I used to work at Walmart, and was loading up a cart in the warehouse, when I heard the strangest movie trailer over the radio. I asked the ladies in the back what movie this trailer was for, and they said it wasn't a movie, but the news. I went out to the sales floor and the electronics department, and watched in awe as the towers billowed smoke on the tvs. Then, after learning that the Pentagon had been hit, we watched in horror the scenes of people jumping out windows on the towers. Some customers even glanced at the tv, and went about their shopping as if nothing happened. Some customers and employees were glued to the TV, crying and pulling cellphones out.
My parents weren't going to get home in time from work to get the kids, and counties all over MD and PA were letting the kids go early. I'll never forget driving as fast as I could down I-83, and it was a ghost town. No cars anywhere. On the way to picking up my little brother and sister, I was listening to my local, now defunct, radio station out of DC. It was heartbreaking listening to all of the kids calling in about their parents that worked in the Pentagon, and if the station had any news. Some sounded like they were elementary school age, others in high school.
We were still, as far as the news let on, under attack. I got to my siblings school, grabbed my little sister and brother. Another thing I'll never forget, two fighter jets escorting a jetliner, presumably to the nearest large airport. That's pretty much when it hit me, the days events were very real and not just three hours away in NYC, or an hour and a half away in DC. They were flying low, and we had no idea what was going on. Presumably, there were still more planes in the air that had been hijacked. I was just in awe watching Tom Brokaw on tv. That's all that was on, every channel. Gladly, I did not have any family directly involved, to my knowledge, in 9/11. Except for my uncle, who delivered drywall to New York daily, none of my family or friends were near NYC or DC. We finally found out later that he was okay.
I just read the Horse Soldiers, by Doug Stanton, the story of US special forces teams who were secretly inserted into Afghanistan. This was a tough time for us, but a tough time for the men and women who operated behind the scenes, with little or no recognition at the time.
My thanks and prayers go out to those who gave up their lives on 9/11/01. My thanks and prayers go out to those who rushed to aid the victims of the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. My thanks go out to the people of United flight 93 who "rolled" into action to combat the terrorists. My thanks go to the men and women fighting for our freedoms at home and abroad.
A movie was aired the week or so after 9/11. It was on all the major channels, I believe. Robert de Niro may have been the narrator. It was news footage compiled from the day, and some of the footage was from a news crew that had been assigned to a local fire company. The officers in charge of the local firehouses and police precints were using the lobby of one of the towers as a command center. You hear some very loud thumps hitting the pavement. I'll never forget when the camera panned over to the windows, and all you saw were bodies dropping. People fleeing the flames. That movie will haunt me for the rest of my life. I can only imagine how it was for the people that were there.
It may seam strange to some but the most traumatic part for me was not seeing plane vapor trails in the sky in the following days. I still get queasy if I look up and see no trails. 
