09/11/2026
25 years ago, I was just a kid in middle school. Mom came into my room and tried to wake me with "a plane just hit one of the twin towers". Thinking it was a ruse to get me up quickly because it was customary for us to make a mad dash for the bus stop at the last minute, I ignored her. Minutes later, Mom came back in again and now I could hear the urgency in her voice.
I'll never forget seeing the video feed of North Tower on fire and watching the South Tower be hit shortly after. Being still fresh off a trip to New York and having been in the South Tower back in May 2001.
The bus ride to school that morning was quiet and somber, with the radio tuned to the news. None of us spoke a word while we listened and tried to process what was happening. My bus driver was Twila Kinney (RIP), always a happy and cheerful woman who had a hardened look of concern on her face. At Wy'East Middle School that day, all of the TV's tuned onto the news.
We watched the North Tower collapse live and that day my English teacher, Mr. Simpson, a retired Army Ranger said what no other teacher dared to say that day. We're going to war.
25 years later, I still have my fathers old World Trade Center ID badge in a box somewhere. I still have my "Flat Stanley" cutout that my cousin had taken up the World Trade Center during my Elementary School Project. I still have countless photographs and memories of a time and place that no longer exist.
25 years later, I remember.
Never forget.