Jason Whitlock. Yes, that Jason Whitlock of the Kansas City Star. Jason is the first person I think of, when I remember 9-11-01. I was doing the weathercast on Jason's radio show and we were having our usual light-hearted conversation. In Kansas City, the weather was beautiful so our talk wandered, until Jason said "Did you see that?" He was referring to the first plane hitting the tower. Looked like a terrible accident....then, the second plane. "Well, Jason, this is no accident." Throughout the morning, while taping an interview for after*words, the director, Dave Vandivort, was telling me, over the ear-piece, about the towers crumbling, the crash in Pennsylvania and the attack on the Pentagon. In 2001, along with other KMBC folks, I was doing a radio talk show and 9/11 was my day in the rotation. Mostly, on the radio, we stayed with ABC's coverage, but we did occasional cut-ins about blood drives, street closures, developments at the airport. I taught my broadcasting class at Johnson County Community College that evening and everyone showed up... in a state of disbelief.

In the days following, I remember how empty the sky was with all planes grounded. It seemed as though people were more patient with and thoughtful toward each other. Flags were everywhere. My brother in the air force, close to retiring, decided to stay on for another four years or so. Around our house, the kids reacted predictably, according to their personalities. The oldest was numb...sad...worried. Our second son went to work on trying to figure out who did it and why. Our daughter, always an optimist, was saying everything would be okay. And, Harry, age 5, a freshly-minted kindergartener, knew what had happened but was more focused on Legos and action figures...a diversion we were happy he was taking. That day, my wife decided we were going to Wisconsin for Christmas. Going home sounded reassuring.

Scanning the list of victims, I came across a name I recognized: Robert Fox. In fact, there were several Robert and Bob Fox's on the list. I had worked with a Bob Fox during college and he'd been a good friend. We stayed in touch off and on over the years and I knew he had moved back to the New York area. I dialed the last number I had for him and waited through the rings. About seven rings in...my mom always told me to give a person at least six rings to get to the phone...I was going to hang up, when, over the receiver, came Bob's unmistakably low-key "Hello?" Turns out he had not gone into the city that day...working from home, instead. One of those unremarkable decisions we all make everyday, never knowing what ramifications may arise. The kind of choice that makes the movie It's A Wonderful Life seem more real than fantasy.

I suspect most of us wondered, in those first few post 9-11 days, how our country and the world would be different. Would families still pile in the car and head for Washington DC? Would you ever let your kids out of your sight? Would you even consider letting your college-age children go away to school more than a short drive from home? For me, I found some answers thinking about my grandma. I had always called her Big Grandma, because, from my little-kid vantage point, she seemed taller than my other grandma, the one I called Little Grandma. (Even as I child, I was master of the obvious!) Big Grandma had lived through two World Wars, The Great Depression, The Korean War, The Cold War, the assassination of JFK, MLK and RFK, Vietnam, Watergate and much more. In her personal life, she had been left a young widow with 11 children, one of whom passed away as a child, raising them on a farm with little money but lots of love and laughter. Through it all, she kept going...moving ahead. She passed away several years before 2001, but, in the days, weeks and months after 9/11, I thought about her often and figured she would have been very sad for the families and for the country. She would have prayed in private and smiled warmly in public. She would have said, as my then eight year old daughter did, that everything would be okay and would have made plans for the future, like my wife did, in saying we were going home for the holidays. As it turned out, we, along with thousands of others, did, eventually, pile the family into the car for a visit to Washington...our kids have been out-of-sight pretty often...as far out as Dallas and Chicago...and, our oldest son is looking at colleges with no parent-imposed mileage limit.

As is the case with many grandmas, mine liked flowers. When it got too hard to plant them herself, her daughter (my mom) made sure Big Grandma had flower-pots filled with bulbs, seeds and plants ready to blossom at some point down the road. There is something intrinsically optimistic about folks who plant flowers. No matter what is happening around you when you bury that seed, you firmly believe you will be there to water it, tend it and watch it push through the soil. And, when it blooms, your faith and hope are rewarded. I think, had Big Grandma been around on 9/11/01, she may well have planted a flower or two...out of season or not...without saying a word to anyone...just to prove that, even on a dark day, there is reason to believe in the future.