I had taken the BAR in July and was waiting until November on the results. I was substitute teaching in Nocona during that time. I had taken over for a teacher on maternity leave and was teaching 6th, 7th & 8th grade Math and P.E. Lord help those kids that had me teaching them Math for 6 weeks, but that's another story for another day, and just note that I pray on a regular basis that I didn't impair their education too much.
Anyway, I had no 1st period class, but I had to be there anyway. So I would get to school at 8:00 and watch The Today Show. I was watching and they cut from the normally time-delayed program to live feed and reported a plane had struck the first tower. Of course, a few minutes later, I watched live on TV as the next plan struck the second tower. I'll never forget how I couldn't believe what my eyes had seen. I still really can't.
I went down the hall to tell the office staff that I thought they should turn on the tv because it appeared something major was happening. I remember being more open with my 7th & 8th graders about what was going on, even letting them see some of the coverage. Of course we watched the coverage grow to include the fall of the towers, the Pentagon and Flight 93. I remember that I was totally freaking out on the inside, but trying to keep it together for the kids.
Here are some of my personal World Trade Center photos that I wanted to share...
On my first trip to NYC in December 1995, I got to go up one of the towers to the public viewing place. You can see the shadow of both towers and the other tower there to the left...
The towers were the twin giants in this iconic backdrop of lower Manhattan...
These were from my 1997 trip...
My next trip was in February 2005, and these were taken at Ground Zero...
This scuplture that had survived and been moved to Battery Park...
and again, that iconic backdrop...
It will never look the same to me. Each time I see it, I think about those two towers that are missing.
I remember how united this country was on 9/12/01. The day after the attacks, everyone was American. There wasn't party division. There wasn't bickering. Osama Bin Laden wanted to destroy America, but he was unable to do that by hijacking four plans and killing thousands of Americans. There was a consensus in this country that we were strong and we would overcome.
Now it seems that 10 years later, this country is being destroyed. It's not being destroyed by the likes of OBL or other terror groups, but fighting amongst ourselves. We need to remember that back in 2011, we prayed for our leaders, not just the leaders that we personally approved of, or that we personally would vote for, but all of our leaders. We prayed for them to succesfully lead this country out of that dark hour. I believe that the same must be done today. We need a consensus to lead us out of this economic crisis. If we don't, then we will have assisted OBL in his pursuit to destroy this great country. I hope that this 10th Anniversary will serve as a reminder to a bickering country that United We Stand...
So on this 10th Anniversary of one of our nation's darkest days, I pray this for our country:
"May our faith be fearless, our hope be stubborn and our ambitions for our nation audacious and unbounded." ~Cory Booker
"May our faith be fearless, our hope be stubborn and our ambitions for our nation audacious and unbounded." ~Cory Booker
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