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The Frightening Day the Sky Came Down in New York City
Only the day of JFK’s assassination remains as clear as that day in 2001 and the woman who would tell me her first-hand experiences.
The day was another September morning in the office until the phone rang. A friend frantically told me that a plane had hit one of the Twin Towers in downtown Manhattan. We had nothing other than a small transistor radio in the office. Someone turned it on and fumbled to find news; it was a Bloomberg stocks radio. All of us huddled around, listening intently for details.
How could that be? The sky was clear, and nothing like this had happened since the time a plane hit the Empire State Building. We knew about the 1993 truck bomb in the other Manhattan building, but this wasn't very comforting. A plane had flown into the Twin Towers. Unthinkable.
Then the unimaginable news came over the crackling radio — the second tower was hit. Now we knew it was no misguided pilot error. Terrorists had struck New York City.
The faces around the radio turned ashen as someone said, “It’s an attack. It’s a terroristic attack!” We fell silent and wondered what to do. Management quickly sent word that we should all leave and go home for the day.
