**Four Years Ago**

I remember coming into that morning work in Michigan. I pulled into the covered parking garage, stepped out of the car and crossed paths with a co-worker on her way to her car. She said with anxiety in her voice, "Did you hear? A plane crashed into the World Trade Center!" Two thoughts crossed my mind simultaniously: an image of a small private plane hitting the building and that what she told me was a joke.

Then I remembered the last time someone told me something like this and I didn't believe it at first. I was walking into a Burger King in Panama City. My cameraman had gone in ahead of me and when I entered the restaurant, he said, "The Challenger blew up." He was a kidder, so I didn't believe him. But he pointed to the overhead television, and there it was. The spanish was hard to follow, but the images said everything.

I walked into my office and turned on my television. I had the only office on my floor with a television (perk of the job). There it was. Within minutes my cramped office - no bigger than a parking space for a car - was full of people. There we sat for 8 hours. We watched the second plane crash. We watched the buildings come down. No classes were taught that day. The world stopped. My eyes left the television only long enough to drive home and turn it on there.

This event joins several other I have witnessed in my life that makes me feel to my core that the world is fundamentally changed. The Challenger explosion was like that for me. So was the death of Princess Diane for some reason. 9-11 joined that group. And now, New Orleans. For some the scope of the disaster is just too much to wrapped one's head around. Other incidents it the emotion.

I didn't know anyone else in Michigan who lost someone on Sept. 11th. But Michigan felt closer to New York somehow. Maybe it was because we were in the same time zone. Maybe it was because many here were from the east coast. Maybe it was because large cities were nearby us... cities that felt like an east coast city.

At that time, I had decided to move west the following year. I talked to my future employers a day or so after 9-11 and asked how the students experienced it out there. I was struck by how detached they were from the experience. It was traumatic alright, maybe like the way the Indonesian tsunami felt. Traumatic but far away.

9-11 is a mixed experience for me. Closer to home for sure, but having lived away from the east coast for many years, more removed than for my immediate family who lived an hour away by train from NYC (meaning it was a commuter area). They all knew neighbors - lawyers, stockbrokers and even one of the pilots - who died.

And then there was my cousin and his wife. I knew them, but not well. I hadn't spent time with my father's side of the family - after many years of living far away, and after many years since my father's passing.

Their son, Ryan, was on the 104th floor. Worked for Cantor. I knew of him more than I knew him. But I think of him every Sept. 11th. So he is not forgotten out on the west coast.