Arkansans remember where they were on 9/11

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – It’s been 23 years since nearly three thousand people were killed after Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked airplanes, crashing into the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, DC and crashing in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

No matter where you were on that devastating day in American history, it’s almost a guarantee you remember the exact moment you found out the nation was under attack.

“I was at work. We totally were just devastated,” Pam McMahon said. She says she and her coworkers were “sticking by the television and following the events,” as “it was obvious we were going to war.”

Her husband, Tracy, said he “was headed to Pine Bluff” for work and on his way he “started noticing all the airplanes coming in low.” He said he found out what was happening when he “got to the job site and they had the TV going.”

Tracy said while watching the World Trade Center burn on television, he couldn’t stop “wondering where they going to hit next.”

The Pentagon was hit next, and amid the shock and disbelief, Mark McCleary said he had his friend who worked there on his mind.

“The first thing that came to mind was me calling him to see if he was okay,” McCleary said.

McCleary says he was truck driving on 9/11, and it was his day to make a trip to Louisville, Kentucky.

“They did end up canceling my run because the Louisville hub was an air hub so they had shut down all the air traffic for the day,” he said.

As the day progressed, he described it as “unbelievable”, and “hard to fathom that this could happen in our country.”

For some Arkansans, it’s easier to remember where they were because they physically felt the attack as they were inside the World Trade Center when the planes hit.

In an interview from a few days after the attack outside the bus station in New York, Terry Pickrell said he was “on the 61st floor when the first plane hit, and they told us to evacuate.” Pickrell was inside the south tower which was hit second.

While he was evacuating, he said he was “somewhere in the range of 30 and 40 floors when the plane hit” the south tower.

He described when the plane hit his building, as “shaking and kind of a rumble” and at that point it was when it hit him how serious it was and the idea “that I might not make it out.”

“The good Lord was with me,” Pickrell said.

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