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*September 11, 2025*






This is the baggage claim sticker that was on my suitcase from 9/11/2001. Ralph Williams and I were flying from Omaha to New York to speak at a users conference in Connecticut. As we had done so many times together we met up at the airport, bought coffee, boarded the plane and took off. Like every flight we’d taken together, same normal routine, same normal stuff.

And then everything changed. We found ourselves having landed in Chicago, and out of reflex I turned on my cell phone. A few seconds later my phone rang, I saw that it was my wife’s number. I didn’t know anything had happened at this point, so I just answered the phone. The voice on the other end was grief stricken, crying, and barely understandable. I tried to figure out what was going on, but only caught, “thank God you’re alive”, and “get to a television”. About this same time Ralph was getting a similar call from his wife.

We deplaned wondering what was going on, and as we we walked to the television in the concourse we saw people huddled around the TVs, and they were trying to figure out what had happened.

We saw something scrolling across the screen about a plane hitting the World Trade Towers. I thought it had to be a small plane, we saw next that another plane hit, and in a way that only Ralph could say he looked at me and said “time to get the hell out of dodge”. I didn’t need to ask what he meant. We both turned and started walking quickly down the concourse to retrieve our bags and get a car. We knew we’d be driving home.

We grabbed our bags and went to the rental car area. One of the few perks as a frequent traveler was status with the car companies. We just went to an empty car and plopped down in it. Ralph had someone telling him that we couldn’t do that and we both told the worker that we were the level that just got to take what we wanted and go.

We found a few more people headed in the rough direction we were headed, and took off.

About then Darren Huggy D Sliva called me and wondered if I was traveling, and I filled him in on what I was doing. He told me then that the Pentagon had been hit, and in subsequent calls told me through tears that the towers fell, and about Pennsylvania. I felt like I’d been gut punched.

The drive went for long periods of time in silence, only breaking the silence to take a call, or get instructions as to where we were to drop a passenger off. I called my parents and sisters, and sent a few text messages, and that’s about all I remember other than just being numb.

I got home eventually, and nothing was normal, and hasn’t been ever since. Nothing is the same as it was on 9/10/2001 and won’t ever be again.

A week to the day, we returned to New York. Ralph and I defiantly walked for blocks to get to ground zero, and were numb once again. The sight, and smell of the site was like nothing I can describe, nor do I want to try.

24 years is a long stretch of time, and people tend to forget things either because other things have encroached in on their memory or because they just want to forget. I won’t forget 9/11. I won’t forget the images of people jumping out of windows to their deaths, or of first responders coated in ash, or survivors caked in dust, the military posted at airports, and I won’t ever forget the panic in my wife’s voice because she was sure I was dead. I won’t forget either the fact that people came together, hugged each other, supported each other, and pulled together because we needed each other.

I won’t forget, neither should you

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