Anyone old enough to remember 9/11/2001 also remembers where they were when hearing the news.  I was working for the federal government, meeting with a colleague to plan a training class.  It was the most complex training my part of the agency offered, and, for some reason, I was judged the only person in my work place qualified to teach it.

As we reviewed the training agenda, a manager came in and told us the World Trade Center in New York had been hit by a plane.  She came back a few minutes later to break the news the other tower had been hit be a plane.  We all knew it was a terrorist attack at that point.  When the manager returned a third time to inform us the Pentagon had been hit by a plane, my colleague and I looked at each other and wondered what was coming next.

The first thought I had was about my twin daughters in elementary school at the time.  I had grown up during the Cold War years  and fears of a nuclear attack.  The old “Duck and Cover” films of that era are still on You Tube.  My daughters would grow up in a world with a different kind of fear.

We grouped around work place TV sets watching the towers collapse.  Then the announcement was made that we could all go home.  Without any idea what was next, the government was shutting down for the rest of that day.

I am proud to say my agency was back at work the next day, as were most government workers.   One employee working for my agency had been badly injured in the New York attack and would die some months later.

I won’t rehash everything else that happened during and after the attacks, but I did have a revealing phone conversation with a nurse some months later.  This lady left her job at a Florida hospital after hearing of the attacks and headed to New York in order to help in any way she could.  I thanked her for the courageous service she performed.

The nurse then told me what it was like to help out at ground zero in New York just after the attack.  The way she explained it, there was an hourly routine.  She helped for 20 minutes, regurgitated for 20 minutes, spent 20 minutes recovering, then went back to work.

Here’s what that tells me – the ground zero scene was much more gruesome than most of us will ever know.  This was a horrible experience for America.

What I learned from observing the events around 9/11 is that we as Americans must be aggressive in protecting our nation, but we also must me intelligent in the way we go about doing that.  I hope our leaders take that to heart as we move forward as a nation.