I awoke three years ago today to the smell of brewing coffee, as I normally do. On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I went through my standard morning ritual: coffee, email, shower, laptop bag, car. Just before going out the door, I set my coffee mug down on the counter and picked up my keys.
I was my Pentagon coffee mug. I got the mug ten months prior while I was at the Pentagon visiting a good friend of mine who worked there.
I recall driving to work and hearing the initial report on the radio from Charles McCord on Imus in the Morning. No one understood the scope of what was going on.
The operations center I work in has a large video wall that spans nearly the length of the entire room. Normally, we look at pieces of our network on the display but today it was a gigantic wide-screen television carrying two different network feeds somewhat larger than life. That was when the second plane hit. It all seemed quite surreal like none of it could be happening. Not to us. Not here on American soil.
Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I hate tall buildings. They scare the Hell out of me. I can go up in them and look out, but I can't look up at them. It terrifies me. I also have to say that I'm not a huge fan of flying. As I saw Flight 175 strike the south tower. I was several hundred miles away in New Hampshire--nowhere near Manhattan--but I had the worst feeling of anxiety and panic I've ever had in my life.
I know I wasn't alone, but I also know that what I was feeling was nothing in comparison to those trapped in the Twin Towers. For the life of me, I cannot fathom being faced with the decision of having to choose which way I wanted to die: to be burned alive by the towering inferno or to jump ninety stories to the street below.
It got worse, then, didn't it? Hearing reports of an attack on the Pentagon made us all wonder what would be hit next and whether any of us were safe. My mind drifted back to the mug I placed on my counter before heading out the door earlier that morning and I wondered how bad things were and if everyone had gotten to safety before the plane had hit. Then, I knew they couldn't have.
By the time the news of the fourth plane had hit, my coworkers and I wondered how many more planes there were and how many more Americans would be killed.
Looking back, I recall so many different things about that day in such vivid detail. The images of September 11, 2001 that resonate with me the most aren't of planes or buildings. They're of people.
People waving out the windows of the Twin Towers for help.
People in mid-air meeting a certain death.
People in EMS uniforms rushing into the towers while others rush out to safety.
People searching the rubble of the Pentagon looking for survivors.
People taking down a plane over Pennsylvania to prevent more Americans from being killed.
People papering the streets of lower Manhattan with pictures, desperately searching for their loved ones.
People being pulverized and crushed to death as two colossal skyscrapers collapsed on top of them.
Whatever else we've learned about the events of that day, we know that this day was not only an attack on our citizens, but also a most heinous assault on our very way of life. Our generation will never forget what happened three years ago.
Nearly three thousand of our American brothers and sisters perished in cowardly and barbaric acts of violence designed to shake our resolve.
Today is not a day of partisan politics or polemical discourse. Today is Patriot Day---a day we have set aside to come together as one American society and remember our friends, neighbors and loved ones who lost their lives. Patriot Day is not about liberal vs. conservative or Republican vs. Democrat. This day is about America. One America. One society. One nationality, united against a new and different kind of threat to our survival.
The sky today in my corner of the world was a bright blue with some high, thin clouds--very similar to the way it appeared to me three years ago.
The sky may be as blue, but the world is definitely not the same. There's no way it could be.
William Smith
ConservativeBlogger.com
