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As I sit down to write this, it's 8:08 AM.  10 years ago at this time, I was on my way home after working the nigh shift at KFDI Radio.  It was a typical Tuesday morning.  Nothing out of the ordinary had happened overnight and I thought about how beautiful it was that morning and that I was looking forward to arriving home so I could sit on my front porch and begin reading my new book I had just bought.

John Wright had just ended his 8:00 newscast and reported an AP bulletin that a small airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.  No biggie.  Sounds like an accident.  But what none of us knew was that, on this morning, our lives would change.  Our country would change.

As I arrived home, the TV networks had already broken into programming.  There was the site.  This was clearly not a small aircraft.  And then, right before everyone's eyes, the second plane struck.

I immediately started driving back to work to help out, but I realized I would probably do no good at the station.  As you can imagine, the phones were jammed, so I grabbed my handheld 2-way radio and told John that I would be reporting to McConnell Air Force Base to begin reporting on how the local air force base was reacting and responding.

When I arrived at McConnell, things were still pretty much business as usual, but it didn't last long.  By 10:00 AM, there was still a long line of cars to get into the base, but they would not let me in and I couldn't reach the public information officer per normal protocol.  By noon, all of the local media outlets had responded to the base and heavily armed MP's were patrolling the perimeter of the entire base.  Bomb sniffing dogs were also being used.

I remember on 9/11/01, it was the first time in my life that I truly felt really, really scared.  Scared of the unknown.  How many more attacks would there be?  They said our base could be a target because of the major air refueling jets housed there. Throughout the next 12 hours, I just remember the helplessness that I saw in people's faces.  Such uncertainty.

Those terrorists might have shaken us, but they will never break us.  Today, remember the victims.  The nearly 3,000 innocent lives that were erased should never be forgotten.