Where were you when the world stopped turning?

My Grandmother lived through the Depression. Great Grandpa remembers Pearl Harbor. My Dad can tell you where he was when he heard President Kennedy had been killed. Me? Well, my generation's first true, life-changing world event has to be grander in scale than any other's. We are the September 11th generation.

Where were you on that day? I remember it like it was yesterday. As a 9th grader, I didn't understand it fully at the time, but I remember living with a lot of fear for months after the event. I've visited Ground Zero twice since, and in the middle of the crazy, hustling city is an unmistakable silent scar with an atmosphere all its own. It's hard to describe. The air is just different there.

I was blessed that no one I personally knew was injured on that day, but I am thankful that one of my good friends served two terms in the National Guard, so he spent weeks searching through the tragic remains (followed by a few years overseas in Iraq). Knowing a soldier really puts being an American in perspective. It makes you a lot more thankful for the rights we all too easily take for granted.

But anyhow, it's the anniversary of a day that haunts us all. How has the tragedy helped you grow? Did it change your life? Make you more proud to be an American? Where were you when you heard the news?

In Memory

by Michelle Lynn McPeters

What was it you had said?
Why did you have to go?
Each simple little memory
Now passes by so slow.
I am stuck in the yesterday
Not wanting to accept
The horrid truth that you are gone
Your life taken without threat
This morning you awoke

To face a brand new day
But a cold-hearted terrorist
Took that gift away
Though the grave cry for the lost
In the settling of the dust
They failed to shake our foundation
For in God we put our trust.

Please watch this video. As Americans, as human beings, we all need to remember that day for as long as we live. It's a part of all of us.

This will be our response to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.

Leonard Bernstein