During the shift last night, it occured to me that I was getting my first tattoo on 9/11 rather than "Thursday" which I didn't coincide(third shift will do that to ya). Unfortunately, it was already planned out to be the Worcester 6 tattoo, and I didn't want to go and change things up on her all of a sudden. So I went ahead with the planned tattoo, and I'm planning on getting my FDNY 9/11 tattoo next year on 9/11. You can check out what my tat looks like by clicking on the post title above...
Anyways, I digress. After my three hour event of self-torture and pain(really it wasn't that bad), I came home to finally take a nap for an hour or two, and then awoke to watch a show that I had planned on watching for the past week and a half. The History Channel had shown previews of "102 Minutes of 9/11", and I had to watch it. Now, I own the Naudet Brothers documentary and several other 9/11 memorial DVD's, but this show was a non-narrated documentary of video clips, combined from personal home videos of people that were there, along with professional videographers that happened to catch this crazy, horrible, outrageous, yet brave turn of events on that beautiful September morning.
To this day, September 11th, 2001 feels like it was just yesterday. I remember going to NJ every year when I was a kid to visit my Aunt and Uncle. And every year, we'd take a day to go to the city. My favorite thing out of the trip every year, was to go to the WTC, take the express elevator up to the observatory, and find one of those empty benches that you'd step down to a lowered section of the floor near the windows. I used to love to lean over, put the top of my head against the window, and look down. You couldn't see the bottom of the building, it was like an optical illusion, like the building was leaning severely to which ever way you were leaning. The vehicles looked like miniature matchbox cars the size of ants, and people looked like little specks walking around. I even had a few chances to get up to the roof deck observatory. I absolutely loved the buildings. I could have sat there for hours, just watching life go by.
Back to tonight, I though the show was perfectly edited, with 911 calls, news footage, FDNY radio transmissions, and the videos of 9 people who documented the event. Amazing now matter how many times I see footage of 9/11, I'm always captivated by it, can't take my eyes off the tv screen, have the FDNY audio tapes saved on my computer and i-pod, and I can't help but think about what the people who perished, went through. There were several events during the show that got to me emotionally. Mainly it was when a battalion chief called dispatch for a run down of what he was getting for the 3rd alarm assignment. The dispatcher read the list, as it went on for what seemed like 5 minutes. Also, when they had audio tape of a crew from Ladder 15(cued with a video shot of the building), talking to another officer who had located several pockets of fire, and casualties/fatalities on the 78th floor of the south tower, just prior to it's collapse.
And the other was at the end of the documentary, when they interviewed the 9 videographers, and one of them talked about when he was walking away from the WTC while he captured a group of firefighters walking towards the scene. It was 19 firefighters from Engine 228 out of Queens. You see, fire engines normally only fit 4-6 firefighters on the truck, but 19 guys piled onto the truck when the call came in during their shift change, in order to "take the box in." All 19 firefighters perished in the WTC collapses, it's the last known footage of them all alive...
I can keep going and going about 9/11, but I'll spare you the eye cramps from reading, and just suggest to you, that if you ever get the chance to watch the documentary, do it. It gives a raw look at what it was like to be there, how that day changed world history, and it will remind you of what you felt that beautiful September day....
