Do You Remember Where You Were on September 11, 2001?

Do you remember where you were on September,  11th, 2001, at 7:46am?  I do, and many of you do also….

David was teaching his History Class and I was asleep.  I woke up and looked at the TV.  I thought David had left one of his action movies on, but as I watched, the news station was reporting live.  I saw a plane crashing into one of the Towers and a huge ball of flames come out the other side.  I couldn’t believe what I was watching….I sat up in bed and turned up the volume….even the newscaster was in disbelief as he was reporting what we were watching.

Then as I watched another plane was coming onto the screen and headed right for the other Tower….it slammed into the 2nd Tower!  Smoke, fire, and dust was everywhere…the newscaster gasped and couldn’t even report the news.  Unbelievable!  It was at that moment when everyone watching knew we were under attack….by persons unknown.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen what seemed to be a long time, but really wasn’t, both towers tumbled to the ground!  I mean tumbled to the ground…only dust and no structure.

I called David’s classroom and tried to put into words what just happened.  David reassured me that the Towers were built with tons of strong steel and would not totally fall to the ground.  He calmly explained that he had actually been in the World Trade Center and had dined at the restaurant at the very top.  “It’s very strong and won’t fall down”, he assured me.  I was screaming at him, turn the TV on!  There are NO MORE TOWERS!

Later that day, I received a heartbreaking phone call from my dad in Arizona.  He told me that a dear family friend had just gotten a job with an insurance company and was in one of the towers for an orientation.  He had been out of work for a long time and was so proud to tell my dad that he finally found a really good job and was heading to New York for orientation and that he’d catch up with him soon.

We both cried….

Over the phone that day, my dad repeated to me a story that I had heard hundreds of times at dinner parties.  He liked telling the story of how I came to own my first dog which happened to be an expensive Bird Dog.

I was only 5 years old and my dad was going to take me Dove Hunting…I’m an animal lover and didn’t know a thing about guns, hunting, nor did I have any interest in going.  He told me that our friend Gary Bird was training a puppy to be a Bird Dog and that I could probably play with him.  That was exciting to me.

My dad had polio as a boy and wore braces and used crutches.  The reason I’m telling you this is because it sets up the scene of this story.  My dad hunted from the back of a pickup truck sitting in a chair in the bed.  Sam, the puppy was on the ground with Gary, who had been working with him for a couple of weeks on retrieving dummy birds.  Someone had the bright idea of letting me try to shoot a dove. They briefly showed me how to hold the shotgun, which was bigger than I was, and as they were pointing way off into the distance and telling me what to aim for…I saw a bunch of Doves right above us and before anyone could stop me, I shot straight above us…the shotgun knocked me on my butt and I started crying for more than one reason.  Not only did the shotgun almost take my arm off, but later on, the little pellets where coming straight down on top of us and they burned like crazy.

My dad was yelling at me, Sam the bird dog was so scared he hid under the truck and Gary was laughing so hard as he was rolling over under the truck.

After a while, everyone settled down except I was still in pain and crying.  Gary came over to tend to my arm.  He explained after the fact, why they were pointing in the far distance, and then why I shouldn’t shoot the doves overhead.  Fine time in telling me that the pellets would come straight back down and that there were so many of them.  I had little burn marks all over my arms and legs; a bruised up shoulder (it was amazing that I didn’t dislocate it) and my ears were ringing so loud that I couldn’t hear anything.

Gary told my dad that he was the proud owner of an expensive house dog, a family pet named Sam.  I was so happy because I thought that he was giving Sam to me for all the pain I was going through.  My dad explained that now Sam would be gun shy and would not be a good hunting dog.  That was fine for me, even though I didn’t know how much a ‘Pet Hunting Dog’ cost!

Sam and I were like brother and sister.  We did everything together, I cooked pretend food for him and he would sit in a chair in my playhouse and eat.  I would dress him up and we’d play house.  He was the best friend ever.

We slept together, ate together, played together and were never separated. He had 11 cats  we had adopted that he watched over. Yes, 11.  He was such a great dog and never had to retrieve a bird in his life!

He lived to be 13 years old and it hurt so much to lose him.

My parents would have dinner parties and Gary would come to them.  He’d play with Sam and of course he and my dad would have to tell everyone of how Sam became my best friend.

Like Sam, my friend Gary was gone in a blink of an eye.  For days my dad would call to let me know that he hadn’t heard from Gary’s wife.  We were all hoping that maybe the group had taken a morning break and that he stepped outside the towers to get a newspaper or to check in with his wife or call my dad, hoping that he wasn’t in the Towers. As time passed and we didn’t hear from him and we knew….

Each year as the bell rings and they read the names, I get a chill when they say Gary Eugene Bird….I know exactly where I was when I lost a dear old friend.

Now 20 years later, I remember…

I will never forget.

There are a good many fellow veterans who will never forget also.

God Bless America.