Originally posted by ANDYW:
Sadly if you don't live on the east coast, you don't really worry about terrorism like us!
-Andy
Please don't generalize the rest of the country out of this by saying that. Some of us knew someone that perished in the Murrah Building in OKC. Some of us had mothers on the way to that building the very day it happened. Luckily, she wasn't there yet, but another family member was.
I'll never forget hearing Howard Stern talking about the WTC. I thought it was a piss-poor prank at first, but when I tuned a different station in and heard them talking about it, I knew something terrible had happened.
I'll never forget driving to work that day under completely empty skies. Not a plane or news chopper in sight - the day somehow seemed vacant...all to eerie.
Somehow I did manage to focus on the horror those poor souls in the buildings and in the planes must have felt. I still get choked up when they play commercials showing a little girl and how she was excited to go on a vacation with her mom...then saying her plane struck Tower 1. I can't imagine how it must've felt for the adults...how the children must've felt makes me want to ball up and cry. I guess being a father does that to you...
I have never been in NYC, but has it really become a tourist destination, as mentioned above, or is it simply a country's way of coping; of becoming a part of it; of understanding the scope of what happened? People flocked to OKC as well, but I never viewed it as a tourist destination. It was a common pain these people felt and knew no other way to defeat the internal demons left behind than to see it for themselves...a modern pilgrimage of sorts.
Headlights on for certain on 9/11...
