A day that I will never forget…..

There are certain days in our lives that etch a mark on our minds. Those are days that we will never forget. A few that are strong in my mind are:

1) The day before JFK was killed he came to Houston. My mom wanted us to see him and he was coming in at the airport close to our house. Mom took us over to the airport and we were standing only about 15 feet from him and his wife Jackie as they got off the airplane. The next day I was in my PE class at Deady Jr. High school when a voice come over the intercom to announce that President Kennedy had been shot. I was stunned, how could it be, I had just seen him the day before and now he had been shot.

2) I was a young mother the day that the Challenger space shuttle exploded a few minutes after takeoff. I was watching TV and they were showing the lift off. It was going well, when all of a sudden it exploded. I sat there in shock as I watched it happen.

3) A few months later, a school bus filled with children, had been hit by a Dr. Pepper truck and careened off the road and into a lake. All of the children had been killed, not one was able to escape the water and they all drowned. I burst into tears as the news network showed the submerge bus. On the top of the bus was a tennis shoe of one of the children. All I could think about was my own children. I will never be able to get that image out of my mind.

4) Sept 10, 2001 – I had taken my son, William to New Orleans to apply for a job on an offshore oil rig. We arrived home late that night and I slept in the next morning. I woke up the sound of the phone ringing. My friend Pat Beattie asked me if I had been watching the news and I told her I had just woke up. She said, “turn on the news” and then she hung up the phone without saying good by. I turned on the TV, to the NBC news channel, and saw the image of one of the twin towers on fire. An airplane had hit the tower and it was burning. As I stood there watching, a second airplane hit the other tower. One plane hitting a building, it could be an accident. But when that second plane hit I knew it was no accident. My heart went out to all the people inside the building. Again I was in shock by what I saw. I had to go to the store to pick up some meat I was delivering to the cafeteria at the Houston Temple and as I stood in line a voice on an intercom announced that another plane had just hit the pentagon. I was in a bit of a panic wandering, “What next”. I drove over to the Temple to make my delivery and hurried home. I remembered that a friend of mine, from church, had a daughter that worked in one of the towers. I knew that she would be frantic with worry and I said an instant prayer for her daughter. As it turned out, Nicole worked on the second floor of her building and she was able to escape without too much trouble. Some friends of hers from New Jersey took her in and cared for her for several days. Poor Nicole will always be scared from that tragedy. She witnessed several people jumping to their death and she cannot get that image out of her mind. To this day, she will cry at the drop of a hat at the mention of the event. I know that we were all stunned by what had taken place. I pray for the families of those who died or were seriously injured. I hope we, as a nation, never forget what happened.

America has been blessed that we had not had an attack on our homeland since Pearl Harbor. I think we had become complacent and didn’t expect such a vicious attack. Our eyes were opened to a new kind of war, a war of terrorism. I pray that the Lord will protect our country from further attacks. I hope that, we the people, will be vigilant in keeping our land secure.

Some of my blogging friends have done tributes to some of the people who died because of the attack. It has touched my heart in more ways than you can imagine. It has refreshed my thoughts about those firemen and policeman who willingly gave their lives to save others. I looked at pictures of men and women who died, with a little bit of information about who they were, and what they were like. It truly tugged at my heart strings.

I remember getting an email from a friend who had sent me a drawing of God, standing over the twin towers, with his arms opened up. It reminded me that God loves all his children. I hope you all think back to what you were doing on that fateful day and that you never forget it.