We had just moved out of NYC, and my kids had been to the twin towers. I’m just as glad they didn’t spend the day watching video of the towers collapsing and people jumping out windows.
I don’t think it would have been catastrophic for the kids if their teachers told them, but I think some of the parents might have lost their shit. It was a good risk-reduction move for the school to tell the parents to tell their kids.
we did, barely.
But I remember, shortly after 9/11, every department in the company had to make plans for what to do if there was a catastrophe and we couldn’t get to the office. And my department’s plan was “we’re not critical, we just delay our work”.
(We did stuff like project trends used in pricing. Yeah, it’s better to have an updated look at that stuff. But your customers aren’t in the streets if you fail to update them. Obviously, the claims adjusters needed a more robust plan than we did.)
Well yeah, everything in NYC shut down. I’m not talking about that.
My then-husband reached out to his co-workers in the WTC, and they were all fine as they were not in the towers. It was before I was on any kind of social media and I’d lost touch with all my WTC co-workers but they were not in the towers either, so I assume they were all fine.
At work the President of the subsidiary I was in reached out to the WTC clients (two of whom were in the towers) and said something along the lines of “Hey I know things are super crazy, but whenever you can, please let us know if you’re ok. We’re all worried about you and our thoughts & prayers go to the entire team at ABC Client, Inc. Please let me know how we can help you.” Responses were communicated to the whole subsidiary as well as the parent company. But we wanted a single point of contact as we knew they were already busy telling everyone they were / weren’t ok and dealing with more pressing matters.
I think kids got sent home when Regan got shot. (I was already home)
In sheer coincidence, I was home sick from school when:
Reagan got shot
The Pope got shot
Shuttle blew up
Lennon was shot
Lennon getting shot affected me more than QE2 death but 911 tragedy was on a whole different level.
Wow, I was definitely not sent home from school when Reagan was shot. In fact, I’m not sure I was ever sent home from school early for any reason at all. I can’t think of any, at any rate.
It’s not so much as the kids themselves being traumatized by the event directly but some of the residual effects upon their parents (potentially) and a lot of other adults. That is, helping the kids to understand why some adults are behaving “differently”.
I’ve found that most younger kids are pretty sensitive to these sorts of things (especially with adults that are a big part of their lives). And the “not knowing” what’s going on can easily lead to some kids thinking that it’s them (and not some other event that they really don’t understand).
We didn’t close at 9/11 or after. I was glued to the radio and was kind of surprised that that wasn’t the case with most co-workers. I worked right by O’Hare and it was creepy with silence, as you’d normally hear airplanes flying almost constantly.
The hysteria was interesting. My daughter was in daycare at the time and they moved all the kids because the building was really-not-all-that-close to a 16-story suburban office building of no particular note.
My office was 2 blocks from the WTC. I came out of the subway shortly after the second plane had hit, first saw the long line of emergency vehicles then saw the buildings up close. I was living in NYC at the time, was about a 7-mile walk back to my place. Didn’t see anyone jump or buildings coming down.
My wife at the time was in tears, of course relieved that I was ok. I had cable modem at that time while most other people were still using phone lines, so I could reassure my family that I was ok. Took 2 days before our chief actuary could reach me, relieved to find out there were no casualties from our office. We spend the next several weeks doing a combination of WFH and working out of our NJ office. By November we were working out of a facility in Jersey City right by ISO headquarters. We could have moved back into our office by December but the underwriters wanted to wait till 1/1 renewal season was over before moving back.
that’s insane!
where did you go after you got out of the subway? Did you see the towers come down?
I walked towards our office, at that point there were a whole bunch of people standing and watching. A few minutes later there was word that another plane was at large (this was the one that crashed in PA) so I figured it was best to head back home. I didn’t actually see the towers fall, but I heard a faint noise behind me, looked back and saw that both towers had fallen. Some of the chatter I heard involved comparisons to movies such as The Siege and Independence Day. There was one guy yelling, “The end is near, repent, Jesus can save you, etc…”
which we were still scrambling in 2020 when that finally did happen with covid, but it worked out fine in the end and everyone could wfh. i never worked from home prior to covid.
I remember seeing it on CNN getting ready for work. Dropped my daughter at daycare. They called like an hour later saying they were closing to come get her. Then went over and got my son after school. Other than that day I don’t recall the schools or daycare being closed again. This was a CA suburb that was unlikely to be a target.
I was in middle school for 9/11. Our teachers never told us anything, but kids were getting signed out of school for the day by their parents constantly. One of my friends talked with his parents about what happened but came back to class. Thats when rumors spread and the teachers werent allowed to confirm or tell us anything. I remember walking home after school that day because soccer was canceled and being scared. We did not get the next day off from school.
I was driving into work when I heard on the radio that “a plane hit one of the Twin Towers.” I thought it was some prop-job and was thinking “what kind of idiot would fly into a skyscraper.” And I hoped not too many people got hurt.
When I got to work, I went to the only TV in the building (which was in the basement) and me and a colleague watched the first tower come down. We went upstairs to deliver the bad news and no one believed us.
We went back down to watch the coverage and we saw the second tower get hit and then fall.
When we got upstairs certainly no one believed it happened a second time.
There were only several internet-capable machines (this was 2001 and not many people needed internet access. But the traffic was so slow.
They let us go around 1 PM. I think I took the next day or two off; I don’t really remember if we opened.
I used to be able to see the towers from my kitchen window, and a good part of lower Manhattan from the end of my street which ended in Sandy Hook Bay.
It was eerie with the gaping hole int he skyline and just some faint smoke billowing for days.
I was listening to an irreverent morning show on the radio and assumed the whole thing was a really bad joke. I had just worked in the WTC recently and it was making me angry that they were joking about an event that, if real, would result in thousands of people dying.
When they said the Pentagon had been it I was getting ready to call the radio station and tell them to stop being jerks when someone else called in and told them to STFU and play more music (which was exactly what I was thinking). At that moment one of the DJs was just like “Look man, we’re not news reporters, we’re out of our element here. I’m sorry if you don’t like the way we’re doing this, but our country is under attack and our show has a lot of listeners and we’re just trying to get the information out there for people. We’re just a couple of disc jockeys doing our best here.”
That was when it occurred to me “holy shit are they actually serious?!?!” I turned on CNN and yes, obviously they had been being completely serious the whole time. 
I was at the CAS meeting in New Orleans for 9/11, along with many other actuaries
I was studying when a small plane piloted by a former Yankees pitcher crashed into a building near my apartment. Heard many sirens, turned on the news to see what was going on. Definitely brought back memories of 9/11 for me.
A friend of mine worked at Aon high up in the second tower. After the first plane hit she had to decide whether or not to start making her way down. She made the right choice, survived with 15 minutes to spare.