Remembering 9/11

This weekend I booked tickets to visit my best friend Juliana in NYC. As I booked my tickets on the eve of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I thought of the impending day. Was it really ten years ago that our great nation felt a blow beyond anyone’s worst nightmares? I remember the exact person who told me the news and exactly where I was standing. I was in eighth grade and my science enrichment class had just ended. Entering the hall of my middle school, the atmosphere in the hall seemed normal. Suddenly a wave of chaos engulfed the hall as whispers turned into yells of panic. See I went to middle school in Oklahoma City, a city that had their own tragedy only six years pervious. I was standing in front of the school office when Anna told me that planes had flew into the Twin towers. At first, I thought she meant the “twin towers” China was building. I couldn’t fathom that planes had crashed into the NYC Twin Towers. Teachers quickly rushed into the hall and ushered students back into the classrooms. My teacher plugged in the ancient TV set as the class sat in perfect silence. Some students cried, while most sat with the mouths agape. While I didn’t live in OKC when the bombing occurred, I still felt the city’s pain through my friends’ memories. At only 14, most had now lived through the two largest terrorist attacks on American soil.

A lot has changed in ten years. Our relatively peaceful nation has gone to war on two fronts, our economy has bottomed out and America’s future as a world power is uncertain. The effects of 9/11 are still felt today in both negative and positive ways. A new sense of American pride has been planted, and I hope we never forget why. Oklahoma City hasn’t forgotten the bombing in 15 years, and I doubt America or the free world will ever forget 9/11. I’ll leave you with a quote from good old, former president George W. Bush. “One of the lessons of 9/11 is that evil is real. And so is courage.”