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I remember that day, 24 years ago. I started the morning early and I was meeting with a salesman from Thompson and Johnson to go over a quote for a new fork truck.
He came in around 8:30. I had the radio on softly in the background. We shot the sh*t for a few minutes and got down to business.
Sometime after 8:46, we heard that an airplane (Flight 11) had hit the North Tower. At that time we did not think it odd. It was an accident after all, right? I'm sure that's what most people thought. We both continued our business while keeping a sharper ear on the radio.
Sometime after 9:03, a second airplane hit the South Tower. We both stopped talking, sitting, knowing, like everyone else listening, that neither "accident" was an accident, and that this was part of something bigger. At around 10 AM, the gentleman from Thompson and Johnson quietly excused himself to leave. We looked each other in the eye, each somber, shaking hands, sensing we were in the beginning of a tragic historical event. The rest of the day was lost in the collapse of the Two Towers, the crash of Flight 77 into the Pentagon, the crash of Flight 93 after the hijackers were overpowered, and the announcements that sought to explain what had happened and what was evolving from those events.
A tragedy that united us as a people, as tragedy and need often do. The person who was me back then would not understand the division in our country today.

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