I Will Never Forget

Today is September 11.

I remember, as most people in the United States do, where I was when I heard that a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers.

I was working at a hospital in Middle Tennessee at the time and a nurse came running into my office to tell me what had happened.

I ran to the nearest TV.

And for the rest of the day staff all over the facility spent every spare minute they could during the day glued to television sets.

I remember sitting on a bed in an empty patient room, in the company of probably 20 other staff, silently watching in horror as a second plane slammed into a second tower.

Watched in disbelief as we all came to learn that the planes were no accidents and that our country was under attack.

As people, office workers and civilians whose only crime that day was simply going to work, jumped in terror from the windows of the buildings.  As they jumped to their death.

As both of the towers fell in a cloud of dust and mangled metal and rubble, while terrified people on the ground in New York City ran for their lives.

As hundreds and hundreds of fire fighters who ran into those twin towers perished in the wreckage of falling and then fallen office buildings.

As another plane went down in an attempted attack on the Pentagon.

As every airplane in the country was quickly grounded..........

During my youngest sons last year of high school he began, as my oldest son had two years earlier, to receive almost daily phone calls from military recruiters.

He wanted to join up.

And I talked him out of it. 

I wanted him to go to college, and he wanted to please his mother, and so he went to college.

Chris spent two unhappy years on a college campus floundering and lost........

During that second summer he called me one day at work to tell me he was at a recruiting office.

I asked him which one and he told me Air Force.

Inside me I breathed a sigh of relief and knew that he was calling me to test me.  Wanting to see how I would respond, and wanting to see if I would again try to talk him out of it.

I did not ask if he had already signed up.  I did not ask him anything about it.

I responded to his call by asking him to come see me at work when he was done and I would take him out to lunch.

By the time we met for lunch he had signed on for the Air Force.

Four months later I kissed and hugged him goodbye, knowing that he did not belong to me anymore.

That he now belonged to the United States Air Force.

The next time I saw my son was the day he graduated from Basic Training in San Antonio Texas........

These are all pictures from Iraq.

He has been there twice now, but he works with many people who have been over there three, four, five times.

They are all someone's son or daughter.  Somebodys' child.

They are sons and daughters and husbands and wives and fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters of citizens of this country.

They are all patriots.

I am more grateful than I can put into words for their service, for their sacrifices and for their committment to this country.

They say "never forget"

They say never forget what happened on September 11.  And never forget the sacrifices that our servicemen and women make on our behalf.

I will never forget...........

Chris in the middle..........

I am having trouble posting pictures.

I will post more when I figure out where the problem lies........