9-11 Reflections

10 years ago, our lives changed forever.I was in my office on a conference call with our Sales Representitive in our southern California office working on a project when the reports started coming in. After a few minutes, we cancelled our conference call. The break room had a TV in it and for about an hour everyone from the President of the Company to the guys who wrapped the crates for shipping was huddled in there together watching the attacks.
Looking back now, my first thoughts seem so naive. I asked who would have sold these guys airplanes. It never occurred to me they would hijack planes to fly into the buildings. We eventually returned to work, and to some semblance of normal, but we were all forever changed that day.
The image that will never leave me if watching people jump from the World Trade Centers, taking their chances with gravity rather than burn to death. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
The challenge of his memorial has been to try to explain the events to my daughter who was about 18 months at the time of the attack. She’s now an 11-year-old. She understands the mechanics of what happened, but I don’t know that she’ll ever really understand the impact it had.
What brings it home most to me is watching the stories of the children of 9/11. These kids were babies who were in in utero during the attacks and lost their Mom or Dad. They have lost more than any of us.
We had a brief moment of remembrance in our service Sunday, and I watched some of the memorials on TV.
9/11 is a watershed moment for all of us, and something none of us who lived though it will ever forget. I hope and pray we will never have another occasion like 9/11 ever again.