Morning Bell: What Shoes Are You Wearing Today?

Look down at your shoes. 

Could you break into a run in those if you needed to?Twelve years ago, the men and women getting ready to go to work at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon didn’t know they would be running that day.

For many New Yorkers, the shoes they picked up off the closet floor that morning would later carry them down flights of stairs and through the streets of the city. They would become worn, covered with dust, and perhaps broken in a matter of minutes.

Some would become pieces of history.

Finance executive Michele Martocci was one of the New York survivors. The shoes she woreon September 11, 2001, will be in the National September 11 Memorial Museum, which is slated to open next Spring.

So will Mickey Kross’s helmet. Parade magazine reports:

At 10:28 a.m., FDNY lieutenant Mickey Kross was in the third-floor stairwell of the north tower when he heard a “tremendous roar,” and the building began to crumble. Kross crouched down in a corner. (“I tried to crawl into my fire helmet … to protect myself,” he recalled.) Hours later, Kross and 15 others climbed out of the rubble—among the few survivors of the collapse.

That day will forever serve as a generation’s reminder of the fragility of life. Today, we give thanks for those who survived. We remember those who were lost in the horrific terrorist attacks. And we salute all the heroes who set aside their own safety in the chaos of that day to help their fellow Americans—whether firefighters, police, emergency responders, or strangers in the crowd.

We will never forget.

Via: The Foundry

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Where were you on Sept. 11, 2001 -- when America changed forever?

At 8:46 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, America was changed forever.

A passenger plane which had left Boston bound for Los Angeles crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York. As news crews showed the American Airlines plane sticking out of the iconic building, a stunned national audience initially thought it might be some sort of horrible accident. But when another plane struck the south tower just 17 minutes later, the awful truth could no longer be avoided. This had been an act of terrorism, conducted by terrorist hijackers on unthinkable suicide missions.

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One of the darkest days in American history would get worse in the ensuing hours. Yet another plane would crash into the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m. and a fourth — believed bound for Washington — went down in a field in Shanksville, Pa., at 10:03 a.m., after brave passengers fought with hijackers and forced the plane to crash.

Meanwhile, at the World Trade Center, office workers poured down the smoky stairs of the burning buildings, passing New York firefighters and NYPD and Port Authority police on their way down. As burning jet fuel melted the buildings' steel skeletons, the awful realization sank in that the towers, which terrorists had tried to bring down in 1993, were not going to withstand the attack. Office workers trapped above the point of impact and unable to flee down the stairs jumped out of windows, some holding hands.

Via: Fox News

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