Five Years Later

Five years ago today, a Tuesday, I hit the snooze button a few times and woke up around 8:40 AM

Without catching breakfast, I quickly rode my bike up State Street toward Angell Hall to catch my 9:00 class.

I was going into one of the double doors on the first floor when, a guy coming the other way asked if I “had heard the news.” With sleep still in my eyes I said “no” as he mentioned something about a plane hitting a building. I didn’t quite know where he was coming from but I figured it was no big deal.

Without realizing the gravity of the situation, I went to class.

About twenty minute later a secretary came to our class room and explained the situation. She informed us that all classes had been canceled.

The girl next to me, who was from New York, had an uncle andseveral friends who worked in the WTC and started understandably freaking out.

Class dismissed and I got on my bike and went back to my house towatch the latest updates on CNN.

Just a few days before, we (the Michigan Football team) had just returned from a trip to the West Coast to play Washington so “planes” were in my immediate mindset. As most of you know, the rest of that day and many days after were very surreal in an “I cant believe that I’m really watching this” kind of sense.

Here we are five years later…as we have seen recently, tragedy often brings out the best and the worst in people.

We have rebuilt, we have gone on…we have had no choice.

Never forget what happened that day and those who paid the ultimate price at that time and in the time since then.

John Wood

P.S. Ready for anything, ready for everything.