BEEGE WELBORN: On September 11th – Thoughts.

I have written about it every year in some fashion, as it’s a visceral memory in our family, as it is in so many others who live or have loved ones on the East Coast. It’s hard to even say the date without tears springing to my eyes – remembering being sick at heart with worry over Bingley at work, only a few blocks from the Trade Center, the frantic calls, watching and hearing the towers I knew well fall, that deadly dust cloud of death roll across and envelop the city.

And the planes. Oh, my God, the folks on those planes. The gaping hole in the side of the Pentagon, and the ghastly gash in the verdant green earth of a field in Shanksville.

But I also remember the incredible courage. The everyday people who were so magnificent in the face of such devastation and horror, who were thinking about others even as they faced their own peril.

Years later, on that same day, the atrocity at Benghazi. The unforgivable betrayals.

The unbelievable heroics in the most desperate of hours.

Americans are amazing – that’s the only word for them.

For us.

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