Hard to believe it's been that long.

I was watching Good Morning America when the planes hit. I can still remember every detail of the day.

When I think of that day, I think of Maria, the Italian girl we had begun hosting a few weeks before for a year in the USA. I was at work and she was at school when the planes crashed.

Her parents in Milan heard of it very soon and heard that one of the planes (Flight 93) had crashed near Pittsburgh. We live near Pittsburgh and they were very much worried about their daughter until they were able to make contact because they were not at all sure that their daughter was safe.

Coincidentally, Maria's birthday is Sept. 11th.
Big Al

My wife's birthday is also 9/11. We didn't have much to celebrate on her 40th.

We were trying to find out if one of our friends, who ran the cooling systems of the two buildings, was still alive. We were able to track down the information because his wife's sister lived in our town.

My main recollection was refusing to let the kids go to school. (We are obviously 3 hours later, so everything was happening as we were getting ready for school.) It was sort of an elemental thing, where I just felt like I needed to keep the family together.

Then I realized I didn't want them to be watching the news, so I frantically loaded some sort of VCR movie (remember VCRs? ) and went into the bedroom to try to keep up on things.

At that point I was still working at Intel, and they had acquired a company that was based near the PA crash site. I can't remember the name of the acquisition, but I do remember spending a lot of time on the phone trying to help determine that all the Intel employees associated with that site were safe. (This was before cell phones, so it was a bit challenging.) Fortunately, they all were. Only later did those of us in my small department learn that one of our colleagues' brother died in one of the twin towers. He had just started work at Cantor Fitzgerald.

I clearly recall hearing the BBC radio 4 announcment in disbelief, going out of my office to talk to a colleague (3pm London time); and my anger watching the TV at home later.

I was in San Francisco. I was working from home and I remember a colleague calling me and telling me to turn on the television.