9/11/2001 “Never Forget”

I remember the day like it was yesterday. I was doing the morning show at a radio station in Central Wisconsin. It was a beautiful Tuesday morning. One of those perfect Fall days.My co-host and I were doing our normal thing. Everything seemed fine. We had a TV in our studio that was ALWAYS on CNN just in case there was any breaking news.  ALWAYS. In the 5-6 years I was working there, the station had never been changed....until that day.

The night before, Ed McCaffrey from the Denver Broncos had broken his leg on Monday Night Football. I didn't get an opportunity to see it live so I thought, "I gotta see his leg break." So, I turned the TV to ESPN and was waiting for the clip. That's when the first plane hit.....but I didn't know it. 2 minutes later, my boss rang the hotline and said, "What the hell are you doing?" In my smart ass way, I said, "I'm doing a show! What the hell are YOU doing?" He proceeded to tell me all about the first plane hitting the tower. So immediately, I flipped it back to CNN. (What are the odds? The ONE day I change the station, not 2 minutes later, there's breaking news about The World Trade Center)

It was at that point that we cut off the song and immediately began relaying to our audience, what was happening. "An airliner has struck one of the Twin Towers", my co-host said. We babbled a little bit about that and speculated on what might have happened. How it could have gotten off course. Not even an inkling of it being a terrorist attack......until the 2nd plane hit.

At about the same time my co-host said, "We're under attack. This is a terrorist attack." I said, "This is a deliberate attack." There was no doubting it. I just remember being numb....sitting in disbelief. In my time on earth, I had never experienced something of this magnitude and it was, for lack of a better word, numbing.

Though the days afterwards were a blur, a flurry of news reports, watching the TV non-stop, trying to piece it all together, trying to make sense of it, watching videos over and over again, hearing first hand accounts from survivors, firemen, police, etc. September 11th, 2001 was and forever will be, one of those days you never forget. One of the few instances in your life where you remember every detail about that day, vividly.

So, when I hear someone say or I read, "Never Forget".....I can't. Nobody can. Nor should we.

God Bless America.