Greg Ganske: “September 11 did change this country. As we were just discussing here on the floor, all of us have very vivid memories…”

“September 11 did change this country. As we were just discussing here on the floor, all of us have very vivid memories of September 11. We see images seared into our minds of airplanes flying into buildings, those tall World Trade Center buildings collapsing, clouds of evaporated concrete, steel, glass, and our fellow human beings rolling down the streets. I have a picture in my mind of the flaming crater of the Pentagon and an American flag flying in front of it. A few days after September 11, I visited ground zero. At that time there were six or seven stories of smoking rubble. I will never forget that visit. I kept seeing superimposed on that horrific sight, essentially the graveyard of 5,000 innocent Americans, words that I had seen written on the wall of a family relief center just a short time before visiting ground zero. This was a family relief center where families of victims could come in, get financial help and get counseling as well. All along one wall for probably about 100 yards, families had brought in pictures of their mothers and fathers and sons and daughters, put them on the wall and then written personal notes to them, and there were flowers and candles underneath these pictures. I kept seeing, as I was looking at that pile of rubble, I kept seeing the handwriting of a little girl. One could tell she was just learning to write from her handwriting and it said, 'Daddy, I miss you. I will love you always.'”