Serious content alert. The local Womens Auxiliary VFW Post 4127 holds a Freedom Walk each year on the Saturday closest to 9/11 which will be tomorrow. I always write it up before hand for the paper to allow people time to plan their calendar. I also send a contribution. I do not attend. The simple fact is I know I can’t make it through the ceremony and this year it is of course amplified with Wednesday’s murder.

As I have posted in the past, we were in what is referred to as Northern Virginia which is a two-three county area around Washington, D.C. In this case, Hubby was assigned to Headquarters, Army Materiel Command and I actually worked in the same building as a contractor. The building is in Alexandria and is about a 20-minute drive from the Pentagon during non-rush hours. My sister had finished a conference (or whatever it was this time) at maybe National Institute of Health and spent a couple of days with us. I was taking her to the Baltimore-Washington airport that morning and we hadn’t bothered to turn on the TV or radio because we always chatter away with each other. Hubby had left for work earlier as they were scheduled to go to a morning meeting at the Pentagon. Obviously everything changed and they in fact had received word about ten minutes before they were set to drive over. In all that followed, I didn’t actually have a chance to talk to him for several hours as he was pulled in to run the night shift in the Operations Center. In situations like this, the Operations Center is “stood up” for 24/7 action. In my contract work, I was also pulled in full-time (well, lots of overtime included) and that lasted until the spring.

None of the individuals killed in the Pentagon attack were friends although I knew some casually professionally.