Remembering 9/11

We will never forget.

9 a.m. Sept. 11, 2001.

I turned on my television and learned the news from Dan Rather. As he reported live with the backdrop of the smoking Twin Towers, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It had to be a dream.

Rather said that two planes had hit the towers, the Pentagon, and that more could be on the way. “America is Under Attack,” according to a dark blue bar on the bottom of my tv screen.

I dropped to my knees and yelled: “Oh my God!”

Just months before, I had been at the base of the Twin Towers on a college trip to New York. A horrible feeling rushed through me, and I felt an uncontrolable urge to be with someone. Only I was home alone.

I was a sophomore at Henderson State University at the time and assistant editor at my college newspaper, so my first thought was to rush to the office and find out any information I could.

When I arrived, I saw dozens of students gathered around the televisions sets in our student center.

“What’s the latest?” I asked the crowd, not caring that I didn’t know any one of them.

I finally saw someone I knew, a girl named Ashley who sold ads for the paper, and we immediately hugged.

“I can’t believe what’s happened,” she gasped through tears.

“I know.”

That’s all I could say.

My eyes were glued to the television as the first tower fell. No one could believe the horror. Not only had the towers been struck by large airliners, now one of them had collapsed.
It seemed to get worse and worse.

Later that day, our university president announced that school would close. Students scrambled around trying to find rides home because everyone thought we were at war.

This was our Pearl Harbor — our day of reckoning. And we were scared to death that something more was about to happen.

I’ve never felt such a sense of helplessness, and I can only imagine what those at ground zero went through — seeing the destruction first-hand, smelling the charred remains of xerox paper, fax machines, cars, office supplies. And people.

There is a look that everyone who was there that day has when they talk about the aftermath. They are dazed, as if in a comatose state that’s too difficult to shake. God only knows what’s going through their minds as they relive the horrors.

I know that in my own mind, just watching the events unfold on tv and the Internet, it was too much to bear.

As the fifth anniversary of the most horrific terrorist attack in world history came and went, we can only pray that nothing like this will ever happen again. God bless those who lost their lives, their families and everyone who is dealing with the aftermath of Sept. 11.