Writemarsh! is less than a year old, so this is the first opportunity I've had to write about 9/11. What I will never forget is where I was and what I was doing that fateful day:
Seven years ago, I was working second shift at my dream job at Pomco Graphic Arts (where my father had worked for most of his 49 years in printing, and has recently retired from).
As was the norm, I would go to bed at about 2 a.m. and get up in the morning to see my son off to school. As was my practice at the time, I would turn on the TV and watch what my wife, Karen, would tape for me the night before. Afterwards, I would "try" to get to the "honey-do" list.
Before I could finish my coffee and get the tape turned on, I caught a news flash on the bottom of the TV...The world trade center had been hit by an airliner that had flown off course!
Forgetting my "shows", I turned on Fox News and flipped back and forth between it and CNN. It had not been an accident!
For the next four or five hours, I sat, stunned...alternating between anger and sorrow for what has become the single most deadly attack by foreign nationals on American soil.
I watched, live, as the second jet hit the second tower. I was aghast. I got angry. I wept.
I went so far as to call our local Army recruiter to find out if I could still enlist. I had turned 37 years old that year, too old to enlist, according to whomever I spoke with.
So I sat, for the next four or five hours, the honey-do list and taped shows forgotten, while my wife and I watched the spectacle that would be the starting point of our "war on terror".
A lot of time has passed and the war on terror is still being waged. I am attending a memorial service later today at the Montgomery County Courthouse to commemorate the 7th anniversary of the attacks, and honor 13 local heroes who have been killed in action during the war. The service starts at 12 noon on the courthouse steps. If you can, attend.
from the World Trade Center)
We should, however, all take a moment out of our busy day and silently remember the innocent people whose lives were lost on September 11, 2001, as well as for the many good servicemen and servicewomen who have lost life or limb to protect our country from future attacks, by rooting these terrorists out at the source, and eliminating them.
Finally, we should say a silent prayer of thanks for G-d granting us the wisdom to elect a president in George W. Bush, who stood up to the terrorists and said "no more!".
G-d Bless America. G-d bless or troops. G-d bless the memory of those who perished on 9/11/01, and G-d bless those who have died fighting the war on terror. G-d bless our president for having the nerve to stand up to the terrorists. And, as you take time for a moment of silence, may G-d bless you all...and may we never forget where we were when we first heard, 7 years ago today, that our country was at war.
B.
1 comment:
I was just coming back from doing the backup tapes in the building next door. One of my co-workers said that a plane had flown into the WTC. Within minutes, one of the girls downstairs had it on a tiny black and white tv she kept in her office and we were all crowded around. I remember watching the second plane fly into the building and thinking, How did they know to have their cameras trained on the building to catch the crash?--then I realized that the other building was on fire and this wasn't a tape of the crash--it was a second plane.
I made my way upstairs to my office and immediately called my husband. "Do you know what's going on? Are you listening to the radio?" I asked him. "Listening to the radio?" he asked, "I'm watching it happen!" He was loading gasoline in his tanker at the refinery in Bayonne. The second plane flew in right over his head.
As my brain struggled to wrap itself around these events, my husband knew the implications right away: "This changes everything. We are at war."
He stayed on the phone with me until he was heading south on I95. He said, "I'll call you when I get to Pennsylvania."
About an hour and a half later, he called me. One of the first things he asked was if they got the fires out in the towers. "Honey, the towers collapsed." I told him. "How many floors?" he asked. "All of them. They're gone. The towers are gone."
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