STRONG LIVES ARE MOTIVATED BY DYNAMIC PURPOSES.
Kenneth Hildebrand
When I turned on the TV this morning, the Discovery Channel was showing documentaries about 9/11/2001. Of course we all remember where we were and what we were doing when that horrible day began. I was folding clothes in the living room, and Lon was in town, waiting for the courthouse to open to get new license plates for some of the company trucks. When it all began, I called him and told him about a plane hitting the south tower. He turned on his truck radio and that's how he found out about the second plane hitting Tower ll. I still have the envelope that he had with him, where he had jotted down "second tower hit by a plane."
In the past years, I was fortunate enough to be in New York City and go to Ground Zero to see the beginnings of the new buildings. I stood behind glass windows and was able to look down . . . down . . . down to the bottom of the underground base. That was truly the beginning of the new buildings.. I also went to Pennsylvania twice, to see where Flight 93 crashed. The first time, there was no fancy memorial. The visitor center was in a big old rusty steel machine shed that just happened to be sitting on a hill overlooking the field where the plane had come down. There was an ugly gash in the ground where the plane had plunged into the earth. In the machine shed, there were chain length fences around the walls, with notes and momentos that people had left at the scene in 2001. There was a bible which had been recovered, opened to the book of KIngs. It had evidently been a possession of one of the passengers and had been found on the ground, fairly close to the impact spot, yet it didn't have a scorch mark or any burnt spots anywhere on it, and was absolutely immaculate and not damaged in any way. There were also newspaper articles and pictures displayed everywhere. The first time I was there, it was very touching. The second time I went, it had been commercialized. A building had been put up, a stone wall with all the names of the crew and passengers engraved on it had been built with a concrete walking path to get to it, and as a visual aid, a marble arch thingy had been erected that shows the flight path the plane had come in on. I guess seeing the actual gouge in the earth made it seem so much more real (on the first visit there). Now the nice building overlooks a beautiful green meadow.
If my memory is correct, tomorrow is also an anniversary.
Happy 70th Anniversary, Mother and Dad.
GOD BLESS YOU ALL