September 11, 2001

On September 11, 2001 I was at work when I heard about the first plane that hit the World Trade Center. I was giving another person a ride to pick up a vehicle, and (if I remember correctly) the clock in my car read 8:17 when the news came over the radio about the first plane hitting. My first reaction was that it was simply an accident. There weren't exact details so I thought the plane was a little Cessna, and it was pilot error. I went back to work, where we didn't listen to the radio very often. My father owns a small trucking company and I was working for him at the time. I lived in Storm Lake, Ia with my wife and my seven month old son. My wife called me at work shortly after I had gotten back. She told me that a second plane hit the other tower and another one hit the Pentagon. I was shocked, America was under attack! I told everybody in the shop about it and we stopped what we were doing and turned on the radio. It was then we had heard about another plane possibly heading for the White House.
Because I worked for my dad at the time, I had a lot of leeway to come and go, I left to go be with my family for a little bit. I was at my house watching the events unfold with my wife when the first tower collapsed. I couldn't believe what I was seeing when the tower collapsed, the loss of lives and the countless injured others was unfathomable to me. I sat with my wife and son for a while and after they had grounded all flights in the U.S. and the final plane crashed in PA, I returned to work. We resumed listening to the radio.
I watched everything I could during my lunch hour and listened to as much as I could throughout the rest of the day. During that evening I sat with my wife and son and watched a ton of coverage. The coverage that disturbed me the most was the live taping segments that happened when the towers collapsed. It really bothered me when you could hear the alarms going off from the air packs of the firefighters. I was a member of the volunteer fire department at that time and that sound just sends shivers down a fire fighter's spine.
It was reported that this was the work of Osamo bin Laden and Al Quida. That evening I began to get pissed off about the whole thing, I was ready to watch those that did that to us suffer. I seriously thought about joining the military to enact revenge. If I hadn't been a new daddy I probably would have, now I'm glad I didn't. The end of the day I gave my son a large hug and a kiss, I did the same with my wife. Eventually, I fell asleep.