a few years ago I walked in the door and my 5 year old son came up to hug me as soon as I walked in the door. He started crying. When I asked him what was wrong, he said "I heard that there was a car accident from the radio. I thought you were hurt."

I was at home, listening to news on a-m radio, when the planes hit. Turned on TV immediately. By the time the Pentagon was hit, I was really getting scared. I lived in Summit NJ at the time, and was able to go up a hill, where I saw the smoke rising. Just horrible, then and now.

Thinking about 9/11 brought back a flood of memories. I worked in downtown Manhattan from 1958 through 1969. The area occupied by the WTC was one of the oldest in NYC. There were even some apartments on Greenwich Street near Albany Street, and you could see kids playing stickball in the street on Saturday. Volk's, the best German restaurant in the city, was on Liberty and Greenwich. Cortlandt Street was home to Heinz & Bolet (discount department store); "Radio Row" (Arrow Electronics and others), and Kaufman's Army/Navy Store, where you could buy just about anything that was gov't surplus, including decommissioned 20mm and .50 ammo.

David Rockefeller pulled off a real power play. His Chase Manhattan Bank's HQ building was downtown. The area wasn't doing well financially, and he wanted more businesses to bolster his bank. He arranged for the Port Authority to steamroller the locals to get the WTC built; it helped that his brother was Governor at the time.

I watched the buildings going up, including the famous "climbing cranes" that racheted themselves up the buildings' exterior frames. The deep excavation exposed the concrete tubes that carried PATH trains to and from lower Manhattan and Jersey City--when a train moved through the tube, you could see it vibrating in the pit that was to be the buildings' underground levels.

If I recall correctly, the WTC put so much commercial realty into Manhattan that commerical rents were depressed for years. I think it took more than a decade for the Twin Towers to be fully or mostly rented.

Goombah, first and foremost, glad to see you around. You've been missed.

I just remember hugging my daughter when she said that, because all I could think of was all the children whose parents were not going to come home that night.

TB, I remember you said something once about the crowded commuter lots, all the people who never came home to claim their cars. Heartbreaking.

I think that if you want to capture what it was like in NY in those days, the best film to see is "The Guys" with Sigourney Weaver and Anthony LaPaglia. It's a thoughtful and slow-paced film that captures the sense of shock and then despair that filled those days immediately afterwards, and then the overwhelming need to pitch in and help somehow.

Yes, there were some cars that stood in the lots like gravestones because their owners perished.

For me, there were two heartbreakers:

First, I went to the local hospital in the afternoon to give blood. Corridors were crowded with people who had the same idea. They told me they couldn't take my blood that day, but took my phone number. Called the next day to say they didn't need blood. Reason (unsaid): few survivors.

Also, our local rescue squad set up at the Summit train station because NJ Transit was able to operate out of Penn Station that night. They only treated four people. Same hearbreaking reason.

I remember that it seemed like the church bells and bagpipes never ended. We live very close to a town with lots of NYPD and FDNY. The losses were devastating.