9-11

As I have spent much of the day a little teary listening to discussion and memories of 9-11, I thought I would share what that day was like for me and my feelings about all of this. I believe it was a Tuesday (right?). It was a beautiful sunny day and Jon was playing hookie from work (one of the only times in our entire marriage). I was indulging and watching a little T.V. in the morning, something unusual that I rarely did, when the station turned to fuzz. I started flipping and was only able to get reception on one channel...the one station that had it's antenna on the top of the Empire State Building instead of the World Trade Center. Did I mention that we were living in NJ then? So, we knew immediately what was going on...literally minutes, maybe seconds after it happened. The next few hours were a blur.

Our first order of business was to track down Jon's dad. We had dropped him off that morning for a flight out of Newark. You can imagine that we were somewhat frantic to find out what flights were involved in the terrorism. He was in the air, and his plane was rerouted to St. Louis if I remember correctly. Luckily he has spent his entire adult life traveling and immediately booked the train to SLC before it was full. I believe he still spent a night or two. Incidentally, shortly after his train left SLC, it wrecked.

We spent the rest of the morning tracking down our friends who we knew might be in harms way. This was a lot of people. Fortunately, all the people who would have been in the immediate vicinity of the towers were not there that day for various reasons. I like to think the Lord was watching over them. We have several friends who spent hours trying to find a way out of the city, and back home, as all the tunnels and bridges were being closed. We had several friends in the Navy stationed at the Naval Weapons Station, Earle. Greg's ship was in the harbor immediately.

We watched the first tower fall and cried. Our friend Billy was watching from the roof of his office building a few miles away from us and he threw up. So went the rest of the day. Watching news, crying, talking to people, etc. Jon called the Red Cross to volunteer to go into the city as a nurse (they never needed him). I know we spent much of the day waiting for news on survivors. We lived close enough to the city that the OR where Jon worked was shut down to all non-emergency surgeries to keep the space open for those injured. None ever came that far.

That evening a friend stopped by. He happened to be the Stake Executive Secretary at the time. For those of you who don't know what that means...he was the secretary to our local church Stake President. The Stake President is responsible for overseeing about 10 wards, so a couple of thousand people. At any rate, he told us the EVERY member of our stake had been accounted for. This was a REMARKABLE thing! We lived in an area where a LOT of people worked in the city. A LOT of people had the potential of being directly in harm's way. I gained a testimony that day of the order of the Church. The organization of the Church is set up to insure that EVERY member is taken care of, and it certainly happened that day.

I'm sure there were more tragedies and more triumphs that day, but these are the things that I remember. 9-11 is absolutely vivid in my memory. I won't get into the ramifications of that day here, as I know we can all agree that that day was horrific and changed our country forever. I'll just say that I am grateful to all those who choose to serve our country, to protect it and keep us free.