A World Event

When the planes hit the World Trade Center, I was still asleep. Sept. 11 began for me with a phone call from my mother, a teacher who found herself in a school of high school students watching the news instead of studying Latin. She wanted to know what the paper was going to do, and what I would do to report on the crash.

I distinctively remember thinking this was a silly thing to ask. The buildings were still standing. A plane had hit the Pentagon and it was clearly an act of terrorism, but it just didn't seem at the time like the sort of story a newspaper in Florida would focus 100 percent of its resources upon.

My wife woke up and was more concerned. She saw the image and said 'That's the World Trade Center!' Quickly, she ran to grab our 1-year-old son, and she expressed anger that terrorists would bring their fight to our shores. But I simply didn't think it was that big a deal.

Then the first tower came down. From the next room, my wife screamed, 'Something is happening.'

I told my mother I had to go and was suddenly glues to the TV set. CNN's Aaron Brown was audibly shocked, peering through the smoke to try and figure if anything remained. As he declared the tower was truly gone, that was when 9/11 started for me. When the second tower collapsed, it felt inevitable.

I was at work within 10 minutes. Somehow, I knew my day would be long and grim. That by day's end, I would be speaking with people who had lost loved ones. A retired intelligence officer called me not long after I got to work and authoritatively stated the only terrorist group he felt could pull off so extravagent an attack. It was likely not the first time I heard of the group, but it was the time the name would stick with me. Al Quaeda.

We got many false reports through the day. Threats of car bombs were clearing out plazas in Washington. Disney World evacuated, which of course was a big deal for us in Central Florida. As it turned out, the planes in the morning caused the only destruction of the day, but it was enough.

I was on the phone with Rep. Cliff Stearns quickly. His office was among those that had not been evacuated. He figured Congress would declare war as soon as the Capitol was open. That never officially occurred, but of course, we have remained in an unofficial state of war since that day. I do recall being impressed with how much Stearns knew about the political struggles of mid-Asia, and felt we had an interesting perspective on the next few months of international news. Stearns was on displomatic missions to Afghanistan both before and after the fall of Kabul.

A photographer and I also went to a local bloodbank, where lined had formed and where people with no direct connection to the tragedy still felt a need to give back. A grown man was in tears in front of TV set there. I asked if he knew anybody. No, but the loss of life was just immense. If nothing else good happened that day, that transcendant connection between mankind was felt throughout the world.

And I did end up speaking to family for a victim, at least potentially. A girl at the local high school had a cousin in the Center. She waited in school throughout the day, watching the news and waiting for a family member to come and update her. Of course, that didn't really happen. Hope was held for many in this disaster that left chaos for days, and the WTC had no passenger roster. Three of four people did make it out. I never could get an update from the girl or her family.

The day was a moment in time that connected the world. I thought of my own short time living in New York a couple years ago. But everyone, even those who never step foot in the city, have memories somehow tied to that city.

Of course, the years since then have been profoundly changed, often for the worse. Our foreign policy was gripped by paranoia. Our focus, which had been overly focused on domestic issues, turned 100 percent to foreign matters. Sadly, the first steps toward economic collapse went unnoticed as a result. And we went about fighting the last war. Our enemy was a mafia capable of nihilism and mass destruction, but we still sought the modern versions of Germany and Japan to target with our military forces.

But the connection we all felt is something worth revisiting. Perhaps a decade later, we can view everything in a clear-eyed way. Maybe we can take a broader view of the country now, and not be so focused on the madmen who caused this. Osama is dead. Al Quaeda is in tatters. There will always be people intent on doing America harm, but we learned that day a decade ago that the world was largely on our side.

As I watch pictures of children this morning taking rubbings of names at the WTC memorial, I am reminded that an entire generation of children lives with the consequences of this day, but they also view it through the prism of history. The children holding crayons today are too young to recall 9/11 at all vividly. I think the rest of us have something to learn from them. And this country has the strength to do just that.