Most people on 9/11 can tell where they were at exactly when the first plane hit at 8:46am on that tragic morning, I on the other hand cannot. What I can tell you is I was in school but that is about all I know.

My school was on the Fort Meade Military base, the closest army base to Washington D.C., and we were placed on immediate lockdown on a National Emergency level when word came of the attack. No one knew what was going on and with no news access and administration not telling us a thing, we were left in a state of confusion. Word slowly got around the school from students in computer classes that had searched the web to see what exactly had happened. By 10am the school knew what was going on and parents were coming to get their children in a frantic. I remember my father picking my cousin and I up shortly after 11 and coming home to seeing both twin towers lit up in smoke.

I had no clue the ramifications of those events that day, or any idea of what was truly happening in NYC. It took me several years and a lot of growth to realize not just the implications of the events that happened on 9/11 but also the implications of what going to war meant.

I don’t think a child, even a teenager can fully comprehend death at such a young age or the idea of someone else taking the life of another human being. We read it in books, we see it on shows and I think it numbs us to the concept of what it truly means. 9/11 is now a symbol to me of what it means to come together as a nation, to rise up from the ashes of what we once were and unite against hatred.

It took me years to comprehend that people were willing to jump out of a building and kill themselves than stay where they were because there was no hope for survival. That in the end it was better to end life fast than to go through hell only to still die. It took me years to comprehend what it must have been like for the people on flight 93 to know they were going to die and to say farewell to their families and then in the mist of danger stand up and have courage to fight. And it took me years to understand the dedication, courage and trials that the police officers, firefighters, military, doctors and nurses had to endure on that frightful and tragic day. It takes someone special to place your life over their own, and it isn’t until 10 years later you see the numbers of civilian lives lost, children who have to grow up without their mother or father or both, firefighters, police officers, and soldiers all who lost their lives in the line of duty in order to serve and protect you and I just so I am able to realize just what it means to be an American. How proud I am to say that this is my country and that these are my people that stand up for me day by day to give me the freedoms I have.

Thank you to those that serve, who have served and who will serve for all that you do, all that you have done and all that you will do.