I still remember 9/11 like it was yesterday.

In fact, it’s hard for me to believe Thursday will mark 24 years since that fateful day: 09/11/2001.

I had just left the United Way of Marshall County kickoff breakfast in Albertville. I was going to see Bobby Decker, then an Edward Jones financial adviser in Albertville, who was a friend and an advertising client.

It was barely 9 o’clock in the morning.

As I walked in, everyone in Bobby’s office was gathered around the television with looks of complete horror and disbelief. The first plane had already struck the north tower of the World Trade Center and smoke was billowing out of it.

I asked what was going on and Bobby told me a plane had hit the tower.

“Like a Cessna or what?”I remember asking.

“No, like a 747,” was his reply.

I remember in those initial minutes, everyone was trying to figure out how a terrible accident like this could have happened. How many are injured? Even worse, how many are dead?

Then the second plane slammed into the south tower and everyone, in an instant, knew this was no accident.

We were under attack.

“My God,” Bobby’s assistant, Charlotte, said.

While the country was still reeling from what it had just witnessed, a third hijacked jumbo jet hit the Pentagon.

Then came the horror of watching the south tower and then the north tower collapse.

Not too long after that came the news the passengers on a fourth hijacked airliner had sacrificed themselves in a field in Pennsylvania to thwart an attack on a fourth target.

It was barely noon.

When the al-Qaida-led attack was all said and done, 2,996 people were killed that day. Those are 2,996 reasons why we must never forget what happened 9/11.  

Patrick Graham is the proprietor and publisher of The Covington News. His email address is patrick.graham@waltontribune.com.