This Wednesday marks 23 years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks carried out by al-Qaeda, an Islamist extremist group.
On that day, 19 terrorists from al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial airplanes and deliberately crashed two of the aircraft into the upper floors of the North and South towers of the World Trade Center in New York. A third plane also crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. After these attacks, passengers on the fourth hijacked plane fought back, and the aircraft crashed into an empty field in western Pennsylvania, only 20 minutes by air from Washington, D.C.
In total, the attacks killed 2,977 people from 90 nations. Among the victims were 2,753 people in New York, 184 people at the Pentagon, and 40 others on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania.
At the time of the attacks, I was a first-grade student. I vividly remember sitting in my family’s kitchen eating breakfast while my mother shifted through channels trying to find highlights of the Denver Broncos game from the night before. Instead of seeing what happened during the game, images of the destroyed World Trade Center took over my TV.
It’s something I’ll never forget, and if you ask most people, they will remember where they were that day.
My father was working for the city of Denver and was at one of the police stations when he learned of the attacks. Both of my parents vividly remember the uncertainty of that day and were worried about whether there would be any other attacks.
“That morning felt like the world had changed in an instant. As I sat there with my young child, just trying to find something as simple as football highlights, everything else seemed to stop,” said Yolanda Martinez, my mother. “The uncertainty of what was happening, the fear that more attacks could come, it was overwhelming. All I could think about was protecting my family and what kind of world we were going to wake up to the next day.”
My wife, Kathleen Duran, was also a first-grade student at the time of the attacks. She said her teacher rolled in an old TV into her classroom and had the news on all day.
“Even as a first-grader, I could sense that something was terribly wrong. We didn’t fully understand what was happening, but the look on the adults’ faces and the way everything just stopped told us this was something we’d never forget,” said Duran.
Years later, my wife and I visited the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York, an experience I would recommend to those who can go. Seeing the remnants of that day and hearing the stories of the people who lost their lives brought back all the emotions we felt as children. It gave us a deeper understanding of the impact and a profound respect for those who endured the tragedy.
