On this eve of the 9/11 attacks on America in 2001, I am in mourning again for what happened in our nation. Various networks are covering the story ... the twin towers are crashing again ... the Pentagon is slammed into by a plane ... Flight 93 crashing into the Pennsylvania countryside.Too many have a 9/10/01 attitude about the dangers out there ... about rampant terrorism that is constantly a threat ... about Operation Iraqi Freedom and the need for our military to be there to protect us here at home ... but do we appreciate it?
The heroes of Flight 93 ... may we never forget.
The heroes of the NYPD ... may we never forget.
Have you forgotten?
5 comments:
9/11 occurred 18 months after I retired from the Navy. It stunned me because I lost 8 of my former shipmates at my last duty station, Pentagon NMCC/Tophand, command and control center for fleet voice/EAMs.
They were like family to me. Tomorrow I'll be there.
Sept 10 01 I was driving a semi around Long Island and up and down the Jersey turnpike.
There was a Fire at the Newark airport that was suspicious.
So I saw the towers the last day they would stand.
I had a load to Savannah and made my way to the Dutch Pantry TS on US 301 on the MD Eastern Shore by the wee hours of 9/11/01.(would have been my grandmothers 100th birthday but she had died 2 months earlier.)
At around 9 am I awoke to a phone call telling me about the first plane. I turned the TV on in my truck and saw the second plane hit. I had to cross the rt 50/301 Chesapeake Bay Bridge and was concerned about it being a target. While crossing the Pentagon was hit. I made it back home to Caroline County and spent the night.
The next day I headed for Savannah and to my surprise I saw not one law enforcement vehicle and none of the DOT truck scales were open. You could have taken anything you wanted up and down I95 Sept. 12. How scary is that? Hope they fixed that for the next time.
We were on a road trip home from Maine. Our older son was ten months old at the time. The night before, we had passed New York City.
We were at t hotel in Bordentown, New Jersey (Exit 7 on the Turnpike). We got to the lobby for a late breakfast just before 9 AM and saw on CNN that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center Towers. As I was contemplating what kind of an idiot would fly a plane into the World Trade Center (and remembering from history that someone flew a plane into the Empire State Building in the 1950s), we saw live on TV the second plane hit the other tower. At that point we knew it was an act of terrorism.
We lived in Maryland at the time. Somehow, we made it home, and I managed to avoid driving through Philadelphia and Baltimore. My wife was too upset to share in the driving. I was in no mood to drive through the Baltimore tunnels, so I drove north around the city on the Baltimore Beltway.
The only comical touch to the story was that we stopped in a diner on Loch Raven Boulevard, and if it weren't for the prices, it looked like we had stepped into a time warp to the early 1960s. Once we got home, we found out that our families were freaking out about us because they didn't know where we were.
I was just a few short miles from the Pentagon in my government class my senior year of high school. Rumor was that students in the gym class could hear the crash and see the smoke. To make a long story short, I was a 17-year old who grew up way too much in one short day.
September 11, 2001 started out like any other day. I was on active duty with the Navy at the Richmond Navy and Marine Corp Reserve Center. I was on ADSW, aka Active Duty Special Work, being the Honor Guard at Veterans' funerals. I was on my way to find out what was scheduled for the day.
I remember the time exactly. It was 0854 hours. I was passing the conference room, noticing at first, only that the room was filled with the "gunnies" from the Marine Corps Reserve section from across the hall. Then I saw what they were watching...one of the World Trade Center towers was on fire.
One Gunny told me that a terrible accident had happened, but that was all that he knew. And so we watched....
And six minutes later, we were at war. We now knew that the crash had been no accident. The Marines, even before the debris had hit the ground in NYC, began securing the building and opening the armory. And then they called their superiors.
Over the next few weeks, they called in Reservists, in case they were needed. The gates were closed and armed guards posted.
One of my most cherished possessions is the Letter of Appreciation in a RED award folder that I have among my blue Navy award folders, which I received for volunteering to stand a guard post during the day so that the Marines could do their duties activating Reservists.
About an hour later, we found out about the Pentagon. Our eyes had finally been opened. Terrorism had ceased being a crime. Now we knew that, truly, we were at war.
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