Elephant Ears

This blog is dedicated to the political happenings in the Valley and Southwest Virginia. As the the name implies, this blog will have posts based on what is heard by this elephant's (GOPer's) ears. It is also a great treat to get while at the county fair or a carnival.

Monday, September 11, 2006

Where I Was On 9/11

It was my junior year in High School. Of course, we had only been in school for about 2 or 3 weeks when 9/11 came.
I remember coming into my 3rd period English class and my friend Chris asked me if I had heard what happened. I had no idea what he was talking about, so he said that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. At this point, we only knew about the first one. Of course, we heard nothing during the class, but we then went to 4th period U.S. History and by then everything had happened and everyone was talking about it. We watched the news coverage in class that day and wondered what would happen next. At this point, there was concern that the planes may have delivered a chemical or biological attack as well, and everyone was wondering if there were anymore attacks that would happen.
I also remember the news saying how Bush was on the move constantly on Air Force One and how all air traffic was cancelled and the stock market had been closed (it didn't reopen for about 10 days in I remember correctly).
Everyone in school was worried there would be a huge war over this, some were even concerned that there would be a draft.
There were no initial reports as to who we thought did it, but Bin Laden was my first thought.
For the next several weeks, we watched the news constantly to see what the latest developments were.

We then began to wonder if anything would ever be done. For almost a month no attacks or talk of attacks came, until one Sunday morning we came back from church and we had began the war in Afghanistan.

The one thing I will never forget about this time was the unitedness of the American public. There were flags everywhere, there were no political discussions of republican -democrat, conservative-liberal. For those few weeks and months after 9/11 we were all Americans. The fact it wasn't an election year probably had something to do with that, but I miss that public discourse.
Its a shame the terrorists had to show us how strong we are when we are united.

For my generation, that was our defining day. Like the Kennedy assassination was for the baby boomers or Pearl Harbor was for the war generation; this is the day we will never forget.

Our thoughts go out to the 9/11 families, our prayers are with you.


1 Comments:

  • At 9/22/2006 9:03 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I was in lunch hall at college -- it seems so strange that a some very good bloggers are so young and I was just 20 at 9/11.

    Go Hokie. Take 'em by storm and NEVER FORGET.

     

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