This week, I had the incredible opportunity to interview Mrs. Annie, who worked in New York and personally witnessed the attack of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. While I am withholding her last name to ensure her privacy, Mrs. Annie has given me permission to tell her story---one of the thousands of stories from that horrific day. She is a woman of great strength and tremendous faith, and I appreciate her sharing her experience with me.

It is early in the morning on September 11, 2001, when Annie, a resource clerk at the phone company, is working at her desk in the landline repair department. Besides the usual chatter of the office, it is peaceful. The desk on her radio is tuned into WPLJ and across the waters in front of her building. She can see the Twin Towers and the rest of New York. Suddenly, the music on the radio station stops and the radio show hosts, Scott and Todd, are talking about some plane that crashed into one of the Twin Towers. Everyone in the department crowds the windows, watching black smoke billow from the North Tower.

"You think that was an accident?" asks Todd nervously. As his question travels over the radio lines, another plane crashes---this time, in the South Tower.

"That was deliberate!" Todd is yelling now. "America is under seize!" The workers, who had been at a horrified standstill up until this point, broke out in a panic. People were screaming and crying. One of Annie's coworkers quickly called her daughter, who was working in the World Trade Center that day. Annie's coworker lost contact with her daughter and did not hear from her again for three long days. The phone company's signals were all stationed on top of the Twin Towers and when the buildings fell, all service was lost. All communication was gone and in the streets, havoc spread. Smoke poured out of the burning towers and painted the sky black. People jumped out of the flaming buildings, desperate for escape. When the towers crumbled, soot covered the streets and civilians.

"You could smell it for months," remembers Mrs. Annie. "The soot, the smoke, it was there for months. The intensity finally went down, but the chalky smell stayed there for a long time."

Following the attacks, New York was in a lock-down. There were no civilian cars on the roads, and people were hiding in their houses. Dogs and cats, which had once been pets, roamed the streets of the city, looking for owners who never came home. The phone company worked from the Giants Football Stadium, trying to restore phone service. The Giants Football Stadium also worked as a morgue, and Annie watched the workers bring in body bag after body bag.

"They had to bring whatever they found in a body bag. It didn't matter if it was a finger, a body, or an arm. They had to bring everything in a body bag," Mrs. Annie recalls tearfully.

Mrs. Annie went on to tell me how the attacks of September 11th impacted millions of people. She told me the story of a man who had leaped out of one of the burning towers to get away from the flames and how a priest came to read him his last rights.

"While the priest was reading this man his last rights, another body fell from the building, landed on the priest, and killed him," Mrs. Annie said quietly. She also explained to me that Middletown, New Jersey had lost 1/3 of its population during the September 11th attacks. Residents from Middletown would commute to work that day and never come home.

In the weeks following that fatal day, Mrs. Annie said that every noise would make the citizens of New York jump. When cars were finally back on the roads, she could look into every windshield and people would be crying.

However, Mrs. Annie informed me that she is proud to be an American because "9/11 showed the world what kind of country we are. We did not fall. America came together that day."

On September 11, 2016, Mrs. Annie plans to stand on the property of the World Trade Center for the first time in fifteen years. She plans to be there because despite the fact that she now resides in Sumter, South Carolina, Mrs. Annie says, "My heart is still there (New York)."

September 11, 2016 will mark the fifteenth year anniversary of the day America was attacked. Nearly 3,000 people were killed, another 6,000 injured, and millions of lives were changed forever. Let us all remember the victims and survivors of that horrific day and may their stories live on so we never forget.

God bless America.