This may seem like a strange event to remember, but I include it because I still remember it to this day. It was the summer before I was to start first grade. I wonder if I knew then that my Mom was an Elvis fan.
We were sitting on the brick wall in the front yard of our neighborhood friends. We usually sat there when we played the game where we would shout "One way!" to the cars driving down our street the wrong way. It was loads of fun for us and we giggled the whole time. All of a sudden the teenage sister, of one of our friends, is frantically running down the street and she starts yelling "The King is dead, the King is dead!". She looked so distraught, I wondered if this King (which happened to be her last name) was a family member.
The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on January 28, 1986, when the Shuttle broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, leading to the deaths of its seven crew members.(wikipedia)
I remembered the seven names of those crew members long after the tragedy.
I was in my American History class in High School. Suddenly we hear a commotion outside our class and a student pokes their head in our door. You could see he was upset. He blurted out "The Challenger just exploded!" and then left. Everyone knew what he was talking about. It was big news that a School Teacher had been chosen, trained and prepared for her first flight into Space. Through daily news reports we had come to know Christa McAuliffe and her family. So, the first thing I remember thinking about were her two children, a boy and a girl, I believe. They had just lost their mother.
Erected in 1961, the Berlin wall separated eastern and western Berlin, Germany. After the Soviet Union fell the Berlin wall fell as well on November 9, 1989, marking the end of the cold war.(blsciblogs.baruch.cuny.edu)
This was a glorious event! The Wall seemed to have lasted forever since it was all I knew in my lifetime. At first, televison crews focused on one area, in particular, where a hole was being opened up through the wall. It was mesmerizing to watch the crowds of overjoyed people helping to tear down the graffiti-covered cement walls.
It was a time to celebrate the reunification of a country. Maybe more importantly it was the celebration of the reunification of families torn apart when the Wall was built.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes. They crashed the first two into the twin towers of the World Trade Center complex in New York and a third plane into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. A fourth hijacked plane, Flight 93, was crashed into an empty field in western Pennsylvania when the passengers fought back after hearing about the previous planes. The attacks killed 2,977 people. (911memorial.org)
I had just woken up to get ready for work. My roommates had the TV on and said a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center. I saw the far away image of the tail of a tiny plane smoking out of the side of the Tower. Not long ago, an aircraft had crashed into a building, but it had been too small to cause any serious damage. I left to take a shower. I finished my shower and started my usual routine of getting ready as I listened to the news on TV. I poked my head out just in time to see the second plane crash into the second tower! This was real. This was a passenger plane full of people. Someone meant to cause serious harm!
My mind was reeling by the time I reached work. Televisions were pulled out of storage and placed in public areas so our patrons could watch what was going on. I saw both Towers fall. I saw the Pentagon on fire. I saw the burnt gash in the Pennsylvania field. I saw people running for their lives. For the first time in my life I felt so unprotected and vulnerable along with everyone else that day.
 |
| from 911memorial.org |
{Family History Tuesday prompts are found at designzbydede}
No comments:
Post a Comment