VE DAY: From my mother's personal history: "It was my tenth birthday on VE (Victory over Europe) day [May 8, 1945]. I had received a bicycle and went to school. When we got the news, we were let out of school early and I got to go home and ride my bike." She tells us that she thought it was pretty neat that school was let out early on her birthday.
SEPTEMBER 11TH: Scott and I were traveling to New England for our 20th anniversary in September 2001. On Tuesday, September 11th, we left our hotel room early and drove to Acadia National Park. While we drove we listened to CDs. We spent the day in the park hiking in different areas and enjoying the beautiful scenery. Around 3:30 or 4:00 we were ready to be done and stopped at one of the visitors center to pick up a souvenir bookmark. It was pretty quiet and there was a ranger standing in the middle of the steps. I stayed in the car and Scott walked up but was stopped by the ranger saying that the visitor center was closed. He seemed surprised that Scott was questioning why. He asked him if he hadn't heard what had happened earlier that day. Scott came back to the car and we, in shock, started listening for reports on the radio to try and catch up with what had happened. We had no idea. We didn't have a cell phone with us so my parents who were with the kids had no way to reach us. We were upset and wondered what we were going to do as we were to fly home Thursday. We decided that we would drive as far as we could that night towards the Providence airport where we were to leave from. We made it to Bath, Maine where we had found a place to spend the night. When we pulled into town, there was a vigil taking place at a park in the center of town. It was dark and we didn't know where we were going. We parked near the vigil and got out to ask someone to point us in the right direction. He was so kind and said we could follow him and he would lead us there. I think that is my fondest memory among the despair of that time - the kindness shown by everyone. We were far from home and not knowing how or when we were going to get home. We had offers from people to get us groceries or help in other ways, and I think we could have asked for anything and people gladly would have helped.
