Understatement: Terrifying moment!

By Michael M. Kelly Sr.: As to the morning of 9/11, I have no difficulty in remembering what I was doing.

I was employed by a telecommunications company that performed conference calls for customers of all kinds worldwide. One of those customers was a large financial advising and management company that was located in New York City, not far from The World Trade Center's Twin Towers.

At 8 that morning, as lead operator, I had just completed the set up and had opened a conference call for this company and had introduced the moderator, who was directing the conference from New York. With the conference call in progress, I was only occasionally monitoring it in case of technical difficulties. The moderator signaled me for attention. When he came on, he told me what was going on as far as he knew and that they were discontinuing the call.

His description was terrifying, and I closed the call and told my supervisor what I had heard. He said that they had gotten the word as to what was happening from several other calls taking place in New York at that time. Our management changed a couple of monitors over to regular TV,  so that we could see what was happening on the newscasts. The rest, as they say, is history, but that was one conference call that I will never forget!