I remember mentally noting that when my younger son left for school.

I was watching the Today Show when it was cut into by local news. They showed the North Tower in flames and had an eyewitness on the phone that said that he saw a small plane hit the building. I was sick to my stomach. My older son was home from school and I called him in. When the second plane hit, I told my son that we were under attack. My ex-husband works in Midtown and I tried calling him at his office and I was told he was out for a meeting. I had no idea where. My son and I were on tenterhooks until he called a couple of hours later. His meeting was in midtown but a fellow worker's wife worked in the WTC, and his co-worker was going to walk downtown to find her. Thanks goodness she got out and miraculously, he actually met her on the street as he was walking downtown and her up. It took my ex 12 hours to get home.

About an hour after the planes were called down from the skies. my son and I heard a plane and went out on my deck and saw the plane flying due south. My son asked me where Indian Point Nuke Plant was, and I showed him south and to the west. We held her breaths until we saw the plane veer toward the east. I told him that the plane must have been sent down to NYC to patrol the skies.

We were just a bit east of the flight path of the two planes that hit the towers. For several months, every time we heard a plane, we would go out and see where it was going. A form of PTSD.

One thing that I have never heard answered. On the flight path down to NYC, both planes were minutes away from a NORAD base, and why weren't jets sent from Stewart Air Force Base to intercept those flights?

Both my sons had friends whose uncles were firefighters that died that day.