jwomp: September 11, 2001

I was getting ready for work on the morning of September 11, 2001. Kelly was upstairs and I was downstairs. While I was shaving, Kelly screamed down to me that an airplane had just slammed into the side of the World Trade Center in New York City. No big deal, I thought. In 1939 an airplane had crashed into the side of the Empire State Building. About ten minutes later, another airplane slammed into the side of the World Trade Center. Something was horribly wrong. For the next four hours, I would be glued to the television. My boss wasn't mad at me for coming in late to work. Matter of fact, he was late too. All of our staff was late.

Flashback to 20 years ago:

My father had taken us kids to the top of the World Trade Center when we moved to New York. I remember how high in the air we were. When nobody was looking, I tossed a handful of coins over the edge. Rumor has it that if a penny were to land on your head from 100 stories above, it will kill you. It doesn't work. There were pennies all over the sidewalk below...and, nobody was dead.

Flash-forward twenty years:

My father made a comment a couple of days ago about how scared the folks on the Observation Deck must have been. I say "Folks" as a generic term. These were children, fathers, and mothers. They were stranded on the top floor, watching these commercial airliners slam into the side of the building, knowing that they couldn't get down. They knew they were going to die. Thousands of people everyday visited the World Trade Center. There was a Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum on the top floor. I know. I've been there. It was filled with children Johnny's age. There were adults mine and Kelly's age.

I would take Kelly and Johnny to New York City in the Spring of 2007. We had a grand ole' time. We visited all of the major attractions. On our last day, we would visit the site where the World Trade Centers used to stand. There is a giant hole in the ground there now. There were many people crying outside the gates. Kelly, if I remember correctly, started crying.

I think there were a total of 6,000+ innocent people killed in the World Trade Center attacks. These weren't just people. They were people like you and me. They were children, just like our own. Remember that. I took my family to New York, knowing we were safe from any terrorist attack. The folks in 2001 took their families to New York City thinking they were safe from terrorist attacks, too. Same with all of the folks in Northern Ireland over the last thirty years. Also, the folks that took their families to Kenya, Indonesia, London, Lebanon, Jerusalem, etc., et al.

On the up-side...here are some photos from our NYC Trip: