Why do national tragedies happen on picture perfect days? It was a beautiful Sunday morning on Dec. 7, 1941, just as it was that Tuesday morning a year ago. I remember driving into Topeka on I-70 from Lawrence, on my way to work, and thinking what a lovely day, if only I didn’t have to go to the office. As I was pulling into the parking lot the radio announcer on KLJC said a plane had just hit the World Trade Center and details were sketchy. It got my attention. I grew up in New York and most of family was still there, but I wasn’t particularly alarmed. I figured it must have been a private plane. There were always reports of near misses when I was there, especially with the Empire State Building.

I headed straight into a 8 o’clock meeting as the meeting was wrapping up and the next group was coming into the conference room, someone asked if we had heard about the World Trade Center. I said yes, a plane had hit one of the towers; I heard it on the radio coming in. He said two planes had hit and both towers had just collapsed. I was only vaguely aware of everyone from my meeting bolting out the door.

Then an alarm went off inside me: my family! They are in New York. My mom, my brothers, my sister she works for a temp agency that often send her down to the World Trade Center. I ran to my desk and called New York. I got nothing, only dead air. I waited and call again and still the same.

I did not reach my mother until the afternoon of the following day. As a nurse she was called in to work Tuesday morning after a code “D” had been declared. She saw the burn victims from the first tower. My youngest brother was making a delivery when the first building started to crumble. Through the dust and smoke, he ran for his life. That evening he, along with thousands of other commuters walked across the 59 Street Bridge, heading home to Queens. There was no other way to get off the island of Manhattan that day except by foot. My sister had still not been heard from.

By Thursday I had decided. I was going to New York to find my sister. I would drive to New Jersey and walk across the GW bridge into the Bronx and from there into Queens. I couldn’t take this sitting in front of the TV, 1,500 miles away, staring at these images anymore. Then the phone rang at 4 a.m. Friday. My sister had been found. She was safe. The relief we felt as a family is beyond expression.

We have all gone on with our lives since then, but not quite the same for me. Those four days in September taught me something about what is important in life. That there is real evil in the world and that tomorrow is promised to no one. That while we can, we are to make our lives count for eternity.

Yet as a people, we are at our very best when things are at their worst. I am proud of how we responded to this attack in the days, weeks and months that followed; I am proud of those emergency workers who never stop looking for survivors; I am proud of the American Red Cross and I am proud of our president. We showed the world, foes and friends alike, that we may be cast down, but we are not destroyed.

Sharon R. Brown, Lawrence