Remembering 9/11

Fourteen years have passed since that sad day, September 11, 2001.   It’s a date where the question “Where were you on 9/11?” has become commonplace.   I distinctly recall being in an elementary school classroom, in Cobb County, Georgia, on an assignment for my newspaper the Atlanta Journal & Constitution.   The specifics of why I was there aren’t clear, but I do recall an announcement over the school’s speakers that “something was happening in New York.”  Classes took a back seat to all of us, kids and adults alike, watching television screens at the school as the horror unfolded.   It brings to mind where I was on November 22, 1963, in Mrs. Henry’s 6th grade classroom at Grim Elementary School, in Texarkana, Texas, when classes stopped to hear of President Kennedy’s death 175 miles away, on a street in Dallas.    Fast-forward to last Friday, where members of the Georgetown fire and police departments once again returned to school district’s athletic complex, where they climbed the stairs to commemorate the 1900 steps of the World Trade Center.   For Central Texas, it was  a humid, sticky morning, but they were again up to the task.   Friday evening, at dusk, my town of Taylor, 30 minutes east, had their annual Patriot Day observance, something they’ve done each year following 9/11.   Even though Friday is high school football time around here, people showed up for this.  The last photo, a Taylor firefighter, an honor guard member, ringing the department’s bell, was resonant, and moving.    These are photos I took for the Williamson County Sun, the first eight from the climb, the final ones from Patriot Day.