Jack xxxxxx, You know how it is when the oven’s on broil and you pop open the door and your face gets scorched with all that blast of heat?

That’s how it felt on 9/11 when AA Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon.

The time: 0938.

We hit the hallways—15,000 of us—and pushed outside only to meet the enormous black clouds billowing from the building. Thousands stood in shock. It was dead quiet. Until...

Sirens screamed in the distance, as first responders urged us to, “Get down, Get down!”—they’d figured out there was a fourth airplane missing.

Just then, an F-16 fighter jet—which comes quiet and leaves loud—roared overhead, pulling a tight spiraling circle around the blazing building. As he wrapped around the ascending column of smoke tears sprang from my eyes as I thought:

My God, he was escorting those souls to heaven.

That moment is seared in my memory for all time. Not only was I so proud to be an Air Force pilot, but as the thousands cheered, I would be reminded how proud I am—and you are—to be an American.

Because the next day, fifteen thousand people returned to the Pentagon—a building that would burn for four more days—because their nation needed them.

So listen. The stories of our lives are not the 9/11s. The stories of our lives are about 9/12. It’s what you do the next day that judges you as a person. As a community. And even as a nation.

This is our 9/12 ladies and gentleman. This is it! How history judges us is truly on what we will do in the 2020 election.

So today, we remember and lift up all of the innocent lives lost on September 11, 2001. Let’s honor the first responders who bravely stepped up after the attacks. And let’s be the Americans worthy of their collective sacrifice!

-Kim