United We Stand
By: Rebecca Kelley
19 men
4 planes
1 tragedy our nation will never forget.

September 11, 2001. It starts out as every other day but, at the end it will be a day everyone remembers.

There were many lives lost that day. Many of them in that dreaded wrong place wrong time situation. There were the business entrepreneurs in the World Trade Centers, the Government and military officials in the Pentagon, and the innocent unsuspecting civilians on the commandeered planes.

I remember the exact place I was sitting when I heard the news. I was in the second seat in the last row of, ironically, my 4th grade history class. My teacher was asking us if we had heard what had happened that morning. A few had but the majority of us had not. She turned on the television and I remember absolute silence roared throughout the entire room of normally rambunctious nine-year-olds. We sat there watching the tragedy unfold right before our eyes, stunned. I don’t think I ever stopped being stunned. I went home that day and my family watched the news. It was devastating what they did. Even though I was young I had a pretty good picture about how much damage was done and how heavily this impacted our society.

There was a shockwave felt from coast to coast, country to country. The family members getting those calls everyone dreads to hear. The grief that wracked their bodies, transforming their faces into unrecognizable masks. The others stunned at what was happening, bewildered. Strangers mourning alongside each other. Everyone expected the world to end that day, but it didn’t. No one expected to lose someone close and dear to them that day not while they were at work or traveling on planes on which people thought they would be safe, but we did.

Then there were those fortunate souls over whom God was watching. The people who called in sick that day or were late because they got caught up in traffic or dropping their kids off. Don’t you now they were in shock thinking that could have been me while also thinking I wonder if everyone else is okay?

Six years later….

Hear I am six years older in the tenth grade. I have never forgotten what happened that day. I don’t think I ever will. I know this nation never will forget. As long as there are those thirteen red and white stripes and that field of blue with 50 white stars, no one will ever forget what we stand for. Freedom. We are the United States of America and united we shall stand.