Jake Owens

I remember waking up for school that morning and we had a proctor kid living with us at the time and he was watching the news, but I really did not think anything of it that morning. I got on the bus for school at Lakeridge Jr. High. My first class of the day was TLC. When I got there all the kids were all talking and messing around and I thought the teacher was not there yet. After a few minutes I realized that the TV was on and the teacher was watching what was happening. Slowly we all quieted down and started watching because we knew something serious was happening. While watching the report the 2nd plane hit. Once that happened I started to worry about what would happen next.

My first thoughts were about an attack here. I worried about attacks on my school or the university that my mother worked at. I also worried about my father who is a police officer and what would happen if there was an attack here or if he would go to New York to help like so many other police officers, fire fighters, and paramedics did. I do not remember anything else from that day because there was not really anything that happened other than watching the coverage of the attack or discussing it in classes or at home but I will never forget that morning.

Richard Hartley

That morning stated out very routine and I was just getting ready for work when my business partner called ma and told me I needed to turn on the TV. I sat down on the couch and was dumbfounded by what I was watching. It was so amazing and almost surreal and I was of course engrossed.

Quite frankly it made me mad. It made me angry that we would be attacked in such a way and that we were not prepared for this type of scenario. It became both a riveting and frustrating experience for me. I delayed going to work because I wanted to take in the experience. I had turned it on after the first plane and i actually watched the 2nd plane hit. It just totally cause me to have feelings of sadness, of anger, of frustration, and of helplessness. After going to work it was the topic of discussion for the rest of the day.

Our Family had some additional concern because our only daughter was serving an LDS mission in New York City when the attack happened. This was not an extremely high level of concern because I knew not only that the church would mobilize very quickly to make sure the missionaries in the area were OK but also because she was currently on the other side of the river in the Queens area.

Denise Laughridge

I worked at Morgan Stanly Dean Witter Discover at the time but I did not work until 12:30pm that day so i was still in bed and my husband was in the shower when my Mother called, which was very unusual, she asked if I had the TV on. I turned on the TV and saw the replay of the first plane hitting and I asked what preview of what movie is this? and she said its real, this is happening to us here. As we were talking about what was happening I watched the 2nd plane hit. I was fearing that we were in war and not knowing it was our own planes that were hijacked. I stayed by the television and was really frightened about what was going on. My first reaction was to go out and get a gun because we did not have one.

In the meantime I had to go to work and we had a lot of employees in those buildings. Morgan Stanley had a little over 2,900 employees in on 2 different floors, one on each tower. (Floors 24 and 76)

Later in the day I left work to go to the wedding of a very dear friend who also worked at Discover. We were sad because we wanted to be happy for this wedding but we were all still fearful for what was going on. You could tell that even they were happy to be married but also worried at the same time. It was sad that such a happy day was marred by tragedy.

After we left the wedding I got the call from Morgan Stanly to come back in to work to see if we can locate some of the employees we could not get a hold of. We called all the numbers we had on record for all these employees to see who would answer. We also sent up a crisis hotline for friends and family to call in to help locate them. I then started the skip-trace process to look up neighbors and family members to call to try and reach the employees who were still missing. In the end we found that 10 employees died on one of the planes and 9 died in the buildings. 19 out of 2,900 employees was very good compared to many other companies effected by the attack. I was working on this straight for 36hrs trying to reach these employees. As part of my service during the crisis the company gave myself and everyone who helped that day a special award and a dinner to thank us for our dedication in a time of crisis.

Becca Smith

I was 11 years old, in 6th grade, when everything happened. I remember that we got a phone call that morning and my mom started freaking out and calling my grandparents and all of her brothers and sisters trying to get a hold of my uncle Ron because nobody knew where he was. My mom did not want to deal with us so she sent us to school. I was in the 6th grade trailers at Suncrest Elementary and instead of the usual class my teacher turned on the TV, that's when we saw the news and I pieced together what was going on. The reason my Mom was freaking out was because my uncle Ron works in the Pentagon and where the plane hit was where his office was and nobody has heard from him. I don't remember doing anything in school that day because it was all taken up by what was going on.

We did not hear from my uncle Ron until about 10pm that night because he had to worry about his team before he could worry about himself and he had spent the day tracking them down. His office was hit by the aircraft but he was not inside because his office was being remodeled that day. It was supposed to be remodeled the week before but it was pushed back. That delay saved his life.

After September 11th I learned to appreciate my family a lot more because you never know when they will be gone.