09/11/2026
Where were you when the world stopped turning, that September day?
I was at Northwest State Community College in Archbold Ohio attending the one single semester of college I've ever done. My best friend and I had told everyone for years we were going to join the military. And we had done just that. Both of us had signed up for the Army Reserves and had already completed basic training and graduated Infantry AIT just 6 weeks prior. We both enrolled in college for Criminal Justice and had recently started school. I was already proving to myself and everyone around me that college wasn't going to be the path for me, when I walked out in-to the Atrium to a TV on one of those wheeled stands playing the news. Just in time to witness the 2nd plane hit. We might have all been young inexperienced college kids, but now we knew this wasn't an accident.
My best friend joined me in the atrium as the news spread through the school. We went to the pay phones (yeah really) and called our reserve unit via collect call. It took 5 attempts to get through because the lines were busy. We didn't know what to do, but we knew we were under attack and we knew we had just signed up to be Infantry soldiers for the next 6 years. Looking back as an adult I now know, these people we expected to have answers were watching the same news broadcast as we were, wondering the same things.
That fateful day changed everyone's lives around me. It lead to both me and my best friend to volunteer for active duty. Led both of us down a wild path in the US Army, where he is still active to this very day. I got out in January of 2012. Everyone around me for my entire military career was directly affected because of this day. It changed the entire life path of literally everyone I know and hold dear as my closest friends. I've lost lots of my military brothers and sisters through the years. All of them that died, lost their lives on this day 25 years ago, some of them just didn't know it at the time.
It changed everything, for everyone.
-Luke
