Where Were You?

We have to remember. It’s our job to tell those who didn’t live it what it was like when it went down. 

Light had just begun to slip through the gap between the heavy hotel curtains when my cell phone startled me. “Hello?” I answered without looking at the screen to see who the caller was.

“Turn on the TV,” my assistant coach back in Oklahoma said.

“Do what?” I said as I searched blurry eyed for the remote. “Why? You do realize I’m in Arizona, two hours behind you, right?” 

“Go to ABC,” she said. Then, “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh...” Her voice trailed off. I heard her start to sob.

Hoisted on an elbow, TV controller in one hand, cell phone in the other, I stared in disbelief at the mayhem on the screen.

The day was September 11th. The year, 2001. 

Everyone alive at the time and old enough to remember, knows exactly where they were and what they were doing that fateful morning when two airplanes purposefully flew into New York’s Twin Towers, then a third into the Pentagon. 

Terror, the magnitude of which we could never have imagined, is tattooed on our souls.

While trying to wrap my head around what was happening across the country, I called home to touch base with my family, then immediately called Bo, my assistant, who was three doors down at our Phoenix hotel. We quickly agreed that we needed to get to the airport as soon as possible for our 11:00 a.m. flight, as there were bound to be delays. I began throwing things into my suitcase while keeping my eyes and ears on the tragedy unfolding in real time on my TV.

But before I could get dressed and out the door, every airport in America got locked down.

Fortunately, we still had a rental car. In fifteen hours, if everything went as planned (which seemed like a lopsided “if” at the time), we could be home--the place everyone in the country longed to be. Bo and I hustled to our borrowed Ford, chucked our bags into the back seat, cued up the GPS for Oklahoma and headed north toward Flagstaff. Driving without speaking, as our brains ran round in circles in attempt to comprehend, we listened to the stammering, shaky-voiced radio DJs trying to divest fact from speculation. The relayed news accounts came in sideways, backwards and sometimes upside down. 

“American Flag” by Mike Mozart / JeepersMedia, via Flickr. Licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeepersmedia/14325835190
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

We had been on I-17 less than an hour when we heard the reports that a fourth plane-- this one supposedly headed for our nation’s capital-- had gone down in a Pennsylvania field. Through mangled cell reception in the mountains of northern Arizona, we tried to piece together what was happening to our world.

Would our country ever be the same?

It’s been 25 years, but I can still see the inside of the hotel room where I was sleeping, the dash of the car that got us home, the corner in Winslow, Arizona where we stopped for food and fuel. The day is branded in my brain.

We can’t forget. Even if we wish we could. 

And we mustn’t.  

History found only on the pages of a book is bound to fade. That which happens—the good, the bad, the ugliest of uglies--is a baton meant to be passed by human hands. Our memories matter. Future generations need to know.

And they won’t if we don’t tell them.

Recently, the iconic Billie Jean King made an astute observance in reference to a documentary chronicling women’s tennis. “It’s tough to appreciate inclusion,” she said, “if you’ve never been excluded.” In other words, the painful guts of a thing need a spotlight. Those who weren’t busy in their everydayness when our country got ripped open, need to understand that it felt like we all were bleeding out. Knowing what once was is how we get to gratitude. And a fierce protection of the life that we enjoy.

An intentional breathtaking memorial now stands in New York where 2,977 lives were taken on that tragic September day. Though it cannot bring back one of the lives, do justice to the heroes, right the evil wrong, it serves as a palpable reminder of all we have. Present tense.

And at the same time, how quickly what we hold most dear can be taken away. 

We have to remember.

God Bless the USA.

P.S.  When the World Stopped Turning

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