On 9/11 my wife and I were attending the annual American Public Works Conference in Philadelphia. There were Public Works Directors attending from all across the country - from large cities to small towns. As the conference began on Tuesday morning, I was heading to the opening session and my wife was coming down from the hotel to also hear the first talk. As I headed to the conference floor, I was stopped in the hall where a number of attendees were glued to the TV. None of us could believe what we were seeing. When she joined me a few minutes later, she was also stunned. The conference went on, talks were given and classes held but we all were glued to our telephones and the hotel tv sets.The day before the conference, I had signed up for a fishing trip off the coast of New Jersey. It was a cloudy day with low cover and for most of the morning we drifted north in a heavy fog. When the fog lifted, I could clearly see Manhattan with the dual towers rising out of the mist. It was eerie to realize that they were now gone. At that point nobody really knew the extent of the damage or what was going on around the country. As people responsible for the infrastructure of our towns, the first question was how do we get home? We soon learned that transportation was at a halt. Directors from Los Angeles pooled their resources and rented a car to head back west, but most of us were stuck in Philadelphia. On Wednesday, I headed back towards Albany with my wife. We went there because I was on military orders as the Assistant Adjutant General for Army in the Vermont National Guard to head to Fort Drum to be with a large contingent of Vermont soldiers on annual training. I put my wife in a rental car and she headed home to Vermont. I drove from Albany to Fort Drum. I will never forget the drive. It was late in the afternoon approaching dusk. I took the back roads and went through many small towns. All along the way,there were flags on the lawns, candles lit and people just talking with their neighbors trying to grasp and come to grips with what happened. It seemed that at that moment the country had come together in grief but also in pride in America, our values and our indomitable spirit. As I look back now, we seem to have lost that spirit and that togetherness that the tragic event of 9/11 brought out in us. I worry that we are now so divided that we may not see that spirit again in my lifetime.

Dennis Lutz