Like most Americans, I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing exactly five years ago today. I was working in Northfield. Right about now, I was driving into my office at City Hall when I turned on my car radio to here the new about a airplane hitting on the towers of the World Trade Center. There was a television in the main hall of City Hall. I turned it on hoping to catch an update and see some video of what had just happened on CNN.
At that point in the day, it was still the conventional thought that a small plane had crashed into the tower. It seemed like a terrible random accident. But then, as I stood there watching, I saw the second plane crash into the south tower on live television. It then began to become clear that I was not watching an accident. I was watching an attack on our country. I think the military calls this epiphany “situational awareness”.
As the day wore on and our situational awareness matured, I heard about the attack on the Pentagon, and then about United 93 plunging into a farm field in Pennsylvania. I remember getting my Department Heads together to talk about what we needed to do to inform our Councilmembers about what was happening and what we might have to do if a second wave of attacks hit Chicago, or maybe even the Twin Cities. What had seemed impossible when I ate breakfast that morning seemed possible now.
Later in the morning I called my wife at her childcare center. It was about lunch time. She had not heard anything about the attacks. She did not have a radio or a television, so I told her as much as I knew. I called my kids on their cell phones at school. They were all huddled around televisions watching the day’s events unfold live on CNN just as I was at Northfield City Hall.
It was a very difficult day, even for those of us thousands of miles away from Ground Zero. It united us as a country, but it slashed our national confidence that the kinds of terrorist attacks that we had seen happen overseas could not happen on our own soil. We know better now.
As we mark the fifth anniversary today of the events of September 11, 2001, it is both right and proper that we take a few moments today and contemplate the loss of life that occurred five years ago today. Consider what has changed in our country since September 11, 2001. Where have we been as a nation and where are we going? Pray of those who were lost on that fateful day and for those they left behind. We should never forget what happened on September 11, 2001.
