1972. The day my innocence was lost.

Summer of 1972. I was 7 years old and full of wonder at the world. Before Nintendo or Pokemon or DVR’s or more than 7 TV channels….there was only sports that would keep us in the house instead of playing stick or running around the neighborhood inventing games. That summer the Olympics were being hosted in Munich, West Germany. I was glued to the tube as we watched Mark Spitz set a now-broken record for 7 gold medals in the swimming events and the Russian basketball team literally steal the gold medal from the Americans in basketball. And then as my family and I tuned on to the morning’s greeting from the TV team, I remember my first taste of terrorism…..Jim McKay, usually so upbeat and excited looked sick and gloomy. His next few sentences changed my life forever. Terrorist had got into the athlete's compound and taken the Israeli team hostage. They had guns and hid their cowardly faces with scarves. Life would never be the same for the world as well as me. I remember crying at the loss of 11 athletes and the 18 hour standoff with the world. Palestine was now a word I would forever associate with as ruthless, cowards who would stoop to any level to seek revenge against Israel. As I grew older….I never forgot that morning. In 1985, I watched TWA flight 847 hijacked and a US Navy sailor murdered and pushed out on the tarmac. I later went and listened to the pilot talk about this hijack at a church with my mother. In 1989 I began working for TWA as a flight attendant and actually flew on that same Boeing 727 and saw the knife marks on the ceiling. It has now since been retired from service as has TWA. In 1993, I worked on the World Trade Center’s twin towers after the bombing by the same bunch of cowards. I helped restore the towers and spent the next 10 months working downtown on the almost all floors of those shinning symbols of US power. In 2001, I was living in Everett, WA after being honorably discharged from the US Navy where I was stationed aboard the destroyer USS FIFE (DD-991). I remember watching that beautiful, normal Sept. 11th morning as the second plane hit the towers. I still carry rage about it. My son, who is 7 will grow up in a world that probably will see it’s share of horror and cowardness. He will read stories about heros but never know the real feeling of "change" that can take a summer morning and turn it all black. I spit at the cowards who hide behind their women and send suicide bombers in where warriors should. I hate them and wish them Hell. There is NO talking to “them”. "They" won't sign peace treaties. "They" are cowards and by "them" I mean Iran, Syrian and the groups associated with the freedom of Palestine. You have made me an enemy that summer day in ’72 and I will never forgive or forget you. Given the chance, I would kill them as easy as they killed a seven year old’s summer of innocence.