I have two pictures of the World Trade Center.
The first one is the one I included. It shows the Twin Towers the way I remember them. Strong, massive, never-ending, I remember standing in between them as a kid and just looking up. They seemed to brush the clouds.
I took this picture during the summer of 2001, on a ferry headed to the Statue of Liberty. Back when people went to work and held meetings in the towers. Perhaps they grumbled about the long waits for the elevators, or the tourists clogging up walkways. It was the summer before my freshman year of high school, where I prolonged transitioning into an adult as long as I could.
I don't have the second picture printed, because it is seared in my memory forever. It is a picture of the next time I visited the World Trade Center. It had been several months since the attacks...but the twisted piles of iron and metal were still there, waiting to be sorted through. There were construction vehicles about, but other then them, the site was eerily silent. Hundreds of smiling faces peered at me...through the yellowed and crinkled missing persons fliers still up. Fliers of moms and dads and kids and friends, who went to work and didn't come home.
I don't need a photograph to remind me.
It's been ten years, but I think at least for me, it will always feel like yesterday. It was a defining moment in my life, as I'm sure it was for most. The weeks I spent glued to the television fueled my passion for the news and my respect for those working hard to tell the stories. It made me want to hug every firefighter, police officer, and first responder, and say "THANK YOU for caring enough to be willing to put your life out there for us!" It made me fiercely proud to be an American. It made me want to find the good in everyone, as ordinary people did extraordinary things that day.
Never Forget.
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