September 11 - Let Us Never Forget
Some days I feel that America has forgotten what we went through 6 years ago. With our American 30 second attention span, Iy pains me to see just how relaxed we have become.
Cox and Forkum have an excerpt from a book, Never Forget: An Oral History of September 11, 2001, by Mitchell Fink and Lois Mathias. This book is a collection of eye-witness accounts of the horrible day.
And as I say this, you hear this really loud screeching sound. I turn around and it’s kind of coming from the elevators. So I run away from it, like ten steps, and look back. And the elevators are free-falling. Then, from the middle elevator bank, not the one I came down on, but from the middle one, a huge fireball explodes in the lobby. This huge fireball is coming right toward me. People got incinerated. And I remember just looking at this thing, not feeling scared, but just sad because I knew I was going to die. But as quickly as it came toward me, it actually sucked back in on itself, and it was gone. It left a lot of smoke and everything was blown out, all the glass and revolving doors leading into the shopping area. All I felt was a big wave of heat come over me, like when you put your face too close to a fireplace. My customer and my general counsel and I just ran out. The three of us ran over the overpass to where the Financial Center is. We went down to where the marina is, where the yachts are. And that’s when we found out what happened, that a plane had hit the building.
I looked up and saw this big gaping hole. I said, “What’s that falling out of the window?”
My general counsel looks at me like I’m nuts. And he says, “That’s people jumping out.” …
Cantor Fitzgerald had four floors in the North Tower — 101, 103, 104, and 105. Nobody got out on those floors. Everyone who was upstairs perished. There were a lot of phone calls to wives and husbands at around nine o’clock saying good-bye, as though they knew they were going to die.
We must never forget that 3,000 innocent people died that day. We must never forget that there are Muslim terrorist in the world, who right this moment, want nothing more than for us to follow these 3,000 people in death. They want nothing more than to kill you, me, our spouses and our children. We must never forget that they are working non-stop, at this very moment, to achieve that end.
Any time you get tired of hearing about the war in Iraq, or the latest terrorist plot, keep in mind September 11th, 2001. Remember 3,000 innocent people who died a horrible death. Remember their families who will bear these scars the rest of their lives. Remember the photos of people choosing to fall hundreds of feet to their deaths instead of burn to death.
Remember!!
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