Most of my blog to this point has been about my deployment around South America. Foreign ports, funny stories, and some work along the way. And it’s easy to forget why I’m here. But on this day, I’d like to go back and talk about the events that ultimately led me down this path.
Most people reading this intimately remember September 11, 2001. Where we were, what we were doing, who we were with. I remember sitting in class when they told us that the world trade center had fallen to the ground. To be honest, I didn’t really know what that was, just that they were buildings. I remember not being able to find my father, who was flying to Washington that day. I remember being picked up from school and taken home early. As we were walking out the door, I asked why I was being taken out of school. My brother stopped walking and grabbed my shoulders, turning to me and said, “You really don’t understand what’s happening today? Thousands of people are dead.”
My 12-year-old innocence at the time, I think, wasn’t just because I was 12 years old. Nobody expected this. Nobody knew what to make of it. Life wasn’t like that. But my life changed with those words from my brother.
In a way, I wouldn’t be sitting here on a ship off the coast of San Diego if that day had never happened. It made me understand how fragile our liberty is, how we need good people to rise up and defend what’s right and support everything that we have, and it ultimately propelled me to join the military. It makes me feel guilty when I complain about work or tough things in life, because it all pales in comparison to everything that’s happened. Yes, our lives are divided into before and after, pre-9/11 and post-9/11, innocence and open eyes. But they go on, impacted by a life that was and events that changed everything about that past.
We have a couple of memorials planned throughout the day on the ship. We’ve rung bells when each plane went down and talked on the loudspeaker about what happened. We have a 24-hour run (on treadmills, of course) planned to memorialize those who died. And above all, we all remember why we’re here, why we joined, and a life that was.
