Five Years Later

Five years ago today I was on a train commuting from Fort Worth to my office in Dallas when my cell phone rang. It was my friend and business partner David Needham asking me if I had heard the news. A plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center. David has his pilot's license and his first thought was that some poor private pilot had made a terrible mistake or lost control of his aircraft at the worst possible time. This thought was chilling to David, but not nearly as chilling as the truth we would discover as the morning unfolded.

I made it to the office in time to see the second plane hit. Our company - Reel FX Creative Studios - produced special effects for TV and film. I remember thinking that watching the reality of an airplane crashing into a building somehow looked fake to me. Like if we had created the scene using digital effects, we might have thought it didn't look real enough. Our minds eye didn't know what it really looked like until that day.

I called my wife and told her to turn on the TV. She was busy starting the day and tending to our daughter Rainey who was exactly one month and three days old at the time. I knew that our world had just changed in one morning and that she would never know the world before 9/11/2001. Just like I will never know the innocence of a time before 12/7/1941 or 11/22/1963.

We debated about sending our employees home for the day, but opted instead to leave it up to them. As I recall, most stayed. We had a lot of young, single people working for us and I think the sense of community was therapeutic.

Five years later we remember. We tell stories. We pray for peace.

And community is still therapeutic.

May the God of love and peace reign in your heart today and in the hearts of men everywhere.