Originally published Sept. 11, 2001
By Woody Paige
Tuesday began as any other.
Yet, it will end as no other.
This day shall live in infamy, too.
They have attacked the U.S. and us.
The unfathomable, but inevitable, has just occurred.
Faceless, mindless cowards started a war this morning.
But united we will stand — always. Winston Churchill said of another war: “We shall not flag or fail. … We shall never surrender.”
Sept. 11, 2001, forever will be as embedded in our memories as Dec. 7, 1941.
America will survive — as it did after the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War and Pearl Harbor.
Amid the fire and smoke and rubble and chaos in New York as the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed, Miss Liberty still held her head high. But there were tears in her eyes.
And the world cries with her.
Our lives have been permanently altered.
Denver was not torched or touched directly this time. We had our Columbine.
But everyone in this city and this state can feel the jolt, the pain, the inhuman assault on Manhattan and Washington, D.C.
The victims were our people.
Each of us knows someone who works in those buildings or lives in those areas or has connections to those disaster sites. Two of my friends had offices in the World Trade Center. An associate has a sister who is employed nearby on Wall Street. My neighbor has a relative stationed at The Pentagon. A man who called said his college roommate is an executive for a company whose headquarters was in one of the towers.
You have someone there.
I tried to call a friend in New York. There was no answer. Soon we all hope to have answers.
We only can sit and watch in horror and wish and want that they are safe and secure.
But thousands aren’t. This is the worst unnatural catastrophe in our country’s history.
And there will be hell to pay for the responsible.
What can we do right now? Hug someone you love. Tell somebody you care.
There are a great many freedoms in the United States. Freedom of religion and speech, among others. But, as Franklin Roosevelt offered, our most precious freedom is freedom from fear.
We lost that freedom this morning. Somehow it must be regained.
Hours before the deliberate, calculated terrorist offensive, the Denver Broncos beat the New York Giants in a football game at the new stadium. That game is so meaningless now, especially in a city that often is maligned, but is the most viable and important on the globe.
And the seat of our government, the home of democracy, also has been assailed. Not since the White House was burned down has Washington seemed so vulnerable.
But we have survived and become stronger before, and we will again.
The worms will not succeed.
I was awakened by a friend telling me of the two suicide crashes at the World Trade Center. I watched as the national media tried to explain and detail. I watched as first one tower, then the other, fell unto themselves. I watched in horror, as everyone else did, and wondered how we have come to this. In my 55 years, I’ve never seen anything like this. I called my mom. As a youth, she was celebrating her birthday one Sunday when music on the radio was interrupted by the news that Pearl Harbor had been bombed unmercifully.
“I never wanted to hear anything like that again,” my mother said this morning. “But I just did.”
I just reached another friend in New York.
“It’s like the world is coming to an end,” he said. “We can guess, but we don’t even know who the enemy is. I want to get out of here as fast as I can, but you can’t go anywhere and you don’t know what to do.
“Tell everybody in Denver to pray for us.”
It’s not over.
Morning turns to mourning.
Attack turns to action.
And We The People of the United States of America must respond. Believe.
