Message Replied To ==========
I was deer hunting. Only other guy at hunt club was a Marine force recon guy.
When I got back to the camp, he walked out and said, "a plane hit the WTC". I came inside and we had a cup of coffee and watched, then the second plane hit.
I tried to call one of my employees who was supposed to go to Canter-Fitzgerald - with offices in WTC - that day. My call wouldn't go through. After several tries, I sent him a text. I wondered if it went through or not (these were still early days of mobile network interoperability). After the towers collapsed, I called him several more times, but the calls wouldn't go through, so I texted him again and again and again.
Finally, later that evening, I received a call from the phone in my work apartment in Jersey City. His dad was also in Manhattan and they had met up somewhere between downtown and walked all the way to the GW bridge. It was at least 10 miles - in dress shoes, coat & tie. They got a cab back to Jersey City and camped out in my apartment until the next morning.
I will never forget when, after that second plane hit, my hunting buddy - force recon guy - said, "I bet this was ben Laden". I had never heard of ben Laden (or al Qaeda, or any of the other such stuff). But I'll never forget the certainty on his face and conviction in his voice when he said it, even though I didn't think anything about it at the time. I just assumed it was the blathering of a typical jarhead.
The collapse of WTC impacted me only slightly for quite some time. My apartment was on Sussex, somewhat near the Exchange Place station and my normal train was from there to the Cortland Street station beneath the WTC. That station was obviously closed for the longest time and for years afterward I rode ferries from right beside my apartment to Manhattan.==============================
There was a young PHD from Geneva on one of the planes that hit the towers so they do a memorial every year. I guess they ran out of people to speak so one of my folks a work asked me to speak. Probably 200 people there including a high school class. While it's a little long, here is what I said:
“An airplane just hit the World Trade Center.” Those were the words SFC Neal Peyton said as he broke into a meeting at the Army Safety Center on Fort Rucker. We continued the meeting for a few minutes as we thought it was just some nut in a Cessna. Then he came back in and said another plane had hit. The meeting ended as we all ran to one of the three televisions in the building. Our Operations Specialist called our Liaison Office in the Pentagon, and I was standing at her desk listening to the conversation when the plane hit that building. We heard it through the phone. Our people were safe, but we found out later that it hit our previous commander’s office. He was fortunate that he was not there that morning, but his boss and most of his co-workers were killed. That morning seemed to last forever as then LTC Rae McInnis stood with a bunch of other very experienced Soldiers as we watched the towers fall and wondered what the future held. What we all seemed to realize was that the world was forever changed. There had been attacks on our embassies, and the barracks in Beirut, and the USS Cole, but this was here, on our home soil, against civilians. This could not stand. Most of us would be in the Middle East soon and we all seemed to know it that morning.
That’s what I remember from that fateful Tuesday morning. I am honored and humbled to be here today speaking to you and especially to a family and a city who lost a shining star that morning. I am likely not the most decorated or deserving former Soldier that could be here today, but no one could appreciate the honor more and I hope my words are worthy of the event.
That group of Soldiers in the Safety Center knew changes were coming and it took only hours to start. That afternoon my wife had trouble getting on post to pick our daughter up at day care. The next day I left for work early only to find cars lined up for miles outside the gates of Fort Rucker. After trying two gates I went to Walmart and bought a bicycle, a helmet, and a reflective vest; parked my truck in Daleville and rode to work. Varying levels of this went on for weeks as no one seemed to know what was next. More changes would come, and we’ve all experienced them, but most of those changes have become so much a part of our lives we don’t think about what it was like before. But I remember when my family went all the way to the boarding gate with me in Birmingham as I boarded a flight that would eventually take me to Korea. I remember being able to pack whatever I wanted in my carry on except a knife or a gun. I remember going to football games and concerts without worrying about how big my wife’s purse was or if you could see through it. I remember when T, S & A were just letters in the alphabet. All that started to change on September 11th, 2001.
As we all know, 2,977 innocent people died that day. 400 were first responders. Many more died later from exposures they suffered at what became known as ground zero. Many still suffer physically and psychologically. In the years that followed over 7000 US service members died in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. 53 thousand were wounded. There are lingering issues among thousands of veterans that contributes to as many as 20 of them a day taking their own lives. That is the price we paid and are still paying. We must not forget.
There were temporary positives in the aftermath, free nations around the world rallied to support us. A French newspaper went so far as to say “Today, we are all Americans.” In politics, the realization of a threat to our way of life temporarily erased the bitter lines between Republicans and Democrats, just months after the most divisive and closely contested presidential election in our history. Church attendance went up significantly in the weeks after the attack. Unfortunately, all of this faded away in the months and years that followed.
What we cannot let fade away is our national memory of what happened 24 years ago. First, we must remember and honor those innocents who were lost that day. We must remember and honor the first responders who ran into the towers knowing full well the sacrifice they might be making. We must remember and honor Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham and others on Flight 93 who were determined not to let the terrorists have their way. We must remember and honor the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines who answered the call to duty following that tragic Tuesday morning. We must remember there are still people out there who hate us simply because we live in a free society. Over our history, millions have sacrificed to give us that freedom. We must not forget.
I have visited the 9-11 Memorials at the Pentagon and in New York. Coincidently I have a niece who is now a tour guide at the New York memorial. I recommend if you ever have a chance to do so, go visit. It is a fitting tribute to those who lost their lives that day. It is almost impossible to make it through the tour without becoming angry or shedding a tear. I did both. You can also stand by the reflecting pools now formed by the foundations of the twin towers and marvel at the resilience of our nation as the One World Trade Center building rises above the surrounding skyline. That resilience is still needed today. We need to come together like we did in those first few months after 9-11 and pray and work for our Nation again and not just for ourselves.
Carolyn and I have two children, Lauren is 26 now so she was two years old when she was stuck in day care on 9-11. Kaitlin was born exactly one month after the attack. I remember sending an e-mail to my extended family announcing her birth where I asked them to pray for her and the world she would grow up in. To our girls and many others 9-11 is just part of history. To them it is much like many of the other events they’ve read about that mark the passage of time. Some of those events became a measuring stick for those who lived through them. I remember my parents using the phrase “before the war” in reference to the time before World War II and “post-war” for the time after. In the Army years ago you would often hear the phrase “Post Vietnam”. My girls talk about the “before times and after times” in reference to COVID. After the attacks in New York and Washington 24 years ago the phrase “Post 9-11” came into use.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we will forever live in a Post 9-11 world. There is no going back. Even as we who remember the horror of that day and what life was like before it pass away, our children, and their children will go on in a Post 9-11 world. We cannot forget what happened that day and the price we paid and are still paying. We must ensure that future generations remember it, not just as a date in a history book, but a day that changed the world and not for the better. We, as a people, must not forget.
In closing, next July we will celebrate the 250th Anniversary of this great nation. There will be music and parades and fireworks and better speeches than this one. We will remember and celebrate all those who made courageous decisions and sacrifices to set this country on the path to becoming the greatest nation on earth. Just two months later we will gather here to mark the 25th Anniversary of one of our greatest national tragedies. I believe it is important that we link those memories as we think of our future. We have stood for 250 years and should continue to stand as the bastion of freedom in a complex world. Much blood has been shed to defend that freedom. But next year 10% of the time our country has existed will have been under the specter of 9-11 and the freedom we lost that day. That percentage will get larger every year from now on. We cannot let another event happen that shakes our freedom to its core. We must be vigilant, and we must not forget.
Thank you and may God bless all of you and may God Bless America
