Where Were You on September 11th, 2001?

by Tamera Lynn Kraft

Everybody has a story about that fateful day. Here’s mine.

A couple of days before that notorious event, my son who had just gotten married in July called to tell us his new wife was leaving him to be with a married man. She would move out on Tuesday, September 11th. I tried to get a flight to Tennessee, where he lived for that Tuesday morning, but I couldn’t. I literally couldn’t book the flight online. Something blocked it. Now I know it was God. I would have been stuck in an airport in Cincinnati and wouldn’t have made it in time to be with him, but then, I thought it was just weird.

Since I couldn’t fly down, my husband drove down on Monday. I got a flight for the following week. Tuesday morning, I watched the news while I waited for my husband to call to let me know if my son’s ex-wife was there yet and how he was holding up. A breaking news story came on Fox News. An airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Nobody knew if it was an accident or on purpose. As I watched, the second plane hit. The world seemed to be collapsing while my son’s life and marriage did. The towers fell while my son’s wife moved her stuff out.

After the planes hit the towers, I realized I hadn’t woke up my daughter, and she was sleeping though this. She was a junior in high school and homeschooled. I woke her up and told her what happened. She wondered to the TV and said, “Oh, I thought you were talking about a movie.” At that point, it seemed so surreal.

All air flight was grounded, and the President was rushed from a schoolroom in Florida onto Air Force One. The stunned news broadcasters then announced a plane was headed to the Pentagon and I remembered my cousin had an office there. He was a private software contractor, but his only client is the Pentagon. The plane crashed through my cousin’s office and killed his secretary (his kid’s SS teacher). He’s alive because an hour earlier, he was called away for an emergency meeting at another location.

The news announced Flight 91 in Pennsylvania was headed toward the White House, and fighter jets had been called to chase it down. At that moment, the whole house rumbled as the jets flew over our house. I knew it was the fighter jets because the planes had been grounded. I spent the entire day watching the news, getting reports from my husband about my son, and praying. It was the day terrorism came to America and the world changed.

A year later, I went on a missions trip to New York. I saw Ground Zero. It looked like a bomb had hit it. It reminded me of pictures I’d seen of the devastation in Europe during World War 2. When I visited Grand Central Station, I read all the messages on a board in the center of the station to those who had died. I didn’t cry until I read one message. “Daddy, I miss you. I’ll see you in Heaven. Love, Veronica.” My daughter’s name is Veronica.

I did fly down to see my son six days after September 11th, but there were only a hand full of people on the plane. After the divorce, my son married a girl he met when he came home to recover. She is a sweetheart. They’ve been married 15 years and have two sons. God restores what evil destroys.

So what’s your story? Leave it in the comments.