Nevin's Data "Points"

Early on a bright Tuesday morning in 2001, I was in the middle of a cross-country flight, literally running from one terminal to another in Dallas, Texas, when my cell phone rang. It was my wife. I had been on an American Airlines flight heading for L.A., after all - and at that time, not much else was known about the first plane that struck the World Trade Center. I thought she had to be misunderstanding what she had seen on TV. Would that she had…. That day, when family and friends were so dear and precious to us all, I spent in a hotel room in Dallas. It was perhaps the longest day - loneliest night - of my life. In fact, I was to spend the next several days in Dallas – there were no planes flying, no rental cars to be had – separated from home and family by hundreds of insurmountable miles for three interminably long days. As that week drew to a close, I finally was able to get a rental car and begin a long two day journey home.   While it was a long, lonely drive, it g...

This week, I’m going to do something I never thought I would do again. I’m going to fly on September 11. OK, so, in the overall scheme of things, it’s perhaps not that big a deal. I know that it’s been six years, that part of our not letting the terrorists win is to go on about our normal lives. I don’t even know anyone personally who died in the attacks, though I know people who do. At the time of the attacks, I wasn’t living in the parts of our nation targeted (although we relocated to the Northeast soon afterward). It’s not like I plan to spend some significant part of the day in prayer or contemplation—and it’s certainly not that I believe for one second that there will be a recurrence of those horrific events just because it’s the sixth anniversary. I was, however, traveling by air on that fateful day, only to be grounded hundreds of miles away from friends and family (see Never Forget ). I know that others were stranded farther away from their loved ones—and perhaps for long...