9/11 forever took away our sense of peace in the U.S.

Peace.

Mark White is Editor of The News Journal.

If I had to name the biggest difference in life before 9/11 and life after 9/11, then I would have to say that it is peace, or at least the sense we had of peace before the attacks and the lack of a sense of peace we have had after it.

Most generations have one or two epic moments in their lifetime where they remember where they were and what they were doing when they happened.

For my generation, there have been two such moments so far in our lives.

The first was the space shuttle Challenger disaster on Jan 28, 1986, when the shuttle blew up during launch.

I was home from high school on a snow day and just happened to remember that the shuttle launch was happening. Being interested in science and space, I flipped the television over to the shuttle launch and was watching live when it blew up.

I was hit with a total sense of shock. For the first few minutes, it was like my mind was trying to convince itself that what it had just seen actually happened.

The second of those epic life time events was, of course, Sept. 11, 2001, or as it has become best known, 9/11.

It was on a Tuesday, which is production day here at the newspaper. About 99 percent of the time, I worked out of our Williamsburg office during those days.

On this particular Tuesday though, I remember having a lot to do so I choose to work out of our Corbin office so I wouldn’t have to spend time driving to Williamsburg and back.

I was sitting behind my desk working when someone came in our back door and said that an airplane had just hit the World Trade Center in New York.

Initially, I figured it was probably just a small single propeller airplane with a rookie pilot or engine troubles that had inadvertently flown into the building. You would see stories about this kind of thing happening from time to time, and I didn’t think a lot about it at first.

A short while later, someone said that a second plane had hit the other World Trade Center tower.

At that moment, a single thought popped into my head.

“We’re at war!”

Back in those days, our publisher, Don Estep, had a small television in the closet of his office. We all rushed up there to watch the news coverage. It was everywhere on television.

Soon after that we heard about plane hitting the Pentagon, the plane crashing into the Pennsylvania field, and every flight pretty much everywhere being grounded.

A few hours later I remember getting a call from then Whitley County Superintendent Lonnie Anderson, which I think was about a prayer vigil that was planned that afternoon at the high school.

I don’t remember who we sent down there to cover it, but it was a lead art on the front page of the paper the next day.

Suffice it to say that 9/11 was an event that both my dad’s generation and my generation remember vividly about where and what they were doing when they heard about it happening.

Life changed after 9/11.

At least for a few weeks, everybody was just a little bit nicer to one another. There is nothing like tragedy to make people forget their petty differences at least for a little while. One thing this country has always been good at is coming together to help one another in the wake of large tragedies, whether it be something like 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina that struck New Orleans.

If people involved in tragedies need things, then we send them. If volunteers are needed, then we have more people lined up than what they need in most cases.

After 9/11 countless people volunteered to work at the site of Ground Zero in New York to help search through the debris for survivors.

Scholarship funds were established for the children of 9/11 victims.

All of our police officers, firefighters and emergency service workers were celebrated as heroes as we saw them respond to this chaos.

Some of the changes after 9/11 were not so good.

Soon after the 9/11 hijackings, someone tried to blow up a plane by lighting his shoes on fire, which had been laced with explosives.

This is why you have to take your shoes off now and go through a body scanner at the airport.

Security increased overall.

Banks had to start getting identification from people establishing bank accounts to make it easier to track the money that bad guys use.

The United States struck back against the Taliban and al-Qaida resulting in this country’s longest running war in Afghanistan, which just ended in ugly fashion after 20 years. Some of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines will forever bear the physical and psychological scars from it.

Perhaps the biggest change that 9/11 brought about was a shattering of our sense of national security. War had come to American soil. Thousands had died in an event that we can’t forget.

Since that time, terrorists – many of them homegrown – have killed many more in the form of mass shootings at schools, work places and even houses of worship, which has shattered our sense of personal security.

Before 9/11 we largely had a sense of peace, which I fear is sadly gone forever.