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Posted on Sep 9, 2011 Print this Article

Remembrance of 9/11

These essays bring back a lot of personal memories, including mine:

NRO Symposium: What I Remember

On 9/11, after watching the horrendous story unfold all morning, I went out to keep a short appointment.  I had a feeling that when I returned I would learn that a friend had been killed, and the premonition proved true.   Attorney Barbara Olson had been on the plane that terrorist hijackers smashed into the Pentagon.   Her husband Ted, then the US Solicitor General, said  that she called him from the doomed plane on her cell phone, and he told her what had happened in New York.   

When I reached for my phone directory to call Kate O'Beirne, a close friend of Barbara's, I noticed that right below her number was the cell phone number of Barbara Olson, who would never answer again.  

I remember seeing another friend, Tony Snow, reporting the story for Fox News with a backdrop that he calmly reported might be the next target: the U.S. Capitol dome.  I think it was the first time Snow signed off with a phrase that stuck: "fair, balanced...and unafraid."  That weekend, walking around the neighborhood, I counted over 100 American flags displayed on porches.   We listened to a  favorite bluegrass CD we had purchased at a Michigan country store, and the homespun songs were as sweet as ever.  But in the face of sudden national tragedy we knew that the innocence and simplicity of that era in history would never return again.  

 

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Posted on Sep 9, 2011 Print this Article