(SPRINGFIELD REPUBLICAN) – Whether it was a 25-year-old Air Force lieutenant escorting passenger planes to safety, a lawyer who signed up to join the military or a firefighter who watched first responders run into the World Trade Center in New York knowing they may not make it out, they all remember one thing from Sept. 11, 2001.
The country came together in a united front.
“We can go back to Sept. 10, 2001, we were all fighting, all at each other’s throat,” state Sen. John Velis, D-Westfield, said. “Or we can go back to Sept. 12, 2001 … flags everywhere, people loving thy neighbor, being able to talk, have disagreements without being disagreeable.”
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Velis recalled being in Afghanistan on Sept. 11, 2018, and attending a memorial in honor of those who died at the World Trade Center and elsewhere and the roughly 7,300 killed in the subsequent War on Terror in the same place where the attacks were planned.
“When Bin Laden and his crew of cowards got together and decided to attack us, I’m pretty sure, as they were planning, part of their thought process wasn’t, ‘we are going to hit Democrats. We are going to hit Republicans,’” he said. “No, they said we are going to hit Americans because of what we stand for.”