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Hard to believe it's been 10 years already.  I was waking up late for work when I had the radio on and could hear Warner Wolf describing the scene to Imus and immediately knew from the context of what he was saying that something serious was up and went to the living room and turned on the TV (I think it was immediately after the 2nd plane hit).  I opted to go down to the office I was working at - not so much out of a duty to the job but rather to be somewhere where there were other people.  I live just outside NYC in one of those areas where basically the skyline is always popping up in view.  I recall driving down the highway at a point where the Towers were framed precisely in my rearview mirror as I had seen so many times except this time they were on fire.  The idea that they would collapse did not register in my mind somehow and I thought of how strange it would look at the skyline with the building so damage - I think somewhere in my mind the totality of what was occurring just wasn't fully registering).  The smoking Towers in my rearview mirror is the last image of the them that I saw - both Towers collapsed as I drove down the Parkway.

I remember how beautiful the weather was that. day.  Literally the perfect late summer day.  I remember the eerie silence in the skies that day as there were no planes in the sky - save for the occcasional fighter jet with it's great roar that was heard yet unseen.  And even though I was probably 20 miles away there was the smell in the air. Just sickening.  And sickening to realize what the smell was from - above all else that's something I will never forget.

We had no TV in the office and I actually did not mind this - in about 9th grade I remember the Space Shuttle Challenger blowing up and going home and watching it on TV blowing up over and over again.  With the totality of the horror of September 11th apparent, in a bit of a self-defensive maneuver I opted not to seek out TVs.  There's a mall across the parking lot from where I worked and I decided to go over with a coworker to try and get a cheap radio to get a sense of what was going on (this also is when I heard the fighter jet).  All of the stores were hastily closing (it was about 11 am or so at this point) and the mall felt more like 9 pm than 11 am.  I went into the Sears to pick up a radio and there was a bank of TVs.  That was the first time that I saw the collapse of each of the Towers.  It's still all so surreal.  I basically spent the rest of the day back at the office, listening to the radio, trying to pick up internet accounts (that it was Bin Laden responsible was no surprise - in fact once it was apparently it was a terrorist attack that was the conclusion I jumped to) and basically being stunned.

I did not know any of the people lost in that tragedy personally.  But my sister's next door neighbor was a victim.  He was from a family where all of his 4 brothers served either as police or as firefighters.  He took a different, safer route, and went to college and went into finance and got a job working in the World Trade Center.  He left behind a young family just starting in life.  The cruelty of such of a fate is just unimaginable.

I remember the skyline changed forever.  The Towers were always special.  It was never something that got old - seeing them towering in that skyline.  Oftentimes when driving locally, I'd opt to go along a route that went past the skyline - it was just so beautiful and awesome.  I recall thinking on those drives of how cool the Towers were.  And the permanence that their presence embodied.  I also volunteer sometimes at a place which is located just off of the Exchange Place PATH station in Jersey City. I remember the first time coming up from the escalator and getting out of the station - directly across from Lower Manhattan.  WOW.  The World Trade Center just looked so majestic.  Breathtaking.  Special every time.  That sense of permanence and power again.  That they are gone is just beyond words.  It still makes me angry.  And while the Freedom Tower rises, the skyline will never be right again.

I remember the pictures in all of the PATH stations and around Manhattan of those missing - just a sea of these xeroxed photos on every pole - on every spare piece of wall that could be found.  Knowing that these people would not be found alive.  That they were gone forever.  Such a senseless loss.

Never Forget.  God Bless the victims, their families, and this United States.

Thank you for opening this forum each year.

-QG