September 11, 2011 is a day that I will never forget. I was in third grade. I was safe in my house in my little town in Ohio. I didn't go to school that day because I was faking being sick. I remember just wanting to watch Television, but every TV in the house was showing live footage of the destruction in New York. I didn't really understand what was going on.I certainly didn't understand how this event happening far away from my home would change the world around me.

I went back to school on Wednesday, September 12. I remember everything being very somber. The teachers still seemed to be in shock about the events that had taken place the day before. Everyone seemed to be doing whatever they could do to show their patriotism and their love of America. We got stickers for wearing clothing that featured an American flag or the words liberty and freedom. It was all a lot to take in as a third grader. I was scared that the same thing would happen in our town, not realizing that New York was so much larger than my small town.

Alan Jackson and Daryl Worley wrote songs about how the events of September 11 made them feel and they played over the airways almost daily. Lee Greenwood's "I'm Proud to be an American" seemed to be the anthem of the year. Television shows were scared to be funny because it just didn't seem right to laugh at the time. Many television shows changed opening sequences because seeing the twin towers was too painful. Americans came together in the greatest showing of love that I have ever seen. People of all races and backgrounds came together.

Seventeen years later it still makes me sad to think of all the lives lost. The phone calls made to loved ones by those in the towers and on the airplanes. We must never stop remembering. We must never forget what it felt like to be one America, a nation standing together. We must not forget about the brave men and women of America who gave their lives that day and they days following. Don't stop visiting the Freedom tower and the other memorials to the victims of 9/11. 2011 was a time when party lines didn't matter for a moment. We were a nation of one and this nation we loved.