[Scully]

I vividly remember the drive to work that morning. I left the house early, the sun was shining and it was a beautiful day. My office had limited internet access and not a single radio. Our VP walked walked into our cubicles and calmly announced that a plane had hit the World Trade Center and walked out. We thought to ourselves that it may just have been a small Cessna and almost shrugged it off. Minutes later, she came back to let us know that a second plane had crashed. Immediately, we knew something was wrong.

However, it wasn’t until my lunch break that I ran downstairs to my car, turned on the radio and sat in the parking lot and cried for a half an hour straight. I came back up to work, frazzled. We all had to work a full day.

I drove to my house, finding only my father home. My mother was stuck in traffic on her way home from work and my sister was up at school. He was standing in front of the TV watching the news and shaking his head. He recalled the day he was working at the Trade Center after the bombing in 1993. Telling me that this was nothing compared to what happened just 8 years earlier. In the following few days, all my father could say was, “We lost a lot of good guys down there. Those were my kids.” I am just so thankful that he retired from the NYPD in the Spring of 2001.

I was glued to the television the remainder of the night, watching the footage over and over. It was impossible to take my eyes away from it. All I could do was pray.