HOW DID YOU WORK ON 9/11?

Today is the 11th anniversary of 9/11. I remember waking up that morning eleven years ago and wondering if I should go to work. I did, but no work was done. We just watched the news all day. At the time we were printing the Roofers Exchange (the predecessor to the RoofersCoffeeShop.com) and I thought how unimportant my work was compared to the horror we were watching. Did anyone care about the Roofers Exchange? Was I going to call a customer and ask if they wanted to place an ad? Was I going to post a tip on how to sell a roof? How inappropriate at that sad time.

But roofs still leak in the rain, they still need roofers to apply them and the roofers still have to buy materials. Eventually I guess our little business did have a purpose and although we still have unimaginable loss, our perseverance is how we show our gratitude. By doing the best you can is how you make your business matter. GOD bless us all and thank you for your hard work. It keeps the world turning when we think it has stood still.

I was staying in Atlanta right next to Olympic Park and CNN headquarters, not far from the airport. I worked for my school district as a network admin and they sent us down there for Networld Interop, a computer networking expo...

It was the first day, and here I was 19 years old, a kid who barely visited any cities and grew up in a town of under 10,000. The conference started w/ a speaker at around 8am. All of a sudden everybody's phones started ringing, then the speaker told us all. ATL was on high alert, and so was I. We stayed for the 3 days remaining to catch the vendors who didn't leave the expo.

Very sad & shocking....Went on with my day...I'm not much of a hand-wringer. The threat is always there.

My wife called me at a job and told me to put the radio on. I was in the middle of a slate roof that was being filmed for a tv show called Renovations on the home and garden station. When the second plane hit I told them I was going home to be with my family. Everybody thought I was nuts. Before I got packed up the third plane hit and they were considering closing all highways as I was working within a 150 miles of three of the crashes. A week later I went up to New York and stood at the base of the trade centers along side a police woman standing there waiting for her partner to be removed from the site. Very sad moment. I could not believe I could drive right up to the site and stand within feet of the devastation. I will never forget the smell.

Just staged a job today. That day, I called the wife and had her record lots of news stations with all 4-5 VHS recorders. I have a pile of tapes.