My family’s story - actually my brother Brian’s story - started in July of 2001 when he decided to join the Vermont Natural Guard and took his Asvab test thinking he would only have to go one weekend a month, two weeks a year and serve his country. Our family has a military background; both grandfathers were in the military, one a Marine the other serving 20 years in the Army and doing tours in Korea. My father also was a Marine. Sept. 10, 2001, was the night before he left to join up. We were having a big dinner together because Brian was leaving at 3 a.m. We were laughing and remembering stories as we normally did while sitting at the dinner table, telling him how proud we were of him for joining. My brother was the second out of five kids and first to join up. I was only 14 at the time and I could only think of how proud I was and that when I was old enough, I was going to join up to. At the end of dinner my dad, joking, said, “well, Brian you never know something could happen tomorrow and we may never get to see you before you leave.” My mom looked at my dad and said, “You shouldn’t say that.” At 3 a.m. as I am lying in bed, I heard a car door slam. It was Brian’s recruiter who had come to pick him up. Thinking back, knowing what I know now, I would have gotten out of bed to say goodbye. It being a school day my other brothers and I got up at our usual time, got on the bus and headed off to school like it was any other day. By that time Brian was at the military entry processing station in Albany, New York. He had finished with all the medical and processing of all his paperwork. He was waiting to be sworn in when the towers were hit. I was in my first class getting help with my homework for my next class when over the intercom the principal came on and let the whole school know what was going on. By that time all we knew was that a plane had hit the first tower. We kept getting updated throughout the day from our principal, while my mother was sitting home watching what was going on. She did not know anything but what she was watching on tv, she did not know what was going on with my brother or what was going to happen, all she could do was pray. Brian never got to call, he just showed up in the early afternoon just before we got home from school. I remember being scared that I would never see him. I feared the unknown. I think most people were. I was teenager, I could see it in my mother and father’s faces, in all my teachers’ faces everyones’ faces. Brian had the opportunity not to serve. He talked it over with my mother and father he decided to join up. When I decided to write this, I asked him why he ended up joining he said “I joined up so I would have a choice in what or where I’d I go in case the draft was reinstated.” He served in the Vermont National Guard for a few years before transferring and moving to North Carolina. In North Carolina his unit was called to go to Iraq. He started his training to go to war in July 2005. He landed in Kuwait in September 2005. By October of 2005 he was in Iraq, and was there until September 2006. With that North Carolina National Guard. How this changed me is that I never went into the military. I took another path I became a caregiver working with the elderly. I also work with children in hope to help them with the unknown, to give hope when you can’t see it in front of you. I think my brother saw hope with his decision to join on the scariest of days.

Lisa Stewart