Those of us who were alive on September 11, 2001, all have our own tales to tell …
Life centered around baseball.
Balls and strikes, wins and losses, road trips, home games, spring training, and writing about the romance of America’s pastime with my beautiful bride at my side, our daughter in college, and our “Be All You Could Be” (on American soil, please!) son at basic training in Georgia.
And then, on a cloudless, gorgeous Tuesday morning in September at PNC Park, life became about war following horrific attacks, tragic death, and millions of lives changed forever.
Deployments, news reports, death lists, satellite phones, Saddam, IEDs, missions, patrols, Afghanistan, Humvees, M-16s, rucksacks, MREs, Baghdad, interpreters, the Sunnis, the Shiites, body armor, battle buddies, the Quran, Kuwait, care packages, lost Christmases, combat, BDUs, and berets.
Let’s not forget the invasions, WMDs, R&R, Iraq, the range, 115 degrees, sand, homemade cookies, cut-off calls, Blackhawks, burn pits, big skies, distant glows, crushed ramen, chain of command, night vision, ammo, camouflage, duty boots, rations, orders, salutes, and beef jerky.
And at home with my wife and daughter, it was about dehydrated stroganoff, blurry photos, skipped Jambos, post office drop-offs, all-night TV, damaged presents, the MySpace trace, acronyms, yellow ribbons, confusing casualty reports, funeral processions, Support Our Troops drives, mailed letters, homecomings, departures, PTSD, and those prayed-for-middle-of-the-night phone calls from the Middle East.
It was the war on terror; it was the life of an Army grunt and his terrified family; it’s one story about 9/11 and what those tragedies provoked, and there are millions more.
We got lucky. We don’t complain. Our prayers were answered – our son survived his war tours; changed, yes, but alive and living in the country he defended with his own life and with his own soul. He’s our hero, and he might be yours, too, thanks to his wonderful work with local veterans since he returned from “over there”.
Today, 25 years after 9/11, we’re lucky that our lives involve being thankful for and proud of both Michael and Amanda, and we continue to pray for the families who are still waiting for their loved ones to come home.
May God bless them all.
