#2428 | Thursday, September 12th, 2002
Sitting having a drink on my holiday balcony in Tenerife.
The person on the next balcony shouted to me what had happened.
We hired a T.V.and were glued to CNN News for hours,quite frankly not believing what we were seeing.It was like watching a film.
Our elder son had been in N.Y. a week previous from Scotland and he had shown us photo`s of the Towers.

Alastair | 62 | United Kingdom

#2429 | Thursday, September 12th, 2002
I was at my high school in Tahlequah, OK. My first hour class is off the campus so I have to drive to the main high school buildings everyday. As I was going to school I had a local rock station on and they interupted their broadcast music to give news about the attacks. Then they went to the Nation Radio station for the rest of the day. I was kind of shaken because although I live in OK I have seen the towers many times when I would visit family in NY. I along with everyone at my school was scared and anxious since our cable was out and all we had to go on was the radio and about one internet page because the connection was bad. We heard things like " People are jumping from the buildings" and " Run, Run, Run they are collapsing." Imediatly rumors started that we were going to war and gas prices would rise. In my hometown it went from 1.25 to 2.50 in some areas. When I reached my 3rd hour government class our teacher Mrs. Boren had her husband bring us footage of the attack. Later that year my government class went to D.C. on a We the People Competion trip and saw the Pentagon. I was also in Boys State and we talked to many people that were in the attacks. I still cannont believe it happened. It has changed how I look at everything in my life.
Ryan | 17 | Oklahoma

#2431 | Thursday, September 12th, 2002
Thoughts about Barbara Keating, who was on American Airlines Flight 11
His thoughts turn to friend lost year ago

By HARRY F. THEMAL
The News Journal, Wilmington, Delaware
09/09/2002

At 8:46 Wednesday morning, I will join many other Americans observing a long moment of silence to mark the anniversary of the deaths of nearly 3,000 innocent victims of foreign terrorism.

My primary thoughts will be of Barbara Keating, a friend to my wife Betty Ann and me, who was one of the first to die that day. She was a passenger on the first jet to crash into the World Trade Tower in New York City. It is impossible for us to imagine what it must have been like on American Airlines Flight 11 out of Boston to Los Angeles, as the murderers took over that plane.

We got to know Barbara more than 50 years ago when she worked alongside Betty Ann as a medical technologist in the Memorial Hospital, a facility long since gone from Lovering Avenue and Van Buren Street in Wilmington. She was then Barbara Kinsey, a south Jersey gal and a histologist in the hospital lab. We attended her wedding to Bill Keating, visited them and their eventual five children at their home in Framingham, Mass., and kept in touch through the years.

We shared another common interest besides our children. We loved Cape Cod, where we used to summer and where Barbara settled after the death of her husband in 1983.

She eventually began to feel isolated there, particularly in the winter. She fell in love with Palm Springs, Calif., after a 1996 visit. So she bought a condo there in Canyon Springs as her new home and sold her place on the Cape. She continued to summer in a rental at the Cape but decided that 2001 would be the last time. Barbara was on her way home to California on Sept. 11 when she took Flight 11 out of Logan Airport.

Her last summer

A friend who took her to the airport said she brought a photo album chronicling her summer to share during planned visits to her four sons, her daughter and 13 grandchildren around the country.

Barbara Keating was family-minded and civic-minded, as one of her sons summed up in one of the many Internet postings and newspaper articles that were filled with love and sorrow following her death. Another son described her as "smart, tough, professional and funny, someone you would not talk back to."

For 10 years she was executive director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of South Middlesex, outside Boston. Upon her 1991 retirement, the Massachusetts Senate honored her. She had served as the regional representative for all of New England at national meetings, including one in Philadelphia. That was where we last saw her. An official of the organization said after her death, "She was very passionate about our role of trying to provide a missing link in kids' lives."

After she moved to California, she attended Mass daily at St. Theresa's Catholic Church in Palm Springs, where she served as receptionist and did other volunteer work. A two-time survivor of breast cancer, she drove women to cancer treatments in her red Sebring convertible.

On Wednesday morning, a tree will be planted in her memory at the development where she lived. Her church will have a service in her memory and that of the other victims. Palm Springs also will have a community-wide observance.

Perhaps the ultimate tragedy of this wonderful woman's death was described in a letter we received from her daughter, Pat. "Ironically, her next planned adventure, a trip to the Holy Land, was cancelled earlier [in July] for fear of terrorism."

Harry F. Themal has been writing for The News Journal since 1959.

harry | 72 | Delaware

#2432 | Thursday, September 12th, 2002
I was actually sitting in my hairdressers on the afternoon of September 11 2001 when a woman came in and said she had heard on her car radio that a plane had hit the Twin Towers in New York. I presumed it was a small bi-plane that had had an accident. When I returned home an hour later and saw my husband's face as he was watching the news on TV, I knew something awful had happened. The children soon came home from school and joined us in disbelief at what they were seeing on the screen. We sat there for hours just watching, crying, not able to comprehend how 'humans' could do this to other humans. I did not lose a loved one in this tragedy - but I feel as though I have. We will never forget.
Sue | 41 | United Kingdom

#2433 | Thursday, September 12th, 2002
I was studying when my mother called me saying: "come here, look what's happened!!".
I came and saw the first accident...then I watched TV all afternoon, trying to call my boyfriend who was travelling by train.
Then I realised how my problems were so little in front of this absurd sadness...but during that day I was absolutely shocked. It seemed as my world had changed in a couple of minutes.
Sorry if I committed mistakes, but I'm Italian and it's time since I spoke and wrote English.
Thank you for the realization of this site: it's a good way to share our personal experience, unique and terribla for each one.
Francesca | 20 | Italy

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