story10656.xml

story10656.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2004-06-17

I was in my office at the local community college preparing for the day when I logged on to the dot-com news around 8:50AM. I usually will read the news around 8:00AM, but I was unusually busy that mornining. The server seemed to take forever, as if the Net was congested. Finally, one lone picture and a brief statement appeared indicating that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I assumed that an accident had occurred. I announced this to my coworkers, two of them from New York. One immediately attemtpted to contact family but all circuits were busy. My wife called from home to ask if I had heard. While we were talking, she said, "oh my God, another plane just hit the second tower. I just saw it." I couldn't believe it. Terrorism didn't register with me. I couldn't understand why two planes had crashed into these towers. Finally I realized this was no accident, something I should have recognized immediately. We all sat in stunned silence, as the whole college seemed to come to a hault. We wached TV monitors all day. When the first tower collapsed I kept repeating: "there is noway that just happened." I was wrong, it had. As slow as I was to come around to reality, I realized that our world had changed, and that we can never think the same way about terrorism again. We must stand strong as Americans and keep the victims of 9/11 in our hearts and minds forever.

God Bless America
Robert