I'LL ALWAYS REMEMBER

There are certain events in history that have such a great impact that people will always remember where they were and what they were doing when it happened.  In my lifetime, there are three or four such days.

When John Glenn first took his first flight in space, I was in the 10th grade.  His son, David Glenn, attended my high school.  As his father went into orbit, the radio commentary was piped through out the entire school.  I listened to the broadcast in the school office where I had a class period as an office aide.  There was a collective cheer through out the entire school when Glenn's space mission ended successfully.  After all, he was OUR astronaut.

When John Kennedy was shot, I was a senior in high school.  I was an officer in the Future Business Leader's of America club.  Our big event for the year was sponsoring the Miss JEB Stuart contest.  During my last period class, English, I had been allowed to go to the stage to do some decorating for the event which was to be held that evening.  The announcement about the President being shot in Dallas came over the loud speaker.  I immediately returned to my English class and listened to the rest of the events that transpired. School was released early and all school events for the next few days were canceled.

When the first lunar landing took place, I was living in a duplex north University Avenue in Provo, Utah.  I had only been married a couple of years.  We had another couple over just to watch the landing with us. But I was also talking on the phone with a girlfriend who had just gotten engaged. I'm pretty sure that I had to make her wait for a minute or two when Neil Armstrong left the lunar module to step on the moon.  

On September 11, 2001, I was living in Salt Lake.  That morning, I had a Church Building Hosting Board Meeting on the 2nd floor of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.  The events on the east coast were just unfolding as I was getting ready to leave for my meeting.  By the the time the meeting started at 9 AM, all the attacks had transpired in New York, and Washington.  Members of the Hosting Board gathered in a Public Affairs conference room where there was television feed.  Our meeting was forgotten. I watched the towers fall with a large group of people from Public Affairs and the Hosting Board.

Last night when news came of bin Laden's death, I was in my son's living room in Denver watching something mindless on television.  My son was upstairs studying for an exam, the grandkids were in bed, and my DIL was upstairs with my son.  She came running downstairs and told me that Osama bin Laden was dead. We watched the news together.