We'll Never Forget

I remember sitting in my American History class, just a few weeks after my Junior year started at Royal Palm Beach High School in Florida. Mrs. Burns, my teacher, had just left us with a worksheet and went to see another teacher. All of the sudden, she came bursting in, wide-eyed and very concerned, and said that the World Trade Centers in NYC had just been hit by a plane. We turned on our TV that was in the class room and watched. We saw the buildings burning just after the second plane had hit. I was young at the time so I don't remember being how I was emotionally. I just remember that it was a very somber day. I saw many flags put up that day, our school's flag even went to half mast. I remember sitting with my family watching the President address the nation. For the rest of that year I don't ever remember not seeing an American flag hung somewhere.

James: I was on my mission in Venezuela. We left our apartment that morning, in Tariba. We walked to our first appointment which was with a co-worker of one of the members in the ward. Just around the corner from his house, some person in a white car, called out to us and asked if we were Americans. We answered yes and he started going off about something that had to do with the Pentagon, the White house and the Twin Towers in New York City. We were confused at what he was saying so we left and continued on to our appointment. As they opened the door and they looked at us with stunned faces and we knew that something had happened and was wrong. We went into their room that had the TV on (probably CNN International) and we just stood there. Stunned. We were pretty inefficient the rest of the day. We had our Mission President interviews that night. Since we'd been out all day, not to mention, missionaries in a foreign country, we were concerned about our future as missionaries. The Mission President wasn't expecting us to be sent home. But the days that followed, the most anybody wanted to talk about with us was if we were from NY and if our families had been affected. It went on like that for about a month.

Now ten years, later, we were able to visit the sight of the future 9/11 Memorial. I'm very exited to see it when it is all finished and completed. It's a way to show us that we can rebuild ourselves. We are strong. Here's a link to the 9/11 Memorial in New York City: www.911memorial.org. Also, go to http://newyorkwtc.com/newwtc.htm. This one also has great concepts and pictures of what the memorial is going to look like.

We'll Never Forget.