We Remember: 9/11 20 Years Later

It is never hard for me to remember what I was doing on September 11, 2001. I remember it as if it were yesterday. I had gotten out of bed a little later than usual for my weekday schedule. My current work assignment was a Title V air permit for a proposed power plant in Pinal County, Arizona. While work associated with the project kept me plenty busy, I was also taking two classes in the MBA Program – Executive Platform – at Arizona State University. I had spent the better part of the previous evening reading and doing homework.

Normally, I’m up at 5 a.m. and the news of the morning is blasting from the television. It was probably about 7:10 a.m. when I made it down stairs and turned on the television as I made my way to the kitchen to put on some coffee. Making my way back to gather intel on national/international news, I saw images of a building on fire, and it took me a few minutes to realize that this was New York City! After a few minutes of attempting to grapple with what was going on, I remembered I had a cousin who works in downtown Manhattan in Rockefeller Center. I called her and was overjoyed to hear her voice. Suffice it to say that my intel was being fed by a local on the scene who witnessed the second attack from the 50th floor of the building. Thankful that her building had not been targeted – at least not yet, I hung up and continued to watch the news before I called the contractor that I was working on the air permit with and inquired if his office was open for business? Yes, he was also watching the television and gathering info, but we were still in business.

I made a decision that I was not going to let these attacks, as horrible as they were, make me fearful of going outside or going to work. I arrived at the work site around 10:00 a.m. While we had no clue as to how many people had been injured or killed in these two attacks on the World Trade Center, it was important to me to put on a brave face. We all knew things were bad, and they would probably get worse before they got better. And you know what? They did.

As Louise Skidmore, head of contemporary conflict for the Imperial War Museum in London states, “Everyone remembers where they were. It was such a seismic event. But thousands and thousands of our audience were not alive and will not remember 9/11. And so they may, to a degree, look back and say: ‘What does it really have to do with my life? Was it a big deal?’ It was a huge deal.”

This week, 20 years later, we remember. It was a huge deal! It was a seismic event!