I was working the graveyard shift the night before and scheduled to get off at 8am, which was 9am in NYC. I am a native New Yorker but now reside in Memphis Tennessee. As I got into the car to go home with my girlfriend, she said, “Hurry up and get in! You’ve gotta hear this!” On the radio was a broadcast of the news saying that one of the towers in NYC had been hit. Well, we both thought it was a joke. I told her to quickly scan some other stations to see if this was on more than one station, and it was on all of them!! My heart was leaping in my chest! She then sped up in a mad dash for home and the television. Once there, I approached the T.V. with fear, and a strong feeling of not wanting to see, but morbid curiousity got the better of me and I turned it on. The North Tower was on fire! And just as we both sat down in shock, here came the second plane to unimaginally hit the South Tower! The sense of shock was so strong, I felt as if that plane had hit me! And there we sat, stiff as statues, watching until the feelings came crashing down with the buildings, and we began to cry. We both grew up with those towers in the background of our lives. To see the emptiness there, the graves of them as well as all those poor people, is too much to bear. New York is unrecognizable to me now. If I see it on T.V. and don’t also see the Statue of Liberty, I don’t recognize it at all. To this day, almost 2 years to the day it happened, I still feel shock to see the replay of those planes taking down a treasured landmark in my hometown. And the extreme sadness of knowing that the people on board those planes and in those towers suffered as they did will never leave me. I will continue to pray for them and the families they left behind so that the wounds will heal.

But if the tragedy that shook America that day is to be considered a wound, I should hope it’s scar to be bright red, so that we may NEVER forget!

“God Bless America!”