Remembering...

September 11, 2011

I would like to take a time out to remember what today means… and what happened 10 years ago. 

They say there are significant events that happen in history that your recall is so vivid that you can remember every detail of where you were and what was happening when you heard the news.  September 11 is one of those events.

If you were alive when President JFK was assassinated, you can remember the details clearly in your mind… I can.  Sitting in Mrs. Worthy’s class at Halstead Elementary school in Copperas Cove, Texas, the announcement came over the loud speaker… our president had been assassinated.  For the next few days, school was closed and we watched every detail that was broadcast on our little black and white family TV set.  We did not have anything like cable… only the network stations and all the programming was about President Kennedy and the detail of what had happened and what was happening.  The nation mourned together.

The events of 9/11 had the same effect on America… on me.  I was sitting in my office at Alliance Data Systems working.  One of my staff came in and asked if I had heard about the airplane that hit one of the towers of the WTC in New York.  Said it was all over the news.  I rushed to the TV’s in the break room to see what was going on and hear the latest information.  It was standing room only as most of the building was there watching in disbelief.  We all watched in horror as the pictures unfolded of the second plane, the pentagon, and the plane that was taken down by the passengers… then the collapse of the towers.  The silence in the room was deafening.  Again the nation mourned together. 

We have been fortunate to have had so little war and destruction on US soil.  That is not to say that bad things have not happen here, but war… not since the civil war.  This terrorism hit the very core of our existence.  We somehow felt we were safe from this kind of thing, not that we ever really were… but we clearly felt some false sense of security.

We united as a country for the first time in years.  This didn’t just happen to the democrats or the republicans… it happened to Americans!  We can never forget how vulnerable we are…