What Was Your First National Disaster?

We were watching the Challengers shuttle luanch in class, like so many of my generation.... that was terrible.

The second time I just lost it was hearing about the Oklahoma City bombing and the fact there was a child care center in the building... it just made it worse. I had just come home from a job working with toddlers at a child care center and was pretty upset.

9/11 was terrible. A boyfriend called me that morning to tell me 'we're under attack'-- which was scary. I've actually kept the radio off around my son this morning-- he's a pretty anxious kid as it is. And he's in third grade-- this isn't the sort of content his teacher is going to bring up. If his friends bring it up, we'll talk about it, but they are usually busy playing silly boy stuff.... :)

I think mine was the Kennedy Assassination . I was in high school when the announcement came over the loud speaker about his death.

The rest of the disasters I agree with Diane B and Wild Woman. I was over seas for Desert Shield/Storm when it started. Hubby was in another country preparing for the invasion.

Good question.

the other S.

I am 43 - for some reason Reagan getting shot didn't really hit me. I was home on a teacher workday from school when the Challenger exploded. We lived in Florida and I went outside to see it go up (you could see the plume of smoke) and also had it on TV. I was in 9th grade and I was at home alone - called my dad at work and told him something went wrong with the shuttle. He told me that I didn't know enough to know whether something went wrong but I had already seen two launches from the viewing area at Kennedy - I knew! It was devastating but honestly, not scary like my grandma says Pearl Harbor was or how I feel about 9/11. Those were scary and you felt threatened. I wasn't afraid of the shuttle disaster.

My husband is from Northern Virginia. We took our now 9 year old to see the Pentagon Memorial when he was 6 and explained it as bad people drove a plane into the place where the military is headquartered to hurt our country. He noticed that all of the birth years on the benches there are before his - 2006. It was very profound for a 6 year old. Since then he has read the book "I survived the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001" by Lauren Tarshis. He found it to be scary last year and didn't want to go to NYC over the summer (we postponed for another year or so).

God Bless all of those who lost loved ones and all of those who protect us.

The first thing I remember being truly sad about was the Oklahoma City Bombing. I was in middle school, living on the base in Bermuda, and watching it all unfold on the news. It was horribly sad and tragic.

I was 18 on 9/11 and at work at the local gym...so, so sad. My kids DO know about it. My brother, their uncle, fought two tours in Iraq because of it...they know why he went and why he is the way he is now. I honestly don't know if they discuss it in school, I know in the past the kids have said yes...but I don't know about this year, we'll see when they all get home.

I agree with you on never forgetting 9/11. Never forgetting what happened, those who died, those who fought/fight, those who love and care. I pray for our nation daily...and today is just a tough, tough day.

Kennedy Assassination - I wasn't quite 2 yrs old and I don't remember it.
They talk about it at school, have everyone wear red/white/blue but for many kids it's right up there with the bombing of Pearl Harbor - it's history.

Like it or not - life goes on.
And although we'll always remember - it's good to know that life CAN go on at least for those who weren't directly impacted.
We can't all pull a Queen Victoria and be forever in mourning - it's a miserable way to live and not really living at all.

I suppose the day Reagan got shot. I was in elementary and I remember us all being sent home, and all the adults were running around saying," The President got shot!"

I remember Mt St Helens too. How about the gas crisis in '79? Does that count? I remember all the adults freaking out and waiting in hour long lines for gas.

Well....I was born in the late '60's....

Apollo 11 going to space in 1969...that was HUGE!!!

Nixon and Watergate in 1972 - tongues were wagging all over the place and being in a military family and living on base?? it was HUGE!

We launched SkyLab in 1973 - we were GLUED to the TV
then we had Roe v Wade in 1973 as well - I remember seeing the protests on TV.

Vietnam was happening and my dad was in it. He and his fellow crew came home and got spit on by protesters that was shocking for me.

I was 4 when I saw a burning cross in our neighbors yard. My dad told me there are stupid people everywhere who are afraid of things they know nothing about.

The Liberal movement started - the "love" generation and was W. in San Francisco in the 1970's!!

Nixon resigned. That was HUGE...

Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980 - that was NATURAL disaster...We got ash from it in Southern California....and we had family up in Washington.

The oil crisis of the 1970's - odd and even plates - waiting for over an hour for gas...seeing people pushing their car to the pump because it was on fumes or out..

The one that sticks out the most for me? Is the Iran Hostage crisis followed by the US withdrawing from the Olympics in 1980.

The Challenger space shuttle? I was at work that day. it was horrible.

I landed in Belgium the day Desert Storm started.

We lost a friend at Kobar Towers.

On September 11th, 2001 - I was sitting in at my kitchen table just finishing breakfast with my then 18 month old son recovering from a miscarriage that happened on the 5th and the D&C on the 7th. My son had no clue what was going on. I called my husband at work and told him what was going on. We lost 3 friends at the Pentagon that day. I remember being outside that evening with our neighbors (we live 8 miles from Dulles Airport) and how quiet it was in the sky. Earlier in the day we were able to see the smoke from the Pentagon.

My kids are aware of September 11, 2001. My youngest wasn't born until 2002. We pray that we will not have another one, but with the craziness of Ferguson and New York? It won't be non-Americans that threaten us, but we the people...

I have friends that lost friends in the Twin Towers. I have friends who helped people in the streets. They remember how people were so unified that day and for months to following....

the kennedy assassination, although i was very young and didn't really get it. then the governor of bermuda was murdered, a terrible and heinous crime in a place that was (then) virtually crime-free. that rocked everyone badly.
i was bartending on the afternoon that the shuttle exploded. in a weird way it was good to have all those diverse people with whom to share the horror and grief. all the differences got put aside.
9/11 is, of course, still vivid in my mind. it was the first day of our homeschool pony club meeting here at my place. my older son came running to tell me that he'd seen a plane fly into a building on tv, and i brushed him off, busy with preparations.
when he came and told me it had happened again, i dropped everything and came to see. we ended up sending all the kids out to play and we moms stayed glued to the tv all morning. again, i'm glad that i had people around to help me process it.
normally i prefer solitude, but crises require some support. i've never seen the country, before or since, come together like that.
may the souls of those we lost find peace and honor. may we find a way through our ongoing schisms of ideology, and make sure it never happens again.
khairete
S.

Challenger was it for me too.

My oldest kids (both 17) remember 9/11 because they were 3. For my younger kids, it's been talked about at home, church and school and they know that it's the reason we have been at war their entire lives and the reason that many people we know chose to serve and were stationed overseas.

My younger kids' first tragedy was Sandy Hook. I tried to shield them from that as they were 6 & 8 at the time - the younger in 1st grade like most of victims - but they learned of it anyway that weekend and know that it's why security changed at school.

I remember the challenger explosion, I think we were watching it on TV live in the classroom. Unless I'm recreating a memory in my head. I was completely aware of Christa McAliffe and the fact that she was the teacher on board- we had studied about it not long before and the process she had to go through to be selected.

For us on the West Coast the natural disasters can be a pretty big deal. We've had lots of earthquakes and I remember thinking the San Francisco earthquake (89ish?) was a big deal - we live in SoCal and there was so much coverage of it, and the collapsed bridges etc. I guess we could relate.

9/11 I was in my 20's. Just going to work like normal...

I guess Kennedy's assassination, though I was young, and I really didn't grasp the significance of it, other than realizing that someone's daddy had been killed and that of course was sad. I didn't understand "assassination" or all the political implications.

When Reagan was shot, I was working in an office and a woman came into the office in a panic, with tears streaming down her face, crying that the President had been killed. Thankfully, he survived of course, but for a few moments we were all really nervous about what was happening. I guess that was the first time that I understood how such an event could effect people and what it meant for the country and national security.

On a personal note, the entrance that took the brunt of the Pentagon crash, that was the door that my husband entered through every day that he worked there (he was in the Navy). By 9/11 he had been transferred elsewhere so he wasn't harmed. But that door was always special to us.

When our son was born (our first child), my husband was with me at the hospital, and was allowed to stay home with me and the new baby for a day, before returning to work. When he got to the entrance of the Pentagon, posted prominently on the outside of that door was an announcement. It said "Congratulations Lieutenant _____ ! He and his wife are the proud parents of a baby boy, born May 7, weighing 9.5 pounds! Mother and baby are healthy and well!"

He took a photo of the sign and the door. We hadn't even sent out birth announcements yet! It was the first announcement of our son's birth. We always thought of that door as our son's "door", and it was so sad to realize that it was destroyed.

Of course, it is nothing compared to the loss of life, and it is completely insignificant compared to the suffering and grief that people experienced and continue to experience, but it's something I always think of when I see the photos and when I remember 9/11.

Technically it was the explosion of Mt St Helens, but I was very young and don't remember it well. The first one I remember is the Challenger explosion and how shocked we all were as we watched from our classroom.

My kids do know about 9/11. We have talked with them a little about terrorism and the fact that any religion taken to an extreme, islam and christianity alike, can be dangerous. We don't talk about 9/11 like it occurred in a bubble and was a one of kind event since we have had several terrorists events in our past that also deserve mention when discussing the topic.

My first 'disaster' was when I was a child in the area when Mt. St. Helens erupted, my father was a heli-logger for Columbia working on the opposite side of the mountain at the time. I remember my Mother being quite frantic & watching the ashes fly in the air out the car window when we were evacuating & being really scared.

I also remember watching the Challenger as a child & seeing my parents cry.

I was on the West Coast on 9/11 & child free...I remember my sister came barging in our house (after calling repeatedly, which we slept thru) & woke up my husband & I & told us to turn on the damn TV.
And then the pit in our stomachs appeared.
My children are too young & weren't alive but they know about it, they have a great great uncle & an uncle who were in lower manhatten during that time that lived thru it.

The first one I can remember is the Challenger.

my time line is somewhat muddled but these are the ones that affected me most.

challenger explosion
oaklahoma city
and the event that coined the phrase "going postal" that happened just a few miles from me at the post office in royal oak, MI

yes, we've discussed 911 with my DS. He was just a newborn when that happended and I recall I was nursing him (badly but doing my best) with the news on mute so he could "concentrate" (i told you...it was bad). i saw the news come across on the today show.

we've spent some time discussing religious tolerance, we're a mixed religion family as it is (dad is Jewish and I'm a Bahai) so it comes up from time to time anyway. also, the school he attends was founded by a couple who were fleeing from the Nazis and teaching diversity and religious harmony and tolerance are one of the founding principles so he's quite familiar with the concept.

not sure how to punctuate this except to say it's a great question. :-) S

There has been a lot in my lifetime.

We were living in Southern California on 9/11. Tyler was active duty at the time. It was scary. Especially when Tyler was deployed shortly after and I was alone with a 2 year old and another one due any day.

The Challenger explosion was very sad for us. I was in college when it happened and the office made an announcement. Many in the classes were crying.

I was in high school when Reagan was shot, my Junior year.

My first real "thing" was Nixon and Watergate. Oh my! That was just incredible! Couldn't believe it. I was young and knew what he had done was wrong and very happy when he resigned. (too bad 0bama won't resign).

After that was the Iran Hostages. I remember my parents wondering what we were going to do about it and how we were going to get our people home.

What I do remember about 9/11 was that the skies were silent. Even birds weren't chirping. Since we lived near LAX, it was VERY quiet. People had US Flags out, people weren't fighting and arguing, they banned together. It was one of those times where you were in shock that someone had the audacity to attack and everyone pulled together.

Challenger. We were going to watch it on TV...but instead the teacher got a call from her husband and we watched the report of its loss instead. We spent all recess theorizing what happened.

Yes, my DD is aware what happened 14 years ago. We have family that were at the Pentagon at the time (though thankfully no one was hurt) and have spoken about it. The school flew the flag at half mast on Friday and the teachers talked to the kids about it. For my older stepkids, that was their first national event of that kind. Wild Woman, I'm sorry for your losses. I clearly remember the skies being very quiet, too. Normally we hear jets getting ready to pull into BWI, but we had silence when everybody was forced to land. I looked up on Friday to see one of those jets flying by and thinking what a different day it was 14 years ago.

The Oklahoma City bombing. I think that's my first national disaster, but it's not something I truly remember -- I don't remember what I was doing when I found out about it.

The first national disaster in which I truly remember what exactly I was doing when I found out about it is 9/11. I was probably the last person to have found out about it. I was in college and was on summer break. I was out all night the night before so I slept in until about 2 p.m. (PST!) I turned on the TV a while later and the first thing I saw was the footage of a plane crashing into the WTC. I thought I was watching a movie at first. When I realized that it wasn't a movie, I was a bit confused. And then I was in denial. It took a while to sink in, but when it did I cried.

I have vague recollections of cowering under desks in preparation for the Soviets dropping "the bomb" on us, but my first clear recollections start with the JFK assassination and then a few years later the MLK and RFK assassinations. We always were frightened that anyone prominent would be shot because anyone could get a gun.

Certainly the Challenger disaster was another one where we all remember where we were when we heard - my father had worked on the space program so I always was alert to it anyway, but also I was living in the next town from Christa McAuliffe's hometown, so it was felt very deeply by many in my community.

Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy affected so many including people I knew. One of my former student's college career was permanently altered (she had just arrived in New Orleans when Katrina hit) and another friend was living in a house on Long Island destroyed after Sandy (she was without a home for over 6 months).

On 9/11, I was teaching when the first plane hit. My class ended minutes later, and another teacher met me to tell me. We went to look at the TV and I saw the 2nd plane hit in NYC. We knew we were in the middle of an unprecedented attack, but we had to think about the welfare of our students (grades K-8) and decide on an information, dismissal and possible safety plan for everyone (because at that time, no one knew what other targets might be in line for attack). We decided to gather the middle school children for an assembly because they were astute enough to see that something was going on, with staff bustling around and running into hastily-called meetings. We left the discussion with younger children to their parents, and we set up a system for parents to make their own decisions about picking up their children or leaving them in school for the rest of the day. Talking to the kids was their decision individually.

My own child was in his school, and I had to leave that situation to the staff where he was.

I think now, in retrospect, we can talk to them about the many precautions that are in place. However, my opinion is that we have so many bogus practices (like taking off shoes before an airplane trip) that have done nothing to make us safer. I look at Israel and how their security forces handle it - they have amazing skills and techniques that weed out problem people long before they get to the boarding area. I'd like to see those techniques used here instead of our undertrained and understaffed TSA workers.

Technically, my first national disaster was the Kennedy assasination but was only 7 months old so I dont think it really counts.

So I guess mine is the challenger. But frankly 9/11 really feels the first one that really hit me the hardest...followed by the Boston Marathon bombings which followed by being in lock down a few days later....

I was in gradeschool for the Challenger, I do remember the whole school gathered to watch it and I remember it happening, but I was small enough I didn't really "get" the significance. I think I was maybe in third or so?

9/11 was the first biggie for me. At least it's the one that has stayed with me the strongest. Someone mentioned Sandy Hook and that one got my heart and still does, I'm sure every mom feels that way...but my son was the same age as the kiddos that were killed, and he did not see any of the news coverage, so we don't talk about it yet.

My son is almost 9. The past few years I have brought it up on the day of, and talked to him about it. This morning I was explaining how truly terrifying and awful it was (in his wisdom he was somewhat pooh-poohing it which I didn't like) and I explained to him that one reason it was so bad was because once the planes actually hit, while all the people in the buildings were trying to run out, all the police officers, fire fighters, and EMT's were running in, so when the towers collapsed it was even more sad. I started crying a little (darn pregnancy hormones...) but I don't mind that I did. He started to really see how big of a deal it was for the first time I think. Although being the kiddo he is, then he was concerned for me, but we hugged it out. It was a great moment really. So I plan to make sure he remembers every year. As he gets older we will get more in depth about it, and why we shouldn't forget. At least that's how I imagine it happening.

I wish a thoughtful day for everyone too. After that close moment with my son, I drove to work and was appalled that traffic seemed even worse than a usual Friday, with people being more rude and inconsiderate (and dangerous) than ever. I was disappointed :(