When the sky is a clear blue and I hear I plane fly overhead….I look up at it …and remember.

I saw it live on television that Tuesday beginning at about 8:05, when I walked into my office and turned the television on.

I heard on the elevator that a plane had hit one of the Towers.

How could a pilot make that mistake?….was my thought and comment as I walked off onto my floor.

Within the next few minutes life changed.

As I sat down and looked at the screen I saw a slash in the side of one of the Trade Center Towers.

And then, that second plane came into view, lifted its right wing, and unbelievably flew into the other Tower.

I remember lowering my chin, pursing my lips and thinking that this was no movie and that my country had just been attacked.

It felt personal.

It felt like my home had been broken into and set fire to…..with me there.

My eyes did not move from the screen as the commentators searched for words to describe what everyone saw and knew was happening.

No one could think with any certainty at that moment that….

Our own planes.

with own own citizens trapped inside ……

were being piloted to bring this upon us.

As a few guys came into my office to watch, we were wondering who had done this and for what reason.

Those calculations ceased and we were again brought to silence when the television screen, from a distance, showed the people waving desperately and then some of them jumping out of the Towers and diving to a death different than the one they would have suffered if they had remained in their burning building.

That’s not what we see and know about America.

An hour or so later when the first Tower collapsed upon itself and the smoke rose and covered Manhattan…..I said out loud…

“God bless us”

That simple prayer was all I could think or say as I watched and witnessed the single, most destructive physical moment in all of my life.

I had been brought, involuntarily,

into the world of the wounded.

And the scars remain in all of us.

When the sky is a clear blue and I hear a plane fly overhead….I look up at it …..and remember.