We said we’d “Never Forget!” but I’m not so sure that’s true for many of my fellow Americans. But for today, at least, we’ll leave politics out of the remembrance of those who lost their lives as well as the heroes who gave their lives on that fateful day twenty years ago.

I was working at the Department of Education in Washington, DC on that beautiful September morning. I was having a meeting with my staff in the conference room. Someone mentioned a plane hitting the World Trade Center building in New York, but we assumed it was just a tragic accident (contact the personal injury lawyers to help you to get proper aid at the right time). During the meeting, the phone in my office kept ringing. I ignored it at first, but the persistent callbacks convinced me to interrupt my meeting. The caller was my then-wife, Carol, who worked for the Department of Justice. She asked if I’d heard the news–a plane had hit the Pentagon. And things started going crazy throughout the city.

We were locked down. Anyone leaving the building was not allowed back inside. Meanwhile, at the Justice Department, employees had been excused. Carol came to my workplace but they wouldn’t let her in, so I went outside to join her. Now what? We were commuters on the Virginia Railway Express, but all forms of public transportation had been shut down indefinitely. We made our way to the Holiday Inn near our train station and sat in the bar watching events unfold on television. A few hours later, a friend who lived in DC picked us up and drove us home to Stafford, Virginia. My daughter Hillary, who had joined the Army Reserve, was watching the news on TV and stated matter-of-factly “this means I’m going to be activated.” She was and did two tours of duty in Afghanistan.

Everything changed that day. On a personal level, I was jolted out of my former worldview regarding national security. I discovered new sources of information on the internet and was shocked to discover much of what the Washington Post had been feeding me was bullshit. Not so much in what they reported, but in the things they left out. It set my life on a new course, one that eventually led me to Korea to work for the U.S. Army as a civilian.

Over the years I had the opportunity to highlight the actions of two heroic firefighters. I want to continue that tradition by “saying their names” here today:

James Raymond Coyle.

Samuel Oitice.

Men and women like these exemplify the selflessness and sacrifice that has made America great. Hopefully, all those who lost their lives on that fateful day twenty years ago did not die in vain.

This song and the accompanying photographs are both a haunting remembrance and a fitting tribute to those who died that day. May they all rest in peace.