09/11/2026
As with any major historical moment, people can often tell you where they were and what they were doing on that day. This was my 9/11 2001 day.
In 2001 I was a software sales rep at HP (Hewlett-Packard). On 9/11, I actually had a 2pm meeting with a client in Tulsa, Oklahoma. My plan was to catch a flight that morning to Tulsa, go to the meeting and come back later that evening. This is a little unusual to how I normally traveled because I typically traveled the day before a meeting just in case plane were delayed or flights got canceled. Because my meeting was in the mid afternoon. I thought it was pretty safe for me to travel that day instead of the night before.
My wife was a school principal at that time and she often left the house a lot earlier than I did and was typically at work around 6:30am. I’m not an early riser so when she left, I was still in bed. I can’t remember exactly what time my flight was supposed to leave, but I think it was about 11am or so. My plan was to leave the house around 9am and get to the airport with enough time to park and walk to the gate and jump on the plane. That was the plan, however that’s not how it went.
So I got ready and headed to the airport a little earlier because I thought there might be some travel delays and I wanted to make sure I got on a flight that would get me to Tulsa by noon. On my way to the airport I was listening to the news and they announced that all flights have been grounded. Flights that were already in the air had to go to the nearest airport that they could land. So just like that my flight was canceled and subsequently my meeting was canceled. I went to the Irving HP office and checked in with my management to let them know that I was accounted for. There was a huge effort at the time to account for everybody who was potentially traveling in and out of the affected areas of Boston and New York. Also, those that were traveling by plane across the country had to be accounted for.
— continued in the comments.
