Hi Cathy,   That day started very quiet for me until my father called, "where's your mother?!"  My response was - at work (duh).  "Is she at the Pentagon today?"  I don't know, why?  This is when I turned on the TV shortly after 9:40-9:45 am.  My mother walked through the front door around 10:20am.  She had been in the Rosslyn office and didn't wait for the military to release the civilians.  She sent her people home immediately.   I remember all of the "where is so-and-so?" questions which followed the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995.  There's still a crack in the wall in my father's home from the impact of that blast.  I had one cousin who worked in the Murrah building.  She was going to be late to work because her son was fussy and perhaps getting sick.  He would have been in the childcare center across the street.  Another cousin had just entered the local highway after leaving the Marine recruitment center (in the Murrah building) where he worked parttime.  Windows were blown out of a nearby office building when one uncle worked.  It took several hours before all members of my extended family (lots of government employees) were accounted for.  That day hits home.   I remember the fear in the surrounding areas of Washignton, DC, when the "DC sniper" was active.  One of the latter shootings occurred in the parking lot of a local Home Depot where my mother had stopped to shop that day.  That was freaky.   Then there was the April 19, 1993 tragedy in Waco, TX.  I was living in Indiana at the time, but the Branch Davidian compound was not terribly far from where I lived in Waco during graduate school.  That was the first time I felt indirectly attached to something tragic which had happened and reported on the national news.  It was definitely not the last time.   Tragedy is everywhere.  So it seems....at times.