Maybe its been over done (if thats possible) but as I sit here today my mind continues to drift back to that tragic day five years ago. Its especially meaningful to me today as I just got an email from my previous investigator (and dearest friend) that his return from overseas with his reserve unit is imminent.

I was home on maternity leave with my oldest and had "slept in" after a long night. When I woke up I turned on the news just as they were showing the second plane hit. At first I thought it was a movie advertisment, but then realized from the sound of the newcasters voice that it was real. I called my husband, who was a police officer and member of the SWAT team, immediately. I remember his voice so well as he told me not to worry, but they had all been put on full alert and that he might not be able to come home for awhile. I spent the rest of the day glued to the television and remember that my normally colicy baby was quiet all day. Still brings tears to my eyes and pain to my heart.
God bless all who were there that day and all those fighting to make sure that there is not another day like it.

I was in court working on a lawsuit involving the misrepresentations of our client's resume to a company in Thunder Bay, Canada particularly interested in whether or not our client had certain qualifications regarding his SAP programming capabilities. The judge declared a mistrial when she took a recess after receiving a note from her court coordinator.

I left the Dallas civil courts building and stopped by my parents' house on the way back to our office. After watching the news for an hour or so, my boss called and asked if I was coming in for the afternoon. I went in for an hour but didn't stay. (Yes, my boss took vacation time from me when I left and went back to my folks' house.)

After some very questionable decisions in our office over the next month, (which I'll elaborate on this week in Padre to anyone with the prerequisite beverage requirement) I quit and applied at every prosecutor's office around the State. I caught on in Granbury by March of '02.

I was in Houston traffic trying to get to school for my last year of Law School. I turned on the radio and they announced the first plane had hit the Trade Center. At first, the radio jockey thought it was a small private plane such as cessna or something and that it was a horrible accident. When he came back and said it was a jet liner - I knew it couldn't be an accident.

I drove on in stunned silence listening as everyone else did to the horror that was that day. When I got to school, there were TV's all over the UH law center set up to monitor events. No one much cared about school that day - it didn't seem to matter. Even today - it hardly seems real.

[This message was edited by Scott Holden on 09-11-06 at .]

They say that when events of this nature happen, the memory of the second you were told never fades. People who were alive when Pearl Harbor was hit can still tell you exactly what they were doing. I can still recall when I heard about the space shuttle blowing up vividly.

For the Towers memory, here it is.

I was sitting in my office when the misdemeanor prosecutor came in with wide eyes to say his wife had just called to say someone flew a plane into the Towers. While everyone else was trying to get our TV which didn't have cable hookup working, I got online and found a news site showing a replay of the first hit. I got in early enough that I saw the second hit live. Everyone spent most of the day huddled around my laptop. I got word that my wife's cousin had been scheduled for a meeting in the Towers and it had been cancelled at the last minute. That shook me really bad and really brought it home. Amazing how 5 years has not faded the shock. I can't imagine how it feels for those who lost family and friends or who were at the site for rescue operations.

I have always remembered a comment from news coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing. A newscaster mentioned that the rescue dogs they were using had to be taken off the site after an hour or so because they became too distraught and had to spend times away to get calmed down again.

Was heading to the shower to get ready for my 9:30 class - can't remember which it was but is was with Prof. Valencia.
The Today Show crew was talking (kinda lightly - not real worked up - about a report of a fire that word had was caused by a plane, no confirmation on that, but sightseeing planes were not uncommon flying around the New York skyline and they hesitated to speculate that it might be one of them. Cameras were showing the smoke coming out when all of a sudden you see a airliner plow into the other. I can still recall the stunned "what tha... Was that a..." then complete stunned silence. One of them confirmed that it wasn't a replay or airing of the first plane hit. Other one said No, it couldn't be because you could see the smoke from first as the footage showed the 2nd plane hitting. More silence and Then the reporters got it together.
Went to school. Watched more in break room as they reported the first tower had collapsed. Went to class and not long in someone came in and said a tower had fallen. When they told him/her that they had reported that a while earlier, they said that the 2nd was reported to have gone down. Class was cancelled.
I can still see the second plane hitting and hear the stunned silence.

I was in my second year of law school in Chicago, and I'd gone in early as I usually did to check my email and such before my Election Law class. Someone came into my chatroom and said a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. I thought it was referring to a little Cessna or something, but I went looking for a news report. All of the news websites were blocked, but I finally got on Sky News out of the UK and saw the report that the second tower had been hit. When I realized what was actually happening, I packed up my stuff and went home.

I got home and turned on the TV to see a report that the Pentagon had been hit, along with a newscrawl along the bottom saying the Sears Tower was a potential target and they were considering evacuating downtown Chicago. (I lived about five blocks from the Sears Tower at the time.) I immediately called my dad, and the first words out of his mouth were, "This means war."

I had to keep my TV on a local news channel in case they decided to actually evacuate Chicago, and all the main affiliates were broadcasting live from NY. So I watched WGN news and stayed online the whole day to get updates from the news sites. The people in my chatroom dividing up all the news channels so we had at least one person watching every channel and sharing the reports from all over. There was so much panic and rumor going around -- I remember hearing "confirmed" reports that both the Sears Tower and the Seattle Space Needle had been hit.

I'll always remember looking out my window, which looked out over the main highway through Chicago (I-94) and a bunch of parking lots in the business district. They were always jam-packed on weekdays, but I remember looking out and seeing them just utterly empty. Downtown was just deserted that day.

I was at work in the Attorney General's office. We had the conference room TV on and intermittently we would all gather in there to see the news coverage. I remember feeling a slight pain/envy?? in my heart that I was no longer connected with the military anymore. Before going to law school I spent seven years in the Navy, and eight years with Boeing as a contractor on the B-1B simulators. I remember the connection all of us at Boeing felt during the first Gulf War. I do miss that part of the military - the sense of pride in serving your country.

The planes hit the WTC during my morning commute to work in Fort Bend County. For some reason, I didn't hear anything on the radio to alert me. Tuesday was our trial docket day and as I was walking into the court chambers, nobody was around which was strange. But I did hear a television on in the jury room. My court partner told me "have you heard...". I briefly saw the tv before we continued with docket, mostly resetting cases. After I got back to see the TV almost 90 minutes after it all started, I was dumbfounded to understand what had occurred. It wasn't conceviable in my mind that the towers could or would fall. God bless us all.

I was in my quarters while on a special tour of duty helping a friend of mine at the Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota legal office. I started there September 10, 2001 looking forward to a relatively uneventful three weeks of work and a chance to renew old acquaintances from my military days. The second plane hit after I got to the office. We immediately knew we were in a war and proceeded to take action to prepare our bomber crews, maintainers, security personnel and all supporting staff. Not one person flinched in knowing what to do. It was amazing to see that all that training everyone hadjust kicked in and people just went to work on the mission at hand. No one showed any fear whatsoever that I saw.

Ellsworth geared up the B-1 bomber force in a hurry. I cannot remember working longer days in my life, but still they flew by. After I got back home to East Texas I was notified that I was about to be mobilized to active duty. Shutting a practice down on short notice was the toughest challenge. Having since been called back more than a couple of times, I'm getting pretty good at it. Most of the judges have been understanding of the circumstances.

I'm an old guy in military terms. What impressed me were the young troops that stepped right in without hesitation.

We often deal with folks that make poor choices in life and now have to face the consequences. Sometimes being part of the criminal justice system makes us cynical. Rest assured that there are other young people out there that would really make you proud.

[This message was edited by B Cole on 09-11-06 at .]

Normally I watch the morning news on TV before going to work, but for some reason I didn't do that on 9/11. When I got to work, my investigators had it on and, of course, we were glued for hours after that.
The shock was no less than November 1963, when I was a rookie in training with the Dallas Police Department, and while returning to the Police Academy from a class held on North Beckley Avenue (near where Oswald shot Officer Tippett), heard over the police radio about shots being fired at the motorcade. Our schedule for the remainder of the day (which was to visit the Crime Lab at Parkland Hospital) was cancelled and we all remained at the Academy in case we were needed somewhere. My first assignment out of the Academy was to spend several weeks under the watchful eye of the City Auditor recording the donations sent in to the Tippett and Oswald families.
Then in 1981, I had just returned to my apartment from law classes to learn that an attempt had been made on President Reagan's life.
These are all frozen moments in time for me, along with the good times: Glenn in orbit, man landing on the moon, the birth of my daughter, and so on. In between may be a bit of a blur, but the shock of all of those evil events have not lessened...nor should they.

I have no trouble recalling where I was. Just two weeks earlier, I had undergone surgery for ovarian cancer. Bob and I flew to Houston to MD Anderson for a tumor conference, and returned on September 10. The morning of the 11th, I was trying to focus on the work that had backed up while in the hospital and out of town when another official came in and told me.

The day has always been a poignant one for me; such a tragedy on the day that I was told I would probably be a survivor.........

Larry Urquhart, a Brenham attorney and former fellow Harris County prosecutor, was in my office to discuss a case he had when I got the word. Larry's son was working in New York City and he called and found out he was okay. It seems unreal even as I think about it today.

Was running late. Wife was 5 months pregnant. I was getting ready for work when she said one of the towers was on fire. I walked in just as the other plane hit live on NBC. Watched for a while then decided I'd better get on in and work on a big brief. She was mad. The towers fell during my commute. I don't think we got any work done for days.

I was almost to work when news broke that a "small plane" had flown into one of the towers. I had a trial docket which was cancelled and then after catching one showing of the tragedy on TV in the judges office, picked up my school age child and met the wife at home and hunkered down.

And thanked God it wasn't as bad as it could've been and that it stopped. And mourned the dead and grieved for their families like the rest of the nation.

I remember the first man on the moon, the murders of Bobby Kennedy and MLK, Watergate, Apollo 13, a lot of really bad hurricanes like Cecilia and Alicia and many other happy and sad moments. But 911 was the Pearl Harbor of our generation. We for several generations have been spared the horror of full out war, or a horrific event like 911. It is the day that for most of us is indelibly burned in our memory.

I lived in the oil business corridor in West Houston then, on the west side near Memorial and I-10 and Hwy. 6, and it was interesting how private oil employers immediately sent employees home and most governmental agencies in the Houston area did not.

And I cursed terrorism. Vigorously.

I had actually been at the court of appeals in Fort Worth on a civil case (before my DA days) and someone had passed along some misinformation - the first thing I heard was that the Pentagon had been bombed. It wasn't until after my colleague had done her oral argument that we were able to hear the news on the radio about the planes. At first, I was glad it wasn't actually a bomb, and then it hit me, "Holy Sh**!!!! PLANES!?!?!?!?" Which of course, was suddenly way worse than I had originally thought.

I was asleep in my dorm room (mountain time)when I heard banging on my door. I stumbled to the door a classmate burst in and turned on the TV. I was just starting to focus, on this burning building, I see this plane smash into the other building and people on the street scream. I just could not put it all together for a few moments.

My classmate told me classes were cancelled. We sat there all day and all night glued to the TV. I think I left for 20 min to get us some burgers while she stayed there to tell me everything I missed.

I was working on a homicide with several other officers. We were told by the office staff about the first plane. We watched for a short time and had to pull ourselves away to continue on the case. After the second plane hit, it was almost a lost cause. We were so engrossed in the television coverage it was almost impossible to get back on track. Stunned is the only feeeling I remember.

I was driving down an FM road to work and listening to a sports talk show. The hosts were describing what they were seeing on ABC TV when the second plane hit.

After a few moments of frantic description, one of the hosts said, "This is now a military operation."

I walked into the office five minutes later and said, "I think we are under attack."