Remembrance

I remember being interested in the military as a kid. My dad had been in the Navy, and I always thought that was pretty cool. I didn't know then that not only would I join the military, I would join when our nation was at war.

In 2001, I was fourteen. I thought America was safe. Who would attack America? I knew from school that we were a military superpower, so I figured someone would have to be pretty dumb to attack us.

September 11 started off as any normal day. I got up, I got on the bus, I went to school. I hung out in the courtyard with my friends until the first bell rang, then I went to my first class. As soon as I walked through the door, I knew something was wrong because the TV was on, and something was on fire and pouring thick smoke. I wasn't sure what it was at first. Then they changed to another camera angle.

It was the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center in New York City. I'd never been there at that point, but I recognized them. Both towers had been hit by that point.

Class started, but we didn't do any work. Not even ten minutes after the bell rang to start class, another teacher ran to our classroom and she said, "They just hit the Pentagon."

One plane flying into a tower could have been an accident. Two planes flying into two towers would be a really strange coincidence, so I kind of figured it was on purpose. But the Pentagon? Even as a kid I knew how important that building was. That's when it clicked that America was suddenly at war, attacked on her own soil.

We watched as the South Tower collapsed. Then a portion of the Pentagon. Then the North Tower just before my first class ended, and the attack was over. I don't remember hearing about Flight 93 until later in the day when they mentioned that a plane that seemed bound for the D.C. area had crashed in Pennsylvania.

I think that's the day I really decided. I took the ASVAB, a placement test for the military, in my senior year, three years later. I had high scores, and I was getting calls from all branches of the military. I wasn't interested in the Marine Corps, so they stopped calling and sending letters first. I thought about the Navy, but at the time I was only interested in the submarine force. The submarine force didn't accept women yet.

I didn't actually join until I'd been out of high school for a year. Initially, I thought about the Air Force. However, the Air Force would only accept me with a GED if I had college credit. With the Air Force out of the equation, I turned to the Army.

I told them I wanted to be a linguist. I even took their language test and passed it easily. They didn't have any slots for linguists, they told me, after I took the test of course. Since I'd had such high scores, my recruiter suggested I look at other military intelligence fields. Out of what was available, I chose Signals Analysis. I went to school for that, and then I never did it for real. The closest I got was collecting Morse code in Korea, which is where I met my husband.

We got married about a year before I got out of the Army. He got out the year after I did.

I look back and I realize that without the events of September 11, 2001, my life could have been very different. Maybe I still would have joined the military, but during peace rather than war. Or maybe I wouldn't have, and I would have never met my husband.

And if I had never met my husband, I would have never met his friend,John Smith. John quickly became a close friend of mine as well.

John is currently deployed in the War Against Terror with his National Guard unit. We are both hoping he stays safe and comes home.