I know a lot of folks are gonna say 9-11 and, by no means , am I discounting the tragic circumstances of that day that changed the lives of so many forever or the trail of tears that followed. Let me briefly make my case for the two that I wept the most over.

 

1. Katrina - the drowning of an American city and the subsequent lack of urgency on the part of our government to help was heartbreaking to me. Those poor people on the roofs of houses, crying out for help, clutching their babies, seeing loved ones swept away, only to have the government deem New Orleans to be not white enough or rich enough to get immediate aid to. If it had been Boca Raton instead, would help have arrived sooner? I went to bed in tears and woke up the same way. Katrina even haunted my dreams.

 

2. Sandy Hook - To this day, I'm haunted by the thoughts of those little children with their faces shredded and blown to pieces and the screams that must have resonated down the halls of Sandy Hook Elementary school. And to add insult to the injured families, some had the gall to claim it was fake news. I was teary-eyed for weeks after Newtown.

 

What about you? What U.S. tragedy in your lifetime caused you the most sorry? Was it 9-11? What about Oklahoma City and the carnage left by home-grown terrorist, Tim McVeigh?

 

As a kid, I know that Guyana and the 900+ that died in the mass- suicide was terribly disconcerting and left quite the scar on my memory.

 

If you were old enough to remember, what about the JFK assassination? My dad said pretty much the whole country was in deep mourning after the President died.

 

Oh, I just thought of another one that would be on my short list:

 

The Challenger explosion. Teacher Christa McAuliffe was to be the first teacher in space. I will never, ever forget the grotesquely pained expressions on the faces of her mom and dad after the ship explodedand they watched what remained of their daughter falling back to Earth. I haven't been able to watch the clip of their expressions in years. Just too sad.

 

What tragedy made you saddest? Was it one of the above or some other event?

That I didn't win the Powerball when it was at $1.5 billion.

Sandy Hook or September 11th.

It will be 9/11 for me. As a high school teacher, I watched the events of the day unfold (after the first plane crashed). I also watched many of my students grow up that day. Some made and carried out commitments to be firefighters or military that day.

 

Also, the events of Columbine and Virginia Tech stayed with me, again due to my profession. I had conversations with many that I worked with back then, as to how we would best protect our students. Then when Newtown happened, the deaths of the little ones, along with teachers that died hiding kids in cabinets, just devastated me. Like you, SF, I have no time for those that claim or even hint "hoax" with that event.

The JFK assassination was a sad ordeal. The shock of the assassination, then the assassin himself murdered days later, followed by the grief of the funeral and with Kennedy's widow and small children a focal point of the media. I was a 9 year old at the time and it was fairly heavy stuff for me at that age.

 

9-11, Katrina, Oklahoma City, Sandy Hook were all extremely sad as well. The reason I chose JFK was it was my first experience with something that traumatic.

I'm 33 years old. 9-11 is the one I'll remember for the rest of my life. I was a senior in high school. Can't think of anything that comes close to what I felt that day.

9/11 for sure had the biggest impact.

 

The Challenger as well, it still sticks with me since I was watching it live when it happened.

I have sadly seen too many tragic moments in my 63 years. The first was JFK's assassination when I was in 4th grade to Kent State to Challenger to Oklahoma City to 911 to Katrina to Sandy Hook to the Boston Marathon. All of them just were plain awful. 911 was probably the greatest because of numbers but Oklahoma City with the Day Care shook me to no end.

9/11 will be it for me as well...that's not to degrade any of the others that were mentioned but not only was it an unimaginable tragedy it forever changed our country.

 

I've heard that "All politics are local", in that vein the tragedy that hit close to home for me was local...the assassination of a family friend and Sheriff Sam Catron at a political rally in 2002. Gunned down by a drug addled lackey of a local drug dealer, it is one of those events that everyone in this county will always remember where they were and what they were doing when they found out.

My lifetime, has to be 9-11.

I have two that had deep emotional effect on me.

 

The first was the 1972 Olympic hostage situation in Munich, West Germany, in which Palestinian terrorists held members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage and killed them during the summer Olympics. I remember seeing the masked terrorists on the balcony of a building and the artist's rendering of the initial attack when they tried to burst into one of the dorm rooms. A 278 lb Israeli wrestler was successfully pushing the door closed against the attackers when one of the them shoved the muzzle of his gun through the door so it couldn't be closed. I imagined that moment in my mind several times. The reason I include it as American history is that there was discussion of whether our great swim Champion, Mark Spitz, was in danger because he is an American Jew. They hustled him out of Munich and to safety. That was the first time that "terrorism" registered on my horizon.

 

The second event is 9-11. I was about to leave for my office when my wife called me into the TV room and said Good Morning America was reporting that a plane flew into one of the World Trade Center Towers. I sat in front of the TV riveted to what they were showing and discussing. I saw the tower start to crumble as the news anchors were talking. They didn't see what was happening and talked on as it fell. I had a horrible, empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. I told my wife then that the next one would also crumble and that everyone needed to get out now--first responders and those who were employed there. When it fell too, I crumbled inside. That is definitely a defining moment for me.

9-11 and not even close

9-11 because we watched it unfold live on TV and then the fear that took over later that day as no one knew what was coming next. For the next days as all the planes were grounded etc. was just the first time many Americans felt threatened.

The begining of our second civil war.

"The Civil War."

 

- mcpapa