What's Your 9/11 Story???

I have no heroic story when it comes to 9/11, unless you call getting some industry colleagues home from a conference in my rented car heroic.  

In 2001 I worked for a mid-sized Savings Bank in west-central Ohio and was to be in St. Louis for a conference September 9-11.  Having no kids yet, my wife and I decided to take a weekend trip to St. Louis prior to my conference- to which we would fly out on Friday and she return on Sunday while I would come home after the conference.  Tuesday started out as normal as one could imagine; I attended to breakfast pre-conference session and was about to go into the first general session of the day with 300 other industry executives.  Just prior to starting, one of the conference leaders got tot he podium and started reading the news line from his pager (remember those) talking about the first plane hitting the North Tower.  Before he finished news came through about the second hit with him uttering the words that I remember clearly this day:  looking around looking for the "joke" he said, "I can't believe I'm reading this... America is under attack."  

They decided to break for a little bit for people to figure out what to do; meanwhile I headed to my room to pack.  I had a 4pm flight home... and I was not going to miss it.  It was while I was packing that I saw on TV the South Tower collapse, with news later that the entire airspace over the US was being shut down, voiding my 4pm flight.  

While my wife was in town we had a rental vehicle, sight-seeing made sense that way.  But if you've ever been to a conference before, you'll know that having a rental car if you're staying at the host hotel is rather useless because if you need to go anywhere, there is likely a "free" shuttle.  But, for reasons unclear to me to this day, I kept my rental car.  I proceeded to the registration table where many shell-shocked people were still trying to sort out all that was happening, meanwhile trying to guess if it was over or there was more to come.  I told them to tell any delegate from Ohio that there was someone with a rental car who was leaving,  anyone wanting a ride- be in the lobby in 30 minutes.

Four of us journeyed from St. Louis to Dayton Ohio in what was the quietest 8-hour drive in my life.  

What's your 9/11 story?  Send your story and we'll post it.