The impact of September 11 on America

Sept. 11, 2001 – a day that no American who lived to see will ever forget.

I was recently asked about where I was that day, and I remember it keenly, deeply. I think it’s a question every American has an answer to—a moment engraved in time.

Since it was early September, it was right in the middle of hop harvest. My cousin and I were working to unplug the picking machine, a more-than-common occurrence for hop farmers, when his wife called, crying.

Those first moments that morning were ones of disbelief. Then, justification—it must have been a mistake. In the hours and days that followed, as the...