Remembering 9/11

Six years ago, I awoke on this day when another reporter at the Las Cruces Sun-News, where I worked at the time, called to tell me terrorists had struck the World Trade Center and I needed to get to the office immediately.

I had been up late the night before and planned to sleep in that day. Instead, I ran downstairs and turned on the television in time to watch the second tower collapse. I stood in shock for a couple of moments, then put a cassette in the VCR, began recording and headed to work.

I remember visiting Corbett Center at New Mexico State University that day to talk with college students. Life there was on hold, as it was around the nation. Students skipped class to watch television. Some sat silently, staring at nothing. The student union building was eerily quiet and solemn.

It wasn’t until I returned home more than 12 hours later that I was able to pause as students on campus had, to begin to process what had happened. I wept. I sat with my wife and watched CNN. I talked on the phone with family members. As the sun rose on Sept. 12, I went to work again.

Several months later, the Sun-News sent me on a trip with middle-school students from Las Cruces to Washington and New York. On the last day we visited Ground Zero. Accompanying this posting are photos I took that day.

In May 2002, it was still a gaping hole, with heavy equipment leveling the ground where the towers once stood. Orange plastic still covered the sides of adjacent skyscrapers where windows had been blown out and had yet to be replaced.

Approaching the site, we passed a church whose outer fence had become a memorial for visitors. Amid the notes, religious symbols, flags and other items that covered the fence for an entire city block, I came across a New Mexico license plate with the faded words “God Bless the U.S.A.” written on it with a permanent marker.

A temporary platform that allowed visitors to view Ground Zero was literally covered in hand-written notes. Some of the middle-school students I was with pulled out pens and began writing, processing.

After a week of watching these young people be excited, energetic and, at times, almost out of control on visits to landmarks in the nation’s most famous cities, many out of their home state and away from their parents for the first time, at that moment I watched them fall silent. Many wept. Some stared silently, alone, at the site of so much death. Some held each other. A couple were writing on the temporary structure until the moment we had to leave.

Their lives had changed.

On this sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks, if you want to share your memories or thoughts, submit a comment at the end of this posting. Even if you don’t do it in this context, take a moment to pause and reflect sometime today.