Never Forget

September 11, 2001. Just the date brings back memories. The images and details are so clear, even after ten years. I remember from the phone calls I made to friends I worried were there to the salty taste of my tears. But of all the moments that day, these had the biggest impact on me.

• Waking up to the newscaster on the radio saying a plane hit the World Trade Center and turning on the television downstairs to see smoke coming from the North Tower.

• Watching the second plane hit the South Tower. I felt as if I'd been physically punched in the stomach.

• The collapse of the Towers. Again, it physically hurt.

• Finding out United Airlines planes, ones that I'd worked on while employed there, were involved.

• The phone call from my brother-in-law's roommate that afternoon. She was in tears asking if we'd heard from him because no one had all day and he'd been down in that area. She asked if I could get in touch with their middle brother. So I did.

• The phone call that arrived late that night, around eleven or midnight west coast time, from my brother-in-law saying he wasn't missing. He'd been down there all day doing what he could, but was finally getting out of there.

Some families never got to experience the moment of relief when the call arrived. But it still didn't erase the pain and the heartache of so many lives taken much too soon and the attack against our country.

As I was driving this past Friday, I heard a song on the radio. The tears flowed then and once again when I found the music video on YouTube.



One of the things I'll remember most about my trip to New York in June was the visit to Ground Zero with my brother-in-law, who became a 9-11 responder by chance. He worked in Central Park as a Mounted Park Ranger, but that September morning he happened to be near Battery Park in a training class. They were pulled out and put to work, helping with evacuations and whatever else needed to be done.

He took us through that day. Well, his day. From where he stood when the second plane hit to where he was when the Twin Towers came down to what happened afterward.

The kids were too young in 2001 to remember anything. Mackenna had been three at the time. Finn one. Rose wouldn't be born for another year and half.

But the three knew what 9/11 was. We've attended Memorial Services at a local fire station. They also knew for a very long and difficult time that day their uncle had been missing. But they hadn't heard what had happened from someone who had been there. And whose 9/11 story didn't end that day, but continued through the clean-up.

At one point during our visit, we sat near the Winter Garden and listened to how he helped evacuate people from the complex. The kids asked questions, ones that showed their youth, innocence and pure heart. Questions I worried might upset my brother-in-law. But if they did, he never mentioned it.

September 11, 2001...Never forget.