>For those of you who are old enough to remember this date it is one, which you will not soon forget. It is amazing how people can remember exactly where and what they were doing at this time.

It seems that every generation has its "Where were you when......" moment. For my parents it was Pearl Harbor. For my generation it was Kennedy. For my children it was the Challenger. For all of us it is 9/11.

For Kennedy........
I was a sophmore in High School eating lunch. Someone came in and told me the news. Strangely enough, my initial reaction of disbelief was more of a "that was a pretty clever joke" kind of thing. Until it turned out not to be a joke.

Oddly enough, I was playing bridge at a local club when I asked someone the score of the World Series game. "The game was cancelled because of an earthquake in San Francisco" brought the same "good joke" reaction.

Challenger was a different story. I was watching the launch from the 20th floor of a downtown Orland office building. When the disaster occured my first reaction was that one of the boosters had just been jettisoned. When there were two fireballs slowly falling back, it became clear that something had gone very wrong.

I was listening to a local sports station on my way to work on 9/11. They mentioned that a plane had hit the WTC and then went back to discussing sports. When the second plane hit they, of course, switched to network coverage and, as for all of us, life pretty much hasn't been the same since.