All of us who live through times of major events remember where we were upon first learning of them. I was sitting in a sixth grade classroom in Collinsville, OK when the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was announced and sat with friends in a newlyweds’ spartan apartment to watch the resignation of Richard Nixon. Four years ago today, 9-11-2001, I awoke early as usual, fired up the workstation in my office, checked email, then opened my browser to its setup page at myway.com, which contains sections of news headlines.

The words “World Trade Center Bombed!” screamed out at me, with a shot of Tower One with a black hole in its side, smoke billowing out. I was able to just get the TV turned on in the living room literally a minute or two before Tower Two was hit, and saw what is shown at right happen live. Stunned — shocked – those words don’t seem strong enough to describe my reaction to what I was seeing. It was now apparent that the first tower was not the victim of a bomb, but of a coordinated attack of some kind using commercial aircraft. Although hundreds of people had just perished, no one at that moment had any understanding of the totality of the disaster yet to come. Emergency personnel were rushing to lower Manhattan to help evacuate the buildings while we watched those trapped on the upper floors jump to their deaths rather than be consumed by the flames.

Then we learned that a third plane had just hit the Pentagon in D.C. — “Oh – My – God!” I thought to myself, “It’s a doomsday scenario right out of one of my beloved novels.” It was only a matter of time before something like this, or worse, happened to us. I had already experienced it many times, via the world of techno-military fiction from the likes of Tom Clancy, Larry Bond, Patrick Robinson and Stephen Coonts. But this was actually happening, and in my mind, was far from being over. I went to wake up the wife.

“Baby, you need to get up. Something horrible has happened in New York and in Washington, something terrible but historic, and you need to come and see this now. No one’s going to go to work today anywhere, so you might as well plan to close your office.”

So she did, and we, like Americans all over the country, sat before our sets and watched this huge cataclysmic drama play out. Tower Two collapsed, the magnitude of the event minimized by the small screen of TV, looking like a Hollywood special effect. With no reference of scale, you could forgive yourself the fantasy of hoping that many survivors would be found in the rubble. Days later, when you saw alternate views of ground zero, you realized how foolish those hopes were. Then, the report of hijacked Flight 93 going down in Pennsylvania after a group of brave passengers rushed the cockpit, willing to die in order to prevent that plane from hitting the terrorists’ intended target, our nation’s Capitol building. And then again, when we thought that we could take no more, the tower hit first, Tower One, began to crumple, and proceeded to collapse, joining its sister tower in a smoldering pile of death and destruction.

That morning I predicted at least a dozen attacks, with strikes on the west coast and in the Midwest. I usually am not glad to be mistaken, but I thank God that I was that day. Much later we learned that it was supposed to be an International day of misery, courtesy of the Islamofascists terrorists intent to down planes in London and Australia, but that didn’t happen either — thank God again.

What we did learn on 9/11, about our government and ourselves was dear to the hearts of most Americans. We saw the first responders risk, and many lost all, to save their fellow men and women. We saw the brave sacrifice of those on Flight 93, to save the lives that had been targeted for certain death. We witnessed 24-hour rescue, then recovery efforts until ground zero in NY and the Pentagon were cleared. We saw our newly elected President Bush seem to finally find himself and discover the mission that would drive the rest of his presidency. We saw for a too-brief time, our country pull together — rich and poor, right and left — much as our parents and grandparents, the greatest generation, did during WWII. We spoke to the world with one voice, and demanded that our message be heard!

You who have attacked us on this terrible day, have attacked ALL of us, and as Americans we will hunt you down without remorse, and eliminate you from the face of the Earth!

And that’s the way it went that day, 4 years ago. The day that everything changed. (db)

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 11th, 2005 at 9:56 am and is filed under Disasters, G.W.O.T., Human Persistance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

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