Everyone Has a Story About 9/11, and We Want to Hear Yours

Sept. 11, 2001, was a day that not only defined a generation but altered each one of us in a fundamental way.

Most of us weren't in New York that day, nor did most of us know anyone who died in the attacks, but that doesn't make them any less personal. We all broke a little bit that day, and as a country, we have spent the last 10 years trying to figure out how to put the pieces back together.

My own 9/11 story begins with a morning phone call from my sister, who worked in mid-town Manhattan at the time. "Turn on the TV," she said. When I did, I saw that every channel was showing footage of a plane flying into one of the Twin Towers. I had no understanding of what was happening until my sister began to cry. "Oh, God," she said. "A plane just hit the other tower."

We would lose phone contact, and on the day when we most needed to talk to each other, we would get nothing but busy signals. The interrupted cell service after the Virginia earthquake and Hurricane Irene brought back just that memory.

Later that day, I was called into work at The Hartford Courant, as every other journalist on the planet was called in to his or her place of business. I was asked to work as a wire editor that day — a job I didn't normally do — which meant that I had to view hundreds of photos from the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the plane crash in Shanksville, PA, and read thousands of inches of copy on the attacks.

Much of it was too graphic to make it into the paper — and there were many discussions that day about where to draw the line — but I saw it all: the mangled bodies, the photos of jumpers in mid-air, the raw pile of wreckage that consumed the innocent.

I left work completely numb, but I remember the vigil a day or two later, when we were all asked to go outside with a candle and stand on the street at an appointed time to remember those lost. My children — 9, 6, and 3 at the time — held our hands as the families of Linbrook Road with their small points of light all cried together.

What are your memories of that day and how did it affect you? What have you learned in the decade since? Is your American dream still the same, or has it changed? Please share your stories with us in the comments below and add any photos that strike a chord as we all approach the 10-year anniversary together.