Sunday, September 11, 2005

The Day of Infamy

Mitch has some great posts. Led me to thinking what it was like for me on Sept. 11. I was driving to Richmond Elementary, when around 7:45am I heard the initial news on KQRS, which was coming in unusually clear for the area (I can usually get KQ in the mornings in St. Cloud, but not very much at points west). I heard about the first plane (initially reported as a private plane), and the thought came through my mind of a novice pilot; then I heard it was a jet liner, and--WTF--how the hell did that happen?!? Then just moments before reaching my destination, I heard of the second jet liner. Having a meeting at 8 am, I had gotten to Richmond at around 7:50am. I rushed to the school media center and turned on the tube, and saw the horror for what it was. 8:00 came around, and 8:03 came around... I left the media center to meet with a parent to discuss their child's progress.. We discussed, but it was extremely difficult to keep my mind focused given the events. After the meeting, I went back to the Media Center, around the same time as the first tower collapsed. My next stop for the day was at ROCORI Middle School; first thing I did, however, was to stop at the Drug Store in Cold Spring and purchase a small transistor AM/FM radio, which I still have to this day. Upon arriving at RMS, I fired up the computer--Internet, slow to nonexistent. I was so hungry for news.. so hungry to find out what the heck was happening. I was finally able to log on to Fox News, and learned that it was indeed a terrorist attack. I learned of the crashing of the plane into the Pentagon, and another that had crashed in Pennsylvania. For the first time in my life I had felt an adrenaline rush like no other time. Where would they strike next? Was this to be a coordinated nationwide attack? Would I go home, only to find out that muslim terrorists, previously in hiding, would start to shoot up St. Cloud? I got home a little early that afternoon, and hugged my boys as they got off of the school bus. After being glued to Fox News for the remainder of the afternoon, we attended a service at St. Mary's Cathedral. There was an eerie tenseness in the air on our way to the service, all about St. Cloud. Gas prices had immediately jumped to $5.00 per gallon. The uncertainty of what to expect left a pit in my stomach, and I was looking around at every corner, and inside every car we passed, watching for any would-be terrorists that would try something to strike out at small-town America. In those few following days, I especially remember the eerily empty skies, sans con-trails save for a few fighter planes that I noticed.

America was on watch. America knew who we were dealing with, and we were at the ready to combat these reprobates who attacked innocent American civilians.

The sorry part about all this is, and continues to be, that there are Americans who would rather we forget all about it. From the first decisions made to no longer show the carnage that 9/11 left behind, they have been systematically trying to once again lull us into a false sense of security and apathy. May every 9/11, until the War on Terror is won, serve as a wake up call that not all in the world is right; that there are yet evil people in the world who mean to kill us; and that we are indeed involved in a just war to render those people incapable of striking a similar blow in the future.

May we never forget!