Yahoo! is asking Americans how September 11 changed them. Below is an account from a reader.
During a memorial service, my husband, three boys, and I watched news coverage from 9/11. My mind switched to that time and I felt as if I was hearing about it that morning again.
I was working in a law office when my soon-to-be husband called me on the phone. He told me to cut on a radio or television if I could. Then he went on to describe how two airplanes had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City. I was in shock when he told me that the news was reporting that it was an act of terrorism. It never occurred to me that American civilians would come under such violence.
To say that 9/11 changed the way I view war is an understatement. That morning was the first time that I felt fear of war. War was something going on in other countries. It was a news story on television. It wasn’t supposed to be something that I felt. Until that day, I thought war on American soil was beneath us. Almost as if we didn’t bleed like the rest of the world.
During the days that followed the attacks, I knew that I had experienced history that would be taught in schools for years to come. It was an event that all Americans experienced together. There was a unity among us that I had never before been a part of.
After the memorial service, my children asked me to tell them what happened that day. I’ve never shared a history lesson with my children that had an emotional stamp on my heart. There were live images burned in my memory. I re-lived the fear, pain, and sadness of war, combined with my hope of unity in the future. No textbook could make that event become real; like the first-hand testimony of a witness. At the end of my re-telling of that day, I felt like a historian, but more than that, a person who had lived to share it.