I had a staff meeting at 9 am. Someone told me as I was on my way about the first impact just before I went to the meeting, and I looked at a picture of the 1st tower on CNN. I remember drawing a picture of it on a white board at the beginning of the meeting. One person said terrorism immediately and the rest of us were not sure. This meeting normally went 2 hrs, but around 10am a secretary opened the door and asked "Do you know whats going on?" She told us what had happened in the last hour, and the director broke the meeting so we could see what was going on.
We all went to the fitness center where they had TVs and @ 100 other people where there watching coverage. Was there @ 10-15 minutes and the 1st tower fell. I just remember what a sickening feeling I had in my stomach. At my desk, the search for information of any sort on the web was impossible, because every site was overloaded. I had a ticker on my desktop, and that was the only information I was getting regularly. The strongest emotion I remember that day was helplessness mixed with frustration at not being able to do anything.
I will say one thing to close though, we can not let our lives change to the point where we are watching over our shoulders every day. If that happens, the terrorists have won.
