Where were you on these days?

I am always surprised where people were on certain days. My dad being an American and my mum being German I have been in some extra ordinary places. In 1963 I was with my dad in Dallas when JFK was shot, all I remember was my dad protecting me. At Thirteen it was very scary for me.

In 1966 I was in Wembley Stadium when England won the World Cup. I was with both my mum and dad.

On September 11th 2001 I was in New York, another scary time with people panicking all around and yes me and dad were covered in dust a seen on TV.

They were three very memorable days for me.

 

A regular Forrest Gump.

 

I remember seeing 9/11 and thinking it was the news replaying the time some guy blew up a bomb in the WTC garage. Then I saw the second plane hit and knew something was not right. Shortly after my friend was banging on my door and told me he just saw that the pentagon was hit when he was at 7-11 and didn't know about the towers. This happened about 2 months after we all decided to join the Army. Pretty much sealed the deal.

 

I wasn't born on the first two dates you mentioned. On 9/11/01 I was in school. It was a weird day even before that happened.

 

Thankyou for the replies. Of course I was at other popular dates, however these three are the most popular.

 

When JFK was shot I was young enough to be sitting on the floor in my pajamas wondering why Yogi the Bear wasn't on when it should have been and why my parents were watching what they were watching on television in horror.

I'll use a different date in the 1960's. On July 20, 1969 I was again sitting and watching television in the home of some friends of my grandparents as Neil Armstrong made his Giant Leap for Mankind. What was very nearly equally of interest was listening to my grandmother tell her friends that what we were seeing wasn't really happening, that it was instead a Hollywood stage set with actors.

I live in Texas and on 9-11 I was at home doing some record keeping work when a client called me up and began babbling about the United States having been attacked. I privately wondered just how drunk he had to be that early in the day in order to experience a hallucination that extreme, and then he finally got it through to me that . . . the United States really had just been attacked. I turned on the television time to try and comprehend what had happened and what was still happening only to see the second plane slam into the other tower about seven minutes later.

 

Jfk, watching tv wondering when my cartoons were coming back on, who was this president that was messing up my day...

66 WC, probably still asleep...

9/11, definitely asleep...

 

Born in 1964, therefore I was not alive at the time of the Kennedy assassination. A very fuzzy recollection of watching the Apollo 11 Moon landing on television, but not a clear memory of the event at all. As a military reservist I was put on alert, within 48 hours after the events of 9/11, with a phone call to prepare for an order to be activated. After about 30 days of being placed on alert my specific unit was activated. This doesn't mean I'm on a plane bound for Afghanistan, it just means our unit was mobilized to prepare for a possible deployment. A lot of hurry up and wait sort of thing. I would say the events of 9/11, had the bigger direct impact on my life than the others.

 

'63-Just leaving for work, watched the replays for a few, and then went about my day.

9/11-Dropping off job app, heard people in the office talking about a plane crash (1st tower strike), then as I was leaving, everyone realizing it was deliberate. Driving home had to pass right by one of the locations on terrorist top 10 list, (no, I won't say), exceeding the speed limit in a definitely unsafe manner, hoping it wasn't the next target.

 

Compelling story falena, thank you for sharing with us.

 

You just brought tears to my eyes. 9-11 had a profound impact on me; and sometimes reading something like you just wrote about it touches me to the core. Thank you for that.

 

My only "Forrest Gump" moment, as Lil Mike's rumorous interjection alludes in ascribing the OPs witness to historical events, was a few days after Iraq signed a cease-fire agreement basically ending the Persian Gulf war in March of 1991. I was tasked with "chauffeuring" an Austrian general via a USAF Lear jet from Riyadh, the Saudi capital, to Kuwait City. On approach into the Kuwaiti airfield, the skies were thick with jet-black smoke pouring from scores of Kuwaiti oil fires. An apt description would be the apocalyptic Inferno scene as written in Dante's Divine Comedy. It looked like hell...quite literally, at least as imagined through literature.

We land and I escort the general and his entourage out of the airplane, and up strolls General Schwarzkopf, himself. I'm standing a few feet to the left of the Austrian general and throw a salute towards General Schwarzkopf that would make a Marine proud. I mean a snap to attention, right out of the manual salute. I get eyeballed by General Schwarzkopf, lo and behold he returns it (a salute) and then goes on about the business of greeting and escorting the Austrian general and his contingency, to bigger and more important matters than I was there for. The airfield was surrounded by Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Abrams tanks and Apache gunships...needless to say I never felt safer in my life landing on foreign soil. All in all...my "Forrest Gump" moment stumbling into a part of history.

Gone, and forgotten by most, but something I'll never forget.

Good evening.

 

That's impressive. I imagine that the only thing more startling would have been to encounter then General Powell ambling about.

 

I was in 5th grade when Kennedy was assassinated. The Principle came in and told our teacher who then told us. Shortly afterwards a TV was rolled into the room and after the rabbit ears were correctly pointed to gain reception, we watched the live broadcast the rest of the day. The next day the first ever jet landing occurred at our local airport. It was a Braniff Airlines
plane out of Texas. We saw Dad aboard and it took off for Dallas.

On 9/11 I was at work in West Jersey and heard it on the radio. Due to many people being from the NYC area, we were sent home for the rest of the day. Before we left we went to the roof of our building and could see the smoke from the towers.

As for the World Cup in 1966, never heard of it at the time. But I was at Shea Stadium for the last game of the series in 1969.

 

I was studying for a test when the radio announcer said there was a statement from Dallas. I turned on my tape recorder and let it run until the tape emptied. Everyone was stunned, and for most of us it was our first experience with mortality. If the president could die, so could we. I thought the life I had planned was over, and it was. Three years later, I was drafted but since I had already talked to the Air Force, I went with them. One good thing that came of it is that I helped save a life. Its funny about fate. What had Kennedy lived, and LBJ was not in a position to enlarge the Vietnam War? Maybe I would never have served. Would that young man have died without me around?

My brother and I had planned to hike in our loess hills. He had gotten a day off, but there was the carnage during the 9/11 attacks. I persuaded him to continue our hike because we could not help anyone where we were. We were gone most of the day with a transistor radio to tell us the news. A contrast to the blood and terror was what transpired in our yard. Thousands of migrating Monarch butterflies were flitting about the yard and clinging to trees. We had never seen so many butterfys in one place and never did again.