With Sept. 11, 2011 marking 10 years today, we asked you to go back to that day and share with us how you first became aware of the attacks and what you recalled most vividly about that day.
       And so you did. You sent us your memories via mail, email, blogs and one was even dropped off. Also, we videotaped the memories of four local residents and Herald Studio Statesboro producer Matt Bankhead put together a video that is very moving. Please go to our website and check that out.
       September 11, 2001 is a day no American will ever forget. And, more importantly, we never should.

Called to duty as Army Reserve soldier in NYC

      The morning of September 11, 2001 started out like a normal morning, except that instead of being in Atlanta, I was in Hempstead, N.Y., on Long Island, across Long Island Sound from where I had grown up in Mamaroneck, N.Y. I had just moved in April from Stamford, Conn., to Alpharetta, Ga., with my new bride to be closer to her family in Statesboro and taken a job in Atlanta.
      At the time, I was serving in an MP unit in the Army Reserve, pending transfer orders to a unit in Georgia.
      On that Tuesday morning, I was serving the last week of my two week "summer camp," performing administrative duties. It had been a fairly uneventful week or so to that point, and some of the paperwork I was doing was processing my own transfer.
      A few minutes before 9 a.m., on a small radio we had on in the headquarters office of the MP unit, the company clerk and I hear the first reports of a plane hitting one of the two towers at the World Trade Center. I believe the initial report was that it was a small plane. Something didn't ring quite right to me, and I stopped what I was doing to listen more closely to the report. I also asked the clerk if she had the alert roster (the roster used to call members of the unit during either a practice or real alert) handy. She seemed dismissive but retrieved it anyway. I began to look at it to familiarize myself with it.
      That's when news of the second strike came over the radio.
Hearing of the attacks
      I handed the list back to the clerk, told her to start at the top, and ran out to find either the Brigade Sergeant Major or Brigade Commander. I found the Sergeant Major first. He had already heard the news, and told me to activate the alert roster, which I had already done. He then asked me to grab whoever was handy, run out to the motor pool, get someone to move some vehicles to block the access driveways to the Reserve Center, and begin lining up vehicles at the gate to go wherever we were ordered.
      By now, it must be about 9:30. My wife Amy called me on my cell phone around that time and amazingly gets through. We don't have too much time to talk, of course, but I explain to her we're about to get on the road to head to a small installation in Queens near the foot of the Throgs Neck Bridge called Fort Totten.
      After I get off the phone, one of the soldiers, a young kid, waiting to go to Fort Totten mentions that he has heard the Pentagon was hit, and wonders aloud when we'll get a chance to get even. I told him not to worry about getting even; there'd be time enough for that, but to concentrate on the task at hand.
      Once into Fort Totten, we entered the headquarters building of the 77th Military Reserve Command. We were met by someone, who had either requested us, or had been told we were coming, and shuttled into a waiting room. The room had a TV, so thus was the rumor about the Pentagon confirmed. We were also in time to see one of the towers fall; given the timeline, it must have been the first (South) tower to fall.
      But by now, everything was a blur, so it could have been the second tower to fall just as easily. And now, I felt like that young soldier, wanting to know when we'd get our chance.
      In short order, we were issued 9mm handguns and M-16's.
Long shifts
      The next couple of days were spent on long shifts of post security, whether that was gate, building, or patrol. We had rigged mirrors with arms to check underneath vehicles. Every vehicle was completely inspected; hood, trunk, undercarriage, and passenger compartment. The line of vehicles with people waiting to get on to post was incredibly long, even more so with more soldiers and civilian employees on duty. We did not get much, if any, sleep
      After being relieved of our duty at Fort Totten when sufficient soldiers had been activated to take the place of the first few of us, I spent the last two days back in Hempstead, assisting in the supervision of the security at our home Reserve Center.
Seeing Ground Zero
      I left New York on that Saturday after the attacks. I had arranged for Amy to meet me somewhere in Virginia, about halfway home. I decided to go home the way I came; through Brooklyn and over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge to Staten Island and New Jersey, which would be the most direct way to meet Amy.
      It was direct, and it afforded me a bird's eye view of the devastation in lower Manhattan at Ground Zero. As I was driving across the bridge, away from the site, I glanced over my shoulder as I realized I would be able to see it. All at once, I slowed, and almost drove off the bridge. Evan at a distance, the devastation, smoke, and flames were huge. It is a sight I will never forget. I had to force myself to keep my eyes on the road and finish crossing the bridge. I was badly shaken by that view. Although I had seen it on TV by then, the shock of seeing it in person was almost too much to bear.
      The entire experience had indeed been surreal. I grew up in New York. For me, to be carrying around a weapon in my own backyard, not as a cop, but as a soldier on actual military duty, was hard to take. I had been in the Towers many times, on business, or for pleasure to eat or entertain clients at Windows on the World. The thought that they were gone, seared into my memory with my own eyes and not from TV, made it even more surreal. 10 years later, it still seems that way.
Far-away look
      The firefighters are what I will remember most about the days after 9/11. The vehicles would leave Fort Totten for Ground Zero clean, and come back caked with ash, as were the firefighters, who in addition to the dust, had a vacant, far-away look in their eyes, haunted by what they had seen.
      I have seen this look many times on soldiers I have met since then; these are the soldiers who have deployed in the service of our country in the wars which followed the 9/11 attacks.
      I regret every day that I was unable to serve alongside them, as so many of my friends have.
      These soldiers, and the firefighters, policemen, and other rescue workers, along with the victims on the planes, in the towers, at the Pentagon, the ones who stayed behind to help others evacuate, or stormed the cockpit of their plane, and those on the ground nearby are the true heroes of 9/11.
      I pray every day for the children who saw the attacks in their classrooms on that day and think of those on that day who were only in Kindergarten, and are now in 10th grade, never having known, or remembering, a country which was not at war. I pray that when they, and my two daughters Cecilia and Abigail, reach adulthood, that they will finally know a nation at peace, safe and secure, with our enemies defeated.
Jeffrey M. Smith, SSG
US Army and Army Reserve, Retired

Déjà vu of a terrible day in Mexico City

      On September 11, 2001, I was in Mexico City, assigned there as head of the commercial section of the U.S. Embassy.
      As I walked into the U.S. Trade Center, where our offices were located, I was greeted with the terrible news that planes had crashed into the World Trade Center buildings in New York City.
      The staff, both US and Mexican, was shocked and very concerned that other US government buildings might also be targeted, including our office and trade exhibition complex. I asked all staff to gather in the corridor outside my office where I urged calm as we continued to receive news of the devastation and regular updated security advice from the embassy's security staff and from our ambassador.
      We all wondered aloud, and some with anger mixed in, just how our government's security system could have been so asleep at the wheel to have allowed such an event to have happened. I told the staff that anyone who wished to return home for the day could do so, and many did.
      What was personally upsetting to me was the fact that I was also in Mexico City on November 22, 1963, the day when President Kennedy was assassinated.
      I was in Mexico as a university junior year abroad student studying at the University of the Americas. At that time, I was on the Zocalo, or main square in central Mexico City, buying a Christmas present for my father back in Massachusetts.
      As I brought the selected tie to the cashier for payment, he said how much he regretted that our president had been shot. I had not heard about this terrible event and fearing I had missed something in translation, I left the store and stopped the first U.S. tourist I could find on the square so as to verify what I thought I had been told in Spanish by the cashier in the store. His reply shocked me and continues to do so to this day.
      He said, "Yes, the news is true and though we are not Democrats, we regret this incident as well."
Dale V. Slaught
Statesboro

A stunning day at the UGA law school

      I had just started my last year of law school at the University of Georgia. It was a Tuesday, and back then I usually rode my bike to school, carrying my heavy case law books and a change of clothes in a commuter pannier fitted on my bike. For some reason, I drove to school that morning and parked in the courthouse garage.
      "Left my house this morning./ Bells were ringing it filled the air."
      I attach significance to this line from Bruce Springsteen's "The Rising" because as I walked through downtown Athens and onto UGA's North Campus that morning, I was struck by what a beautiful day it was. The morning was warm, but the wind had a certain softness that foreshadowed the change of seasons about to come.
      I was president of the Women's Law Student Association and the first thing I had to do that morning was post some flyers to advertise for an upcoming event. I was putting up flyers in the lower floor of the law school, where students tend to gather before and after classes.
Watching in ‘The Pit'
      One of the lounges is a large, sunken-in area with a TV that we called The Pit. I was putting up flyers there sometime around 9 a.m. when I noticed a group of students and staff gathered around the TV. Every few minutes, everyone would let out this surprised gasp as the news stations were replaying the first plane hitting the north tower. I'm not much of a TV person, but eventually I came over to see what was going on.
      At that time, no one knew what was going on. The room was abuzz with people speculating about whether it was an accident or intentional. Then, the second plane hit the south tower, and it was clear this was no accident. More students, staff, and some faculty began arriving and gathering in The Pit.
      Some of those who came had no idea of what was going on and expected just a normal day of classes and extracurricular work. As we were watching, more and more astounding reports kept coming in. A plane had hit the Pentagon. A third plane was heading for New York (later turned out to be false). All aircraft forced to land. All incoming international flights diverted to Newfoundland. All flights cancelled. We watched as the south tower collapsed and suspected the north tower would as well. Another plane down in Pennsylvania.
      I sat there with a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and law professor, and a couple of Supreme Court clerks trying to make sense of these events as they were unfolding.
      Soon, the dean of the law school, David Shipley, came in and announced that all classes were cancelled that day.
Not knowing what to do
      I intermittently tried to work a little in the library, but mostly just discussed the events in small groups with other law students.
      I spent the afternoon not knowing if I wanted to go to church or go to a downtown bar. Both offered a sort of solidarity or outlet. In the end, my better angels prevailed and I did attend an evening church service at a local Episcopal church. I also felt a desire to make a meal from scratch that I prepared for my roommate and his girlfriend. They left at the end of the evening and I was alone the rest of the night.
      We all went to bed believing that as many as 10,000-15,000 people had been killed. I felt that same kind of loneliness that I felt about four weeks earlier when my father died in St. Louis and my husband would not make it to Athens until the following day to travel there.
"Empty sky, empty sky/ I woke up this morning to an empty sky"
      I remember the news conference with the NYPD and NYFD giving their initial estimates for how many personnel had been lost. For months, CNN would close a number of their late night news shows with footage of the clean-up of ground zero
      My cat seemed to pick up on the mood and liked to sit in a box that held my printing paper. I called it her bomb shelter.
      It took a long time for us as Americans to comprehend what had just happened.
Laura Harriman Wheaton, Esq.
Attorney at Law, Brown Rountree PC
Statesboro