a day to remember, part I

Today is September 11, and it is the eighth anniversary of the terrorist attacks that took down the two World Trade Center towers in New York City.

At the time I was working at the Bothell location of my company, and so my alarm didn't go off until around 6am. Instead of the music that normally accompanied my alarm, I heard the morning show hosts talking seriously talking about planes and buildings. Figuring it was a joke, I got up and turned off the radio to get ready for work. Once out of the bedroom and into the kitchen to make my lunch, I turned on the TV out of curiosity and found the news showing the towers burning. As I stood there and watched in shock, the first tower fell. I went to wake up Chris to tell him that the WTC had been attacked and one of the towers had collapsed, then I went to work. By the time I got to work and turned on my computer, the second tower had fallen.

Soon after the towers fell, it occurred to me that my father-in-law took the train to the WTC station every morning to go to work. I called my mother-in-law and she had heard from him - he had missed his train and been on the one after it, which stopped well before the WTC due to the attacks. As I understand it, missing that train probably saved his life as he would have been stuck under the WTC when the planes hit the buildings.

We were lucky to have not been personally affected by the death and destruction that the attacks created, but we like all citizens are still dealing with the aftereffects in the financial and military sectors to this day. I hope as the years pass and the scars begin to fade, that we will all be able to put this event behind us and move forward into a brighter future where we can use education and goodwill to ensure that such a tragedy will never happen again.