September 9, 2002 - 9:44 p.m.
Note: This is the first in a five-day series on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, what we felt then and what we've learned in the year since.
I should post this on Wednesday, but the inspiration has struck now, so here it is.
On Wednesday, this country and maybe the world will think back to Sept. 11, 2001 and remember, perhaps relive, the day our lives changed.
We will talk to each other about where we were when it happened. We will watch the television coverage, or read it in the newspapers.
Here at MSU, we'll no doubt have discussions in classes. There are memorial services planned here and throughout the country.
We, as a nation, will grieve, again. We'll remind ourselves of the horror. Of how that sunny day became so suddenly sickening.
I will remember biking across campus as fast as I could to call my parents at work as soon as I heard the news. I don't know why I did that. It just seemed right.
I will remember seeing the image of smoke where the two towers once stood, wishing that the smoke were just obscuring them, and that they were still standing.
I will remember the shouts in the newsroom. The running between cubicles. The strange feeling of being paid to know what was going on and interpret it to the public, yet feeling just as lost as everyone else.
I will remember being sent to the state Capitol when they thought it was going to be evacuated, and how silent it was in a part of Lansing that, on any other day, would be bustling with activity.
I will remember interviewing someone on the phone from Washington, D.C., and how I almost swore and hung up on him when he told me "how cool it was" that he got so close to the Pentagon.
"I saw the scorch marks," he said.
I will remember the numbness we all felt that day, and how empty I-96 was when I drove back to Wyandotte that evening.
I was hundreds of miles away, but it felt like it was happening around the corner.
I guess relatively speaking, it was.
We will remember a lot.
But what I hope we as a country also remember was how this nation came together.
I hope we will remember the image of the Statue of Liberty, juxtaposed against the shrouded Manhattan skyline as the rubble burned for weeks - a true sign of our resilience.
I hope we will remember the blood drives, the volunteers, and the truckloads of relief that came from the rest of the country.
I hope we will remember the posters of the missing; people who were most likely dead, but whose family members held out hope they had somehow miraculously survived.
I hope we remember that this is a nation that has stood up to adversity before. This is a nation that started out by challenging the odds.
More than 200 years ago, these radical people who described themselves as "Americans" stood up to one of the strongest military forces on the planet, because they believed their values - freedom, the right to disagree, the will to live a happy life - were undefeatable.
Those values are still invincible. They have been dragged through the most difficult of challenges, through filth and horror and unimaginable atrocities.
But those values have somehow survived.
We are indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Our flag is still there.
This nation shall not perish from the earth.
And you better believe that we the people are still trying to form a more perfect union.
It's important for us to remember the terrible things that happened a year ago, but more important, I think, to remember how we became a stronger people, a more faithful people, and a people who no longer take what they have for granted.
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