10 Years Ago

Flag at the Pearl Harbor Memorial

Tuesday Sept 11, 2001 Provo, UT.  I woke up annoyed, my alarm had gone off and instead of hearing the normal radio station it sounded like someone had changed it to an AM station.  It didn't take long for me to actually listen to what was being said on the radio, it was so unreal.  Why were they talking about planes flying into buildings?  I couldn't quite grasp what they were saying.  My alarm had gone off just minutes before the second plan crashed into the World Trade Center.  I heard the news people describe in unbelief what they were witnessing. I was so confused, this kind of things didn't really happen did it?  I turned to the TV for more information.  My other roommates were already gone to class or work.  After calling my parents to check in with them I headed down to my brothers apartment.  I didn't really want to watch the news alone.  The news was addicting, yet we kept watching the same things over and over again.  I saw many things I wished I hadn't, they weren't filtering the images. They were showing the raw footage.  

I only had one class that day, my animal anatomy lab.  I pried myself away from the TV and headed up to campus.  The campus was very empty, most classes were released or cancelled for the day.  Not so for my anatomy class.  My instructor was a short, fiery catholic woman who was one of the hardest professors in the department.  Nothing was going to stop her from having class.  The two hours I was in my lab she never made mention of the world events, we all did our work as quickly as possible so we could leave.  It seemed so surreal that our world looked the same as it had the day before but everything had changed.

It was a scary and uncertain time, a time I will never forget.

Today Steve is working, all the firefighters in his unit gathered at training towers.  Dressed in their full gear each firefighter climbed 115 flights of stairs in memory that so many firefighters did 10 years ago.  He said it was one of the hardest things he has had to do, I can only imagine how hard that must be.  Such a fitting tribute to those who gave their lives to save others.