I will never forget this day. I’m presently watching the streaming of the reading of names in New York and the service at the Pentagon.

They started playing Amazing Grace and as much as I try I can’t stop tears recalling that day.

I was at work that day. I recall hearing a plane had struck the World Trade Center in New York. I thought it was a small passenger plane and was just an unfortunate accident.

Then I heard it was a jetliner and another struck the other tower. I then knew this wasn’t an accident. Then when the Pentagon was struck I remember feeling terror that we would be next. Our area is home to Norfolk Naval Base and home of the Atlantic fleet.

The one thing I remember for days was the sound of silence. There were no planes flying.

No. I can never forget September 11. It was the start of the feeling the America I grew up in was gone and we would never get those times back.

Watching the towers burning. Watching news cameras zooming in on little dark spots falling from the towers to suddenly realize they were people who jumped to escape the burning flames and trying to comprehend what must have been going through their minds as they were falling to their deaths. They did not know that morning when they went to work that they wouldn’t be coming home.

For awhile the country came together. Now in 2021 we are at each other’s throats. I don’t know if anything can unite us as a people any more.