This day of this month always brings to mind my first awareness of the 9/11 terror attacks.
I was retired but my school-teacher wife was still working and had yet to arise. Her clock radio had gone off and the one and only local FM station was playing. On the news, it was announced that an airplane had flown into one of the World Trade Center towers.
In my mind’s eye, I saw a Cessna or Beechcraft, its pilot slumped over from a heart attack and haplessly colliding with one of the towers. “Most unfortunate,” I thought. “I hope there were not too many hurt.” I could never have imagined it as a deliberate act. (And I’d read Tom Clancy’s book “Debt of Honor” wherein a pilot flies an airliner into a joint session of Congress being addressed by the President.
A small plane, that’s what I thought when I heard.
Then the news announced that a second aircraft had flown into the World Trade Center and I spoke aloud, to no one in particular, “We’re under attack.”
I turned on the TV and started a couple of VCRs. I still have the tapes. As events unfolded, I predicted that we would learn all the wrong lessons from this incident. (We did.)
And every year at this time, I still remember the hole I felt in the pit of my stomach when realization occurred. And I weep.