[Jcordell]

I was working nights and 9/10/01 was my Friday so I got home a little after 6:00 A.M. Mountain Time and went to bed. About 4.5 hours later the bedroom door crashed open and my wife was standing there in tears telling me that the WTC and the Pentagon had been attacked and thousands were dead.

It took a few minutes for me to wake up and the news to sink in. The first thing I thought about was all the people who had been on the planes. All those people. For some reason that statistic struck me harder then all the people in the Pentagon and the WTC. Eventually (of course) I also thought about them. I knew we were witnessing one of those "BIG EVENTS" that occurr periodically and I suddenly wished it was 9/10/01 again.

Later that day I had to make the drive over to the police academy (about 20 miles east of where we live) to pick up my certificate showing that I was now a fully certified police officer in the State of Idaho (I had completed the academy and my field training with my department). By then all non emergency and military air traffic had been grounded. I remember thinking that this was the first and possibly last time I would ever look up to the skies above the U.S.A. and there would be (almost) no airplanes flying. It struck me that our skies hadn't been that empty since before WW I.

My law enforcement certificate is dated September 11. 2001. Everytime I look at it I remember that day.