September 11, 2001 started out the same as any other day. I got up early and started out for a run. I headed up the hill just outside of our apartment and turned the corner at the end of the street. Another jogger approached me with a frantic look on his face. He told me that the World Trade Center had been bombed. He said I should go home fast and turn on the news, and he ran off.

I sped up and ran back home. I ran past someone sitting in their car, listening to the news on the radio. It sounded urgent and panicked. I remember thinking that whatever this was, this was the next big news story. The next O.J. Simpson case, the next Oklahoma City bombing.

When I got back inside the apartment I called to David, who hadn't turned on the TV yet and had no idea that the world had changed. I didn't know that either, but I knew something was wrong. We turned on the TV and slowly started to grasp what had happened.

By the time we turned on the news, the towers had already collapsed, but we didn't know that. First, we saw one airplane going into one tower. Then, another plane. Then, we watched the south tower collapse and then the north tower. We saw that the Pentagon had been hit. And learned that yet another plane had crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.

We wondered how many more planes, how many lives were already gone. We were glued to the set the rest of the day, watching those same images repeat all day.

When we went to bed that night, everything felt different. Nothing felt as safe or as sure. I woke up in the night to the sound of a plane overhead and I panicked for a second, thinking nothing should be flying. Then, I realized that it was a military plane and felt comforted that it was our men up there.

That day was the first day I really felt a true sense of love for my country. I had always been grateful to be an American, but I didn't know how much I could love other people simply because they were part of my country. Or, were hurt for simply being in my country. I didn't know I could cry that much or feel such deep hurt for people who were strangers. Who somehow felt like they were a part of my family now.

Read Oral Histories from 503 firefighters, paramedics, and emergency medical technicians who were there that day.