On that day, I was scheduled to attend a fundraiser for then-gubernatorial candidate Jim McGreevey with my political class from Toms River High School North. I felt ill, so I missed the trip but went to school anyway. At about noon or so, I ran into a friend of mine who was an EMT, who was preparing to go to NYC. When I asked why, he said that airplanes had destroyed the World Trade Center and a majority of the Pentagon. I immediately went numb, and I don’t know how I made to my next class, which was Journalism II. I was the Editor-in-Chief of my high school newspaper (I will now be a freshman in college), but I didn’t know how I would report this. But anyhow, we crowded around my teacher’s computer as we logged onto CNN’s website. The article and pictures graphically detailed what had occurred. I froze for two reasons: 1) my dad works on Fifth Avenue and I wanted to know if he had made it out of New York OK; 2) two cousins of mine work in the Pentagon (luckily for them, they worked on the opposite side from where the crash happened). Thank God that everyone was OK. My dad after catching the ferry to Weehawken hitchhiked for four hours to get home. My cousins both raced home to let friends and family know they were OK. Our church actually lost a member of our congregation, and a girl I went to school with (who was one of seven children) lost her father. In spite of the event’s horror, we must never forget. We must never forget the evil that human beings are capable of. We must never forget that liberty comes with a price. And most of all, we must never forget what it means to be American. God Bless the U.S.A.