September 11 Reflection | Day of Service Journal Part 12

Friday has become the day I sit down and write another entry in our Day of Service Journal, documenting the road toward September 25. But today is September 11, and this year marks 25 years since 2001. Before I talk about where we are with the project, I need to talk about where I was that morning, and what that day changed for me.

I remember September 11, 2001, like it was yesterday. I was stationed in Germany at the time, serving on the commanding general’s communications team, and we were flying when the attacks happened. There are parts of that day and that period of my military service that I still don’t talk about. Twenty-five years later, that hasn’t changed, but I can talk about what the day did to my life.

When I look back over my military career and what ultimately became 27 years of combined military and federal service, September 11 is probably the clearest dividing line I can draw through that part of my life. There was the way I thought about service before that day, and there was the way I thought about it afterward.

A few months before September 11, I had returned from a deployment to Kosovo. Deployments were already part of the job, and I understood that military service could take you away from home and put you in places most people would never see. But September 11 changed the weight of it. I can think back to who I was mentally before that day and who I became afterward, and they are not quite the same person.

When we landed back in Germany, we didn’t know everything that was going to come next. Nobody did. What we did know was that something fundamental had changed, and for those of us serving at the time, it was clear that whatever came next was not going to be something we watched from a distance.

One of the things that stands out more to me now is how young our family was. Lilliany was four months old, and Landon was three. I was a soldier with a job to do, but I was also a husband and a father with two very young children living overseas.

Because of the job I had, there were times my family didn’t necessarily know where I was. That was already part of our life, but after September 11 the uncertainty surrounding military service felt different. The tempo changed, the expectations changed, and eventually the direction of my military career changed too.

That post-9/11 period would later take me to the Middle East. Looking back now, I don’t just remember assignments, promotions or deployments. I remember a career that feels divided into two distinct periods: pre-9/11 and post-9/11.

Twenty-Five Years Later

Twenty-five years is a long time. It is long enough for those two little kids in Germany to grow up, long enough for me to complete 27 years of combined military and federal service, long enough to become a grandfather, and long enough to build an entirely different chapter of life. Even after all that time, September 11 still does not feel distant.

I think about the people who went to work that morning and never came home. I think about the first responders who ran toward danger. I think about the service members whose lives changed in the years that followed, and I think about the families who carried their own part of that service without wearing the uniform. For anyone who wants to spend some time remembering the people and events of that day, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum preserves those stories far better than I could attempt to do here.

That last part, the families, probably means more to me now than it did when I was younger. At the time, you focus on the job in front of you. Twenty-five years later, I understand the weight that spouses, children and parents carry in a different way. That perspective also brings me back to the reason I normally write here on Fridays: after several weeks of searching, we finally have our veteran family.

Last week, I wrote that we were three weeks away from September 25 and still didn’t have an address. In Part 11 of this journal, I shared how our search had widened into the community and how one introduction was leading to another.

One of those introductions came from Floyd Thomas, the Mattaponi District representative on the Caroline County Board of Supervisors. He connected us with a local veteran he thought might be a good fit.

When we first spoke with her, she told us she was okay and didn’t want to accept help if there was another veteran who needed it more. She even offered to check with her church and help us find that person. But after thinking about it, she called us back and decided to accept the help herself. She and her elderly mother have some things around their home where they could use a hand, so the search we’ve been documenting for the past several weeks is finally over.

Later today, Ryan from The 516 Project and I are going to the property for the site survey. We’ll walk the home with her, listen to what they need, and figure out what can realistically be accomplished when our volunteers come together on September 25.

For weeks, people have been asking us what we need. Until today, I haven’t really been able to answer that. After the site survey, we should finally have a list. We’ll know more about materials, skilled trades, how many volunteers we can effectively put to work, and whether anything needs to happen before the Day of Service.

There are only 14 days between today and September 25, so once we finish the site survey, things are going to move quickly. We need to understand the scope, figure out what can be done well in one day, and then match the work with the right people and resources.

I didn’t schedule today’s site survey because it was September 11. That’s simply how the calendar worked out. But once I realized what day it would fall on, I couldn’t help thinking about the distance between those two mornings.

Twenty-five years ago, I was a young soldier stationed in Germany, trying to understand what had just changed and what might come next. Today, that chapter of my military career is behind me, and sometime later I’ll be standing at the home of another veteran and her elderly mother, listening to what they need and figuring out what a group of people from our community can do to give them a hand.

Those two things are not the same, and I don’t want to pretend they are. September 11 deserves more respect than being turned into a convenient lesson or a marketing message.

So this morning, I’ll remember the people we lost, the service members whose lives changed afterward, the families who carried the weight with them, and the young soldier, husband and father I was when we landed back in Germany 25 years ago. Later today, Ryan and I will walk that property, listen, make our list, and start getting ready for September 25.

I didn’t plan for those two things to share the same date, but 25 years later, I’m grateful that’s where September 11 finds me.

We have the family. We have the address. Today, we find out what they need.

If you want to follow the work or be part of what happens on September 25, visit our Community Impact page for the latest Day of Service information.