Did 9/11 change your life?

[Martinjmpr]

Just curious here about the effects of 9/11 on people's lives. I don't mean the things we all have to deal with - TSA, terror warnings, increased security at public events, etc, but things that affected or changed the course of YOUR life directly.

I was in my 2nd year of law school at the University of Wyoming. I remember we had a Civil Procedure class that morning and of course the attacks were all anyone was talking about. The professor (a renowned civil rights lawyer named Joel Selig) asked the class if we wanted to have a regular class or not and said that although he would prefer to have class, he would respect the wishes of the students. Ultimately, all classes were cancelled at the law school for that day (and probably for the entire university although I'm not sure about that.)

I was 39 and had served just over 10 years of active duty with the Army, I got out in 1996 to go back to college, and had already been mobilized once out of the Army Reserve to deploy to the Former Yugoslavia in 1997 - 98. In 2001 I was in the Colorado National Guard's 5th Battalion, 19th Special Forces Group out at Watkins Armory, serving as the detachment sergeant for the Military Intelligence detachment.

Our unit didn't actually get called up to active duty until almost a year later in the Summer of 2002, so I was able to finish my 2nd year of law school. Due to some paperwork SNAFUs I didn't end up deploying until January of 2003 to Afghanistan. I spent most of my time at Bagram AF (Camp Vance, which was the CJSOTF sub-camp) and didn't see any "action" although it wasn't unusual to hear shooting off in the distance (typically that was one group of Afghanis fighting another group - we called it "green-on-green" fighting.) I spent my last couple of weeks at the KMTC (Kabul Military Training Center) and flew out of what is now Hamid Karzai airport (at the time it was just called Kabul International Airport.)

By June I was back home and planning on resuming my studies, even though my class, the 2003 graduating class, had just graduated.

I transferred from the Colorado National Guard to the Wyoming National Guard (115th Field Artillery brigade) and did one more semester of law school.

Then in December, 2003 my Wyoming guard unit was mobilized for Operation Iraqi Freedom and we deployed in January of 2004 to Kuwait. We spent almost all of 2004 in Kuwait, didn't leave until December 11th. Most of the people in my unit took a "mid tour" leave but I didn't want to, so I spent my whole ~ 11 months in Kuwait.

2004 was basically the year that Iraq "blew up" so while we didn't have any combat in Kuwait, there was a lot going on next door in Iraq. I was all over Kuwait from Camp Arifjan in the South to Camp Doha outside Kuwait City, back to Arifjan, out to a small satellite camp called Truckville, then up to Camp Buehring (formerly Camp Udairi near the Iraq border) and finally back to Arifjan.

We demobilized just before Christmas of 2004 and in January 2005 I went back to school for my last semester, graduating with the 2005 class. I can honestly say that I can't name a single person from my graduating class - I just wasn't in it long enough.

The Kuwait deployment wasn't much fun but there were a couple of good things that came out of it. I ended up getting a promotion I'd likely never have gotten if I'd not deployed. And since I didn't spend my money on stupid stuff, I ended up with a nice nest egg to live on.

In March of 2005 I submitted my retirement papers to the National Guard as I had, at this point, over 20 years of creditable service. I retired at the end of 2005.

Anyway, it's unquestionable that 9/11 changed the trajectory of my life. It would have been much different if I hadn't been mobilized and gone overseas twice in 2003 - 2004.

[Bailey Guns]

Not for me directly. But my youngest son went into the Air Force in 2003 and became a JTAC. He did 7 tours between Iraq and Afghanistan. He has just over a year and a half to retirement now. Seems like just last summer I was watching him graduate from Basic Training in San Antonio and now he's an E7 in Alaska. So his chosen life direction was directly impacted by 9/11 and, in turn, that has had a pretty profound effect on my life.

[FoxtArt]

I was on track to become a pilot and had logged a reasonable amount of hours for being in high school. At the time, an ATP was averaging $144,000/year IIRC, there were several motivations, travel was a big one.

Among other drastic changes, it completely hollowed out the industry where only the most seasoned of pilots even had a job at all, and there was no entry anymore as a commercial pilot for a long time after that. I never flew again.

[Great-Kazoo]

yes, to a point.

[clodhopper]

I would argue that it has made changes in everyone's life, some more (see OP) than others. But since it is impossible to go back in time and re-live the last 20 years for comparison, it is exceedingly hard to quantify. There have been so many changes in life, government and more that occurred over long time periods and have become simply accepted by us that we dont even think about the impact or what life might be like if something like 9/11 hadnt occurred.

[eddiememphis]

Nope

Not directly

[Irving]

Nope

Not directly

Same here. It should have though. I should have enlisted. Maybe. I don't know.

[fitterjohn]

Interesting question. My boss had actually just sent an email to everyone in my branch talking about this and sharing his experience of that day. This is part of mine:
That is a day I will never forget, I think that event very much changed the way I view the world today and think of it often. I was in the passenger seat of my dads work van at the stop sign of troutman and beaver creek going to Rocky Mountain high to be dropped off For about my 3rd week of being a high school at 15. My dad was speechless and I couldn?t comprehend the damage over the radio, I was imagining a small Cessna single prop that accidentally hit a building( I had no idea what the trade towers were). Got dropped off at school and went to sit in class and the tv was on to much horror. The bell rang and my teacher said there will be no class today this is more important and didn?t say another word for almost 20 mins then turned around and just looked out at us and simply said ?some of you are going to war?. Over the next few years many many people I knew went to fight and some spent the next 10 years only knowing high school and war. I will never forget the news not taking about politics just talking about being Americans and everyone coming together. I think that was one of the first times I ever truly felt American pride and understood it.

I think that event will forever be ingrained in my memory and every day is a reminder to never take a day for granted, that we are not guaranteed a tomorrow.

So I guess I would say yes it did directly change my life. Like Irving said maybe I should have enlisted maybe not, I guess life puts you where you need to be

[Eric P]

Not really other than a modified air travel screening.

[rondog]

Never really thought about it, but now that you mention it - yeah, it did actually! Before 9/11, my wife was a corporate travel agent. That job went away almost immediately. Not long after, a friend of hers helped her get hired on at Kaiser Permanente as a union employee, and that job has given us incredible health benefits from day one. $5 prescriptions? $10 office visits? $50 co-pay for major surgeries? Yes please!

[Joe_K]

Yes. And still waiting on the guilty to be brought to justice.

[OtterbatHellcat]

It did for me, and I don't see how it couldn't for all Americans. That event probably united us as a nation more than any other time in our history.

[BPTactical]

It didn’t change my life one bit.

It changed my world like a motherfucker though…

[Doc45]

Yes, in many ways. The most impactful is through my older son, currently deployed-Colorado Army National Guard, E7 Flight Medic and ncoic, who saw along with me the second plane hit the World Trade Center. That pivotal moment convinced that then 17 yr old kid to join the military. Two years later when he was feeling unsatisfied at college, something was gnawing at him, he signed up.

The good and bad experiences he’s been through these past 18 years shaped him in to the fine man, husband, father and son he is today. Can’t wait for him to get home.

[StagLefty]

I think it really brought it home that the USA was not invincible !!! I was thinking a lot about that this morning while I was putting up for display my Flag of Honor that has all the names of those killed that day.

[rondog]

Wonder how many times Joe's gonna check his watch today.....

[Aloha_Shooter]

https://www.facebook.com/United/videos/4698075396892606/

I first heard about a plane flying into the WTC second-hand that morning from someone who I think had just overheard a news broadcast as he was exiting the operations center. Our first thought was that it was a weird accident, a general aviation plane, something small. I had to go up to the ops center and saw the second plane hit the tower, saw the size of it and realized it was no accident. I dropped off my report then went back down to my office area and gathered my people, telling them that while it wasn't official yet, we were at war. We then got phone calls from people we worked with in other states, noting we couldn't contact our usual POCs at the Pentagon and there were reports of a bomb or explosion at Foggy Bottom (the State Department). Eventually we realized someone was seeing the plume from Flight 93 hitting the Pentagon and just mistaking where it came from but information was sparse and confused all day.

I did manage to contact my people overseas and verified their safety but we had a small group TDY up in DC who were incommunicado and stuck for a few days. Eventually they were able get a rental car and drive back to our base in FL but of course it's always uncomfortable when you have to report "no contact".

It's hard to say how it changed my life directly -- most of the impacts to me personally were indirect. My father had died months before 9/11 -- to some extent, the event mollified the lingering effects of his loss because I was glad he hadn't lived to see that attack on the US. As a boy, he sat on the roof of his parents' house in Kaimuki and watched the Japanese flying overhead as they attacked Pearl Harbor but he never told us of this -- we learned about it from a cousin at his remembrance party. I can't imagine the white hot rage he would have felt if he'd seen the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon. My young nephews were concerned for my safety as we ramped up for OIF even though I wasn't directly involved.

9/11 changed the direction of where we were going with space operations (my own career field in the USAF). Bush was set to act on the recommendations of the Rumsfeld Commission and go full throttle with US Space Command. We might even have seen Space become a separate service before Trump's election although I still have some doubts about that. After 9/11, Bush decided to create US Northern Command which meant the dissolution of US Space Command (in order to keep the number of combatant commands down) and it gave impetus to the take over of the space operations career field by the missileers for a decade and a half. Career-wise, everything was set against a standard of what are you doing for the GWOT -- you were nothing if you didn't deploy (not much need for people with my background in theater but that's beside the point).

I'll stop with that. The rest of it sounds like sniveling whining when I think of the guys and gals who went to the desert and sacrificed lives, limbs, and minds there. Eff the Clintonians who pointedly and knowingly ignored a building threat for 8 years (with 2 attacks just months before the 2000 elections) and the Obama-bots who set out to restructure American culture, history, and society despite the proven threat. Bush made some bad decisions but he had limited information and got bad advice at the time -- plus he was undermined from Election Day onward and through the EP-3 incident by the Leftists in Congress and the bureaucracy. I think he at least honestly wanted to protect America which is more than I can say for Billy Boy or his 2 Leftist successors.

[JohnnyDrama]

Yes it did.

The events of 9/11 and the following cautions took a lot of the impetuous out of the travel industry. The company I was working for closed its doors within two months of the attack. That can be directly and immediately attributed to 9/11. The course in life I took after that, going back to school and getting into a different career, getting married, the rest of life that happened after that, who knows? But, the events of that day definitely changed the course of my life.

[JohnnyDrama]

Wonder how many times Joe's gonna check his watch today.....

It's Saturday. You could make a drinking game out of it.

[BlasterBob]

Not for me directly. But my youngest son went into the Air Force in 2003 and became a JTAC. He did 7 tours between Iraq and Afghanistan. He has just over a year and a half to retirement now. Seems like just last summer I was watching him graduate from Basic Training in San Antonio and now he's an E7 in Alaska. So his chosen life direction was directly impacted by 9/11 and, in turn, that has had a pretty profound effect on my life.

If you don?t mind telling, , your son is stationed WHERE in Alaska?

[Danimal]

It definitely did change everything for me. I was in high school but I was living off a friends couch because I had left home at 15. Nothing was going great, I had three shirts one set of pants and college was never going to happen for me. I was working nearly full time and still doing well in high school but I did not have any real life plans. Then I remember walking into class and one of my friends came running in and told everyone that a plane had just hit the world trade center and it was on the news. We turned on the TV just in time to see the second plane hit. I was confused like everyone else, but I will never forget that day the whole class sat completely silent just watching both towers fall. I don't think that anyone said anything for the rest of the day even as school let out around lunch time. Instead of walking to work I went to the recruiters office and signed up to go to MEPS.

After graduation I spent 6 years and two deployments figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. That got me the GI bill and into college for a degree in electrical engineering and now work in aerospace. Before that day I had no plans to join the military, and I am not sure I ever would have.

[Joe_K]

Wonder how many times Joe's gonna check his watch today.....

Que?

[crays]

Reference to the ice cream man's deference regarding the repatriation of our 13 lost souls from Kabul, not you.

ETA: That's my assumption anway.


Sent from somewhere

[OneGuy67]

It caused me to enlist back into the Army (Guard) after being out for 8 years and during that last 10 years I was in, I deployed multiple times to multiple locations. Places I would have never gone, to do things I would have never thought I would do. I retired after 23 years of service and don't regret one thing, other than not being able to physically continue to serve for additional years.