It's been 10 years come Sunday. I'm sure we have a lot of memories. I remember when Jon Stewart put his show back on the air he said, "There's only so long you can hide under your desk, sucking your thumb and crying."
I remember I was home, trying to log onto my office server to check my orders. It couldn't get a connection and the last time that had happened there had been a disaster, so I turned on the TV news. The first plane had already hit and the second struck the other tower as I watched live. I sat sobbing in my chair when the first tower collapsed and then the second one did too. I remember thinking I should try to call my daughter who had just moved from NY to Philadelphia two weeks before with her fiance. I knew all of her friends still lived in NY and that he had worked in the Towers. But I didn't have the courage until that night. "Elizabeth," I asked her, "do you realize you probably saved Darren's life when you convinced him to go back to school and move to Pennsylvania?" "It's barely left my mind," she answered. He's now the father of their two children, my two beautiful grandchildren.
I was listening to two Chicago FBI agents being interviewed this morning on public radio. They talked about being sent to the crash scene in Pennsylvania and since the other crash sites were physically impenetrable, they became the lead for clues. They found the passport and check book of the terrorist pilot almost immediately, completely readable. And then they talked about picking up human remains. "We had to remain emotionally unattached. Too much depended upon us being clear headed. But after a few days we looked up at the ridge and the family members of those who had died were up there watching us. The entire site fell silent for a moment. After they left we found the area littered with momentos the families had left, pictures and letters, and we could hardly bear it. But we had to return to the site, the families deserved it and the country depended up it."
