With the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks taking place this Sunday there will be much said and relived about the two-plus hour long event that set the tone for the first decade of the 21st century.
Each of us will remember it, mark it and analyze it in our own individual way. In light of that, we thought it might be more proper for each editorial board member to provide some insight into where they were when the planes struck, what they felt and how we see its impacts today.
As Sept. 11, 2001 dawned, it was business as usual around the house.
My wife Melanie and I were busily preparing for work trying not to bump into one another in the bathroom. And of course the television was on and as usual tuned to one of the network morning shows.
When the news first broke that a small airplane had somehow crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers I tuned in. All of a sudden came the news flash – and seeing some surreal street-level video – that a second plane hit the other tower.
I joined millions of others who all of a sudden knew this was no accident.
Our home was just a little more busy than usual as we had inherited an exchange student from Lithuania, thanks to the urging and pleading of our youngest daughter. Shortly after word of a plane crashing into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. came the panic call from Doville's mother in faraway Vilnius. She did not have a good grasp on United States geography.
I think I knew how my grandparents felt on Dec. 7, 1941.
Paul Delaney
I was in middle school at the time, and my morning ritual was to watch KXLY's Good Morning Northwest. It wasn't a chance for me to get any news, but rather to watch something on TV after reading the comics in the paper.
At that age, I had never heard of the World Trade Center, and at first didn't even know which city it was in. I didn't understand how this could affect me, being thousands of miles away from New York City. Most of my friends also had either not heard of the building or had not watched the news that morning.
The morning of Sept. 11, 2001, I saw my neighborhood change, if only for a small bit of time, as we figured out what happened. The walls broke down, and we were all on the same team. I hope that we can find that same drive and the same resolve we had in the aftermath of that terrible day. Otherwise, we relegate ourselves to being the same people we were on Sept. 10.
James Eik
Over the course of a few hours that day, the televisions at my high school started turning on and drawing students and teachers to their screens. The casual talk, that something weird was happening somewhere far away from our tiny Wisconsin town, changed to something more urgent.
I was a sophomore in high school on Sept. 11, 2001. My memory of that day is mostly hazy, but I recall clearly sitting in English class with the television wheeled to the front of the room, watching as the second plane struck the World Trade Center. That day changed the world, certainly, and not just by spurring war in the Middle East and bringing the threat of terrorism to the forefront of Americans' minds.
For me, barely able to grasp what was happening at the age of 15, Sept. 11 and its aftermath introduced me to hate and violence that I never knew existed in the world. Nevertheless, I feel a sense of community that has stretched beyond the borders of towns and states across our nation. Americans came together in grief, and I hope the next 10 years see us uniting in our nation's continued quest toward personal freedom and peace.
Becky Thomas
On Tuesday Sept. 11, 2001, my sons were getting ready to head out to Betz and CMS. We wouldn't have known about the towers had not one of their friends come by to walk to school with them and told us about the first tower.
I turned on the TV to see the first one on fire and then the second one was hit and the story started to come to light. My first thought was, who would have done this and why. Naive, I know.
Then anger, once it was revealed about the hijackers and how far-reaching the plan would go.
As a country I think we are too lax about the issues of terrorism and how freely people can move about within our country and its borders. The radicals that want to cause chaos hope to have innocent people lose their lives so we live in fear that it could happen to us or our loved ones and stop living the life they perceive as ignorant and unholy.
Despite our current lack of leadership in Washington, D.C. the U.S.A. is still the best country in the world to live and raise a family.
Veterans should be applauded for taking the fight to the radicals and keeping this continent safe from all of the extremism that is being felt throughout the rest of the world.
Harlan Shellabarger
My morning routine consists of unfolding myself out of bed, blindly stumbling to the kitchen to make coffee, sitting down to read the morning paper and clicking on CNN to get the electronic update.
It was that way 10 years ago this Sunday, so getting up at 6 a.m. I missed the live version of events. When I clicked on the TV every channel showed the smoking chimney that was the World Trade Center so my reaction was it was a really bad fire.
As I watched the replay of the second plane slamming into the South Tower it hit me that it was far worse and I actually became light-headed.
As the months unfolded and we learned more about who attacked us I became angry, but not only with the terrorists. I remember seeing a sign along a road between Marshall and the Fairways that read “We didn't start this war” and thinking, no we didn't, but nor did we do all we could to make sure someone else didn't either.
I feel we let a golden opportunity for unity and sense of combined purpose within ourselves as Americans and the rest of the world be squandered. Instead of being asked to sacrifice we were asked to spend, and our government's 9/11-influenced spending since then, some of it questionable, is one of the reasons our debt is so high.
We will be paying for the lost opportunity for a long time, and so will our children.
John McCallum
The anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001 attacks may come and pass this Sunday, but we would like to invite you, the Cheney Free Press reader, to please write in and share your thoughts with the rest of us.
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