story6655.xml

story6655.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-12

My story is pretty unremarkable-I had turned on the tv to check the news before going to work to see what was the condition of Ed McAffrey-he's a Bronco receiver who had broken his leg in the Monday Night Football Game the night before. I remember glancing at the picture and thinking, "There's a movie I want to miss" just after the first plane had hit. It sank in pretty fast that this wasn't a movie trailer and I, like so many others, had that gut wrenching realization come over me that the US was being attacked by terrorists as soon as the second plane hit. I stayed and watched the news coverage until the towers came down and then went to work. Work is as the secretary for a church in Fort Collins. We have a large tv screen in the sanctuary and we could get ABC news on it and we left it on all day-interrupting it every half hour for people to express their thoughts or prayers. We had a steady stream of folks-most of whom I had never seen before-come in to our sanctuary that day. Some just sat. Some prayerd, others talked among themselves quietly, a few wept openly. I dunno if they were all Christians or what and it didn't make any difference-they would have been welcomed in our facility even in a time when nothing was happening. I do know that they needed what they perceived to be a safe haven at that time. I remember feeling as though all of these people were a part of the human fabric of life and that we were all on an equal footing-from the lady who got out of her Jaguar to the student who showed up in a beat up old Toyota. It took several days for any of us on the church staff to get it together to function somewhat normally again..think we were all pretty numb-just like everyone else.