With this post I add my voice to the chorus of patriots who are observing this 9/11 by remembering Al Qaida’s attack on the U.S. at the World Trade Center in New York City, the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania and the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. I could not see the smoke from the Pentagon from our Silver Spring eighteenth floor condo because we faced north, but I saw it from the condo of my neighbor across the hall.
I was a Realtor then and my manager’s ex-husband worked at the Pentagon. He was knocked from his chair by the impact of the plane.
Maryland is a magnet for illegal immigrants, partly because of the ease with which they can obtain driver’s licenses here, which I think is why some of the 9/11 terrorists lived near us in Beltsville. They bought doughnuts from a bakery there where a friend worked, and when she and her boyfriend were moving to California and I took them to the Verizon Wireless store to buy them cell phones for the journey, the salesman told us the 9/11 terrorists had purchased their cell phones at that store.
These little brushes are like a feather compared to the losses of the people who died and their families, and the people on the scene at the time and during the clean-up. But they are enough on this day to concentrate my mind on my love of America and my gratitude to the persons who protect and defend it as their profession.
