Do you remember where you were on Tuesday morning, Sept. 11, 2001?
It should have been a day like most other days, with parents rushing to get their kids fed and off to school and the parents themselves rushing to drink their morning coffees as they headed off to work.
But bright and early that fateful day, our lives - whether we were directly or indirectly affected by the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. and in the fields of Pennsylvania - forever changed.
Nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial aircrafts, intending to strike the World Trade Center in New York City and various targets in Washington.
Of course, we all know how the rest of the morning unfolded. One plane was crashed into the Pentagon and two others were crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Passengers aboard the fourth flight fought off the terrorists in an amazing act of bravery and crashed the plane in a field in Pennsylvania, possibly preventing another attack in Washington.
How could something like this have happened? It seemed surreal.
The attacks resulted in almost 3,000 fatalities -the largest loss of life from a hostile attack by a foreign entity on American soil. The New York Fire Department lost 343 members, while the New York Police Department lost 23 -the largest loss of emergency responders in a single event in U.S. history.
This week, we asked our readers to respond with their 9/11 memories -how they felt that day and how our world has changed since the attacks. Many responded as we expected, with feelings of shock, anger and sadness.
We heard from some who were in New York during the attacks and bore witness to the catastrophe. We heard from others who have visited the 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero and how the visits have had a profound and lasting impact on their lives.
Others responded with interesting theories on how and why the attacks happened. One Gibsons man, backed up with years of education and employment as a structural engineer, said that the Twin Towers were actually destroyed in controlled demolitions by the terrorists and not by the aircrafts that hit the structures.
Questions as to why the attacks happened, and in some cases how they happened, still remain for many. But one thing no one can question is that our lives changed that Tuesday morning.
On Sunday, take some time to reflect and remember those who lost their lives in the attacks. Sept. 11 will never be forgotten. It is the day the world changed.
