My roommate (who works in ops at Eagle) called me at 8:20 and told me a plane had hit the WTC. I wondered why she was waking me up to tell me about some idiot flying his 150 into a building, I'm not very, umm, alert in the morning so it took me a while to figure out something important was going on. She got frustrated, told me to "just get your a*s out of bed and turn on CNN" so I did. And later wished I hadn't, as the reality hit that two of those planes were 'mine' (AA). I got on the company comptuter ASAP, but the crew lists had already been blocked. Standard procedure, immediately following an accident/incident the company locks out all information regarding the involved flights (out/off/on/in times, crew lists, pax lists, ac number etc).
Thankfully I was at my apartment with my boyfriend (now husband), but I was really nervous until the crew lists were released. I ended up not knowing any of them personally, but it's very sad to lose 17 of your own.