John Byrnes Remembers 9/11 and His National Guard Service at Ground Zero

but we went on to a war footing within a month.

“We had soldiers deployed and we've had 25 years of after-effects, you know, the war in Afghanistan”

went on a lot longer than anybody who were expected. You know, we get into the weeds about the use of the pretext of done 11 for the war in Iraq, but it certainly made it a much more sellable project by those who wanted to sell it at the time. And we fought that war on terror around the globe, lots of operations, lots of folks in the military. You know, since that, you know, we lost almost 3,800 chains that day, 343 firefighters,

numerous NYU PD and Port Authority Police Department, folks died that day. We lost in the neighborhood of 8,000 folks between Iran and Afghanistan fighting overseas, and then we lost 32,000 U.S. Americans are capable of achieving extraordinary things when they had the freedom and opportunity to do so. This is American Potential.

“Welcome to the American Potential Podcast. I'm your host, David from 25 years ago today.”

America was attacked on 9/11. For me, I was driving to the congressional office that I worked at, and I was listening to the radio, news radio, and heard that a plane had hit the towers, and they cut to the New York feed, and I'd listen for the rest of the day, Benchey watched it from the congressional office on the TV, and then we all went home early, because we didn't know what the world was going to look like. You know, at Ground Zero in New York City, the response,

you know, extended beyond just firefighters and police officers and EMTs, you know, really, folks that we learned to be real heroes. But National Guard members were there too, and today

we'll hear from one of them about his first hand experience of that historic day. So I'm really pleased

to welcome my friend John Burns, who is the strategic director for Concerned as Veterans for America. John, thanks for joining us. David, thanks for having me on. Happy to kind of commemorate this.

“Yeah, I think we're talking before we went on. I just can't believe it's in 25 years. You know,”

it seems like it's such a foundational memory, you know, probably for all of us who were, you know, certainly for you who are there, but just it's one of those wherever you in the world at that time. Yeah, definitely it changed people's lives. It changed the trajectory of American history. It certainly changed my life in my life's trajectory, so. Yeah. So where were you in New York on 9/11? Yeah, so I got up that morning. I had a 9 o'clock class. I went and I was going to school as an

undergraduate, adult undergraduate in Manhattan at City University of New York's Hunter College. And I had a three day, a week as a National Guard soldier at a three day, a week, swim regimen, where I'd go for a mile swim in the school's pool. And I had just completed that mile. I'd shower it off. And I went outside, walked up the steps from the basement where the pool was, went outside to get a cup of coffee, noticed it was a beautiful day. It was election day,

saw the people forget it was the New York City primary election, which in New York City is generally the election for most offices. Not a lot of general election decisions made outside of the primary as a few, but not many. And I climbed up another set of stairs with my coffee sat down in class

from there at Hunter College. And first thing that glued me in that something was going on,

the first memory I really have, that it was a special day, was a series, just a prolonged, 10, 15 minute series of sirens rolling downtown along Lexington Avenue outside the classroom minute. At one point it was so loud, the professor kind of remissed. And she, she just was not happy. She kind of, you know, she was just frustrated having to talk about the sirens. And about 10 minutes later, a young woman in the back of the classroom said a plane just hit the World Trade Center.

She was looking at news on her phone. So yeah. So she said, you know, a few minutes later, a plane hit the other World Trade Center tower. And as soon as class was over, I was like, I got to do something. So I put myself into action and started preparing to get to my armory at the part of the response. So you, you really realized at that moment that the nation was

under attack. It took a couple of minutes to be honest. She said, you know, she said the second,

when the first time she said it, I was thinking, you know, in the 1940s bomber hit the empire state building, navigating poorly, you know, there are small planes and helicopters that fly towards around Lower Manhattan at times. So my first impression was maybe a small plane or something, even when she said a second plane, I was thinking, you know, we all know first reports are often inaccurate, right? So maybe pieces of the first plane at the second. And her third statement was

they're saying on television, it was terrorism. And that was kind of when I realized, you know,

sometime in the next couple of days in some part of the operations recovery, security, repair, one of the other or all of the above, we were going to have something to do. So it was at that point, I started kind of moving around campus just trying to close a couple of loops, you know, drop some papers on deaths of professors. And while I was doing that walking through kind of the

main atrium of the school, I saw the first power collapse. And that was just like a ton of bricks

falling on myself, not just on Lower Manhattan. Yeah, I mean, that was surreal. I remember watching that on TV in my office and it was like, whoa, what's happening here? This can't happen. So as you make your way to the armory, as an national guard member, what was the atmosphere like there? I mean, imagine your, you know, your comrades are kind of like, what's going on? And it's got to be a lot of nervousness and uncertainty.

Yeah, it was an interesting journey downtown. I ran a two, three blocks, looking over my shoulder, saw a cab, held me pulled over, you know, told him that where I was going, and he said, well, I will take you to Queens, but I'm going over the bridge. I pulled out my military

idea and I said, you're going to know there are like mile and a half past the bridge, because I need

“to get to my armory. And you know, I just made a clear to him that he was, that's what he was going to”

do. And he was, he was agreeable enough in the end to do that. Hopped out of the cab right there at the armory. And the next thing I notice is there are two soldiers who I don't know, they're in a sister unit that drills in the same armory. And they are scanning guard in front of the building with rifles, M16, A2 rifles with bayonets affixed, because at the time, you know, security soldiers, they keep ammunition and weapons separately. And the armories didn't tend to have much if any

ammo at the time. So the the only way they could really secure the building was to have folks posted with bayonets. And of course, you know, the entire nation, the entire city, especially, was in a panic. So who knows, is the armory going to get hit next or police station is going to get hit next or they're going to go after bridges. It was a lot of confusion that morning, but I, you know, they halted me, stopped at a respectful distance, showed my ID, went up to my locker

and changed into as much of the uniforms I had there. I remember to this day, I remember having the wrong color T-shirt and being in the wrong color T-shirt and feeling very uncomfortable that I was not quite perfectly in uniform, but nobody really gave a who that morning. So it is funny how you remember details, right? Because, you know, I remember sitting in, you know, I was in a congressional office. It was a district office in suburban Chicago area. And everywhere, you didn't know that

like the possibilities were endless. You didn't really know what was all happening. And so we're like, are they going to attack congressional offices? Are we safe here? Which seems absurd now. But at the time, it was like, well, maybe not so we all got sent home. And I remember driving home, and I'm on the highway. And I look over and there's these guys doing road work, just doing the regular job. And I was like, do they even know what's happening? Like, do they know how

consequential this is? And it turned out to obviously be very, very consequential. So as you're at the armory, you know, with fellow soldiers, what kind of transpires they are just waiting around

watching? Is there confusion? Yeah. So I was one of the, I was one of the very first soldiers

“from my unit to come from the outside. I think they're, they're, they're, they were certainly the”

company exos. So Lieutenant Jeroza, he was there before me. And there might have been one or two other junior and listed NCOs. And then there were two full timers, two or three full timers, who were in the armory every day. And the, the executive officer, you know, he was starting to develop potential plans for what would come next. Nobody had any idea. But like the first need was, hey, we don't have any maps of lower Manhattan, because we don't train in lower Manhattan.

Yeah, even though part of our mission is to do, you know, local support, local relief, local emergency response, you just expect those things to, you know, be delivered during a hurricane or, or, you know, somehow you're going to get them. And of course, here we are a couple of hours into the biggest, you know, man-made catastrophe, the biggest terror attack on US soil. One of the biggest attacks against US soil ever, and we don't even have maps of the area that's affected

in our own city. So, you know, he was like, I don't know what we're going to do. And I was like,

“I think I got this one. I knew there was a Barnes and Noble, about a mile or so. So again,”

I'm running again. I run down to Barnes and Noble. I'm running it again, south on Lexington Avenue. And of course, the vast majority of the crowds of from lower Manhattan are walking north

And this is about two miles north of ground zero. But they're walking to the bridges,

“right? They're trying to, because everything shut down. There's no urban transport. There's no mass”

transport. Some of the highways and bridges were shut down to vehicle traffic. Only open to first responders,

emergency vehicles, you know, police officers, national guardsmen with ID, we're trying to report in. And so everybody's walking up town. And I just one guy walking with his partner looked over and said, you know, seeing me running, said, now I'm really afraid. And you know, just that, another one of those weird memories that left out, a couple of minutes later, made it down to the Barnes and Noble. Of course, the doors locked, they're closed. They're trying to get out of there.

Pound it on the, the glass door. And funny. I just visited a couple of weeks ago. Pound it on the glass door. And, you know, one of the, one of the managers came over. So I mean, your form was like, what do you need? And I was like, I need every map of Manhattan that you have, tourist, whatever. And he just took me over to the drawer where they keep the map books and just

“handed me the whole pile, um, and I was like, the in the back, right? Because I hadn't grabbed”

the rocks back and put it in. So now I'm running back up to the army with a handful of, of maps in a, you know, Barnes and Noble bag. And then the rest of the day was kind of what you just described, right? Like, what do we do next? So in the military, we have formations. And we have, you know, what we call hurry up and wait. And as new leadership kept coming into the armory. And as I said, there were sister companies there, not everybody was from the same chain of command until really,

um, until you got to, like, the governor level for state operations. Uh, we kind of kept mixing and matching is a new leader would come in with seniority, want a head count, uh, want a, you know, want to cast organized and see, see what he had in terms of platoon sizes. We got to call it to go grab our medical bags if you had any medical training. Uh, we all got information for that. Everyone with the bag. And somebody realized that probably there was not much need for half trained medics

“when, you know, half of the EMT, uh, tri-state EMT capability had responded and it was also four hours”

after the initial attack. So anybody on site being discovered still leading medical treatment, they, they would already be handled. We talked about, uh, getting blood and somebody called the hospitals and they were already, you know, three, four hours into it, overwhelmed with blood donors. Uh, so we kept having formations hashed out. When I didn't know what the time was, uh, soon to be, you know, one of my vloggers term commanders that I served with in a guy that I

already respected a lot, uh, another sister company commander have responded, like immediately after hearing

the plane hit the World Trade Center, the first plane. He was, uh, he was a district attorney

down in Loman, hadn't so it was about a mile away where he was and he put on his army, uh, physical training uniform because he used to run over the Brooklyn Bridge every day at lunchtime and it was the only army uniform he had in the office. So he went over there with his cell phone and he was coordinating response all the way up to the, the governor's level in Albany and he found a mission eventually for, for my company and his company pulled us out of kind of the task force that

had been organized and finally around sunset, we took a ride down to, uh, to Loman hadn't just by the Brooklyn Bridge and after, you know, uh, 45 minutes to an hour, hashing things out, after it just got, just they have got dark. We were posted for security along Canal Street, which is itself three quarters of a mile a mile above a ground zero and we were there to just work with the police, uh, because they were spread to thin and secure every corner because, you know,

here it is 12, 15 hours after the attack and people want to see what happened, right? It's, it's no longer, um, there's no longer things falling down anymore. People are getting curious. There's huge cloud of ash rising over Loman at and, you know, that people natural curiosity or the kind of the rubber neck effect took place and so we were there to stop them from going down there to keep them safe, uh, to keep them from interfering what was an ongoing and remained an ongoing, uh, fire,

uh, uh, uh, an ongoing emergency site and ongoing rescue operation and eventually ongoing recovery operation and we took turns. Yeah, every 15, 20 minutes, so you'll walk down, come back. It was about, uh, again, about a 30, 40 minute walk both ways. Uh, and we all, everyone on the, the, the in the pitoon, uh, every one of the fire teams got all four guys down there and looked at it and, uh, you know,

at, at dawn on the morning of September 12, um, one of our senior leaders just basically showed

his police badge because he was also police officer and the hijacked and he or city bused to drive us back to the army, so he had a couple hours of sleep. Wow, so you spent the, the, the native September 11th, where he's, uh, morning of September 12th, right near ground zero and right near ground zero, uh, within site, it's certainly like even canal street, there was like dust on the side streets

And then what, what did, what did you do for the next number of days or weeks? So, uh, we got

“some sleep that day in the army, uh, we went down the next night. We, the same commander had refined the”

mission. Uh, we were told we had till, to later that evening to rest, get something to eat, recuperate, uh, didn't get to go home, uh, but we rested around the army and we had a mission starting it midnight, uh, the night of the 12th morning of the 13th and that was inner security closer in. So, that night, we relieved the other company, uh, down at ground zero, the perimeter around the entire world trade center, uh, where, again, the fire department, the FDNY, uh, and this was prior

to a lot of changes that came to FEMA and incident response lessons learned, but the New York City Fire Chief was the incident commander there, uh, and that caused a lot of friction with other agencies, the NYPD, uh, lots of other agencies that came along as the week, uh, went along,

but basically, again, you had a working fireside, uh, working, uh, you know, underground fire where

“things were prone to collapse as fire burned, uh, and he just needed to control who went on and”

nobody was told that they can't go on. If you showed up with a state New York State Police badge or an FBI badge or even yet we had CIA officers, military chaplains come, uh, go talk to the fire chief, if it's okay with him, you sign in in his logbook, you can go on and say, and like, there we were lots of, you know, young, lower and listed army specialists, uh, sergeants, even some privates and PFCs, having to turn away, like members of federal law enforcement agencies

from trying to go on where they wanted to, uh, simply on wall of authority, right? No weapons, no, no real, uh, ability to enforce it, right? I mean, we were legally right, uh, but, you know, try to override an FBI agent and it was all moral authority. Look, the fire chief is happy to have you go inside, but it is a working fire just checking, so he knows you're here if something happens.

“Uh, and so we spent, I spent almost two weeks right there alongside ground zero, uh, which was”

tough, you know, I mean, the first night we went, we, we were working midnight to 12, um, and the

first night we went, we had no masks whatsoever, um, within a few days we had, you know, the, the masks we all became familiar with, uh, early COVID, uh, just cloth masks and then we had, you know, home depot masks with some filtration ability. Eventually we had like actual, um, you know, breather masks with the side breather's and open for the eyes, um, but I know guys are ready who got the sick who served down there. I know a lot of guys who served down there and served with me in a

rack and between the, the chemicals of the two, you know, lots of cancer, uh, victims and it's hard to say which it was from, but yeah, we spent 12 days down there staring at that hole and yeah, you could see the smoldering fire was smoking the whole time. It smelled like burning plastic. It was, uh, it was, yeah, it was a, a life-lasting impression. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think, you know, there's just a lot of folks who've been born since or were really young. I got a daughter who

was born about, you know, just about a month before 9/11 occurred and, uh, you know, she doesn't have a real memory of it, obviously. But that's funny. I have a niece, a goddaughter, uh, abortion, the same button. So we just celebrated her, her 25th birthday last, uh, uh, last two weeks ago, three weeks ago, beginning at August. So, uh, it's interesting because she was on my thoughts that morning as I was running down to the armory, right? I, uh, I grabbed my cell phone at some point in

there called my brother and said, "Go home, uh, take care of my goddaughter, uh, stay out of the city, uh, until we know what's going on." Uh, turns out he was down there, uh, a block or two away from me most of that two weeks because, uh, you know, cell service and, and phone service was deeply impacted. So he was laying fiber out to cable for Verizon where he worked at the time, uh, you know, on the same in the same square mile down there. So yeah, I, I just, uh, it's hard to, for people who

didn't maybe live through it to really convey how all consuming it was. Now, obviously, you were there.

We even just for Americans. I mean, it was incredible. I mean, obviously, there was an airline

service for a few weeks. Uh, there wasn't, you know, the people were stranded. I, my, my father-in-law was stranded in DC. He got with some folks rented a car and they drove back to the scog area, you know, and, uh, it just impacted so many different aspects of life in the immediate, um, and then, and then beyond that, it was very impactful for our nation. Yeah. I mean, you know, we talk about milestone events and people's lives. You know, the assassination John Kennedy comes up for, for a lot of

boomers, uh, you know, before September 11th, uh, there were some in my life-tive, you know, shooting a Ronald Ray in, the space shuttle exploding, the, the war Iraq, but nothing nothing came close.

I'm at my parents are in that generation. Uh, they were little kids when it happened like, like,

“you know, like preschool kindergarten, first grade age when it happened. Uh, but it was, it was that”

life-changing from America. I mean, not quite the war ramp up that we had, but we went on to a war footing within a month. Uh, we had soldiers deployed, uh, and we've had 25 years of, uh, after effects, you know, the war in Afghanistan went on a lot longer than anybody who had expected. Uh, you know, we get into the weeds about the use of the pretext of done 11 for the war in Iraq, but it's certainly, uh, made it a much more sellable project by those who wanted to sell it

at the time, the Dick Cheney's Don Rumsfeld. Uh, you know, and we fought that war on terror around the globe. Lots of operations. Lots of folks in the military, you know, since that, you know, we lost almost 3,000, 2800 and changed that day. Uh, 343, uh, fire fighters, numerous NYU PD and Port Authority Police Department, folks died that day. Uh, we lost, uh, in the neighborhood of 8,000 folks between Iran and Afghanistan fighting overseas. And then we lost 32,000, um, U.S. veterans and

service members in that same era, uh, to suicide. Uh, so, you know, it's not all, the suicides aren't all necessarily 100% attached to that. But, you know, this changed American history. The folks that we elected, uh, any aftermath of that or all based on that, uh, you know, you could tie all kinds of things that happened, uh, the economic crash of, you know, 2008. Uh, there's an impact from 9/11, everywhere since that. John, how did it impact your life directly from in the years? Oh, it changed

all, but it changed all kinds of things. I, um, I was in a undergraduate program for international affiliation. So, I had a, a big intent to work there. I had just on September 11, I had just kind of moved, uh, into my, I guess, what it would have been in my sophomore full-time year. Um, and I was, I was, I was really enjoying it. I had a bunch of foreign policy classes. I was signed up for, uh, I was anticipating graduating in January of 2004. And, uh, wasn't 100% sure what I wanted to do.

New, I was getting into green foreign policy. Um, wasn't sure if I was going to go to a teaching. I, I didn't really, you know, at that point I was, I was in my 30s. I didn't really want to go to, uh, to the State Department necessarily, uh, but things changed. You know, when we were down there around zero, I really considered, you know, going back into a government, um, not just military, but maybe into intelligence, uh, given my degree, given my experience, uh, kind of the, the desire

to not see that happen again. I ended up getting, uh, deployed in state, uh, for our homeless security missions starting with, uh, with every opportunity I had when I was away from school, uh, during school breaks to do, uh, security at John F. Kennedy Airport as we got into the, uh,

“a ran war the first month, uh, again, a lot of people don't remember, but in 2003, when the”

Iran War kicked off, the memory of September 11th wasn't even, sorry, Iraq, yeah, I do that all the time. Um, the Iraq War kicked off, and the memory of September 11th wasn't even two years old. Uh, so there was huge fears of terrorism ended up patrolling the New York City subway system with the NYPD that, at that point, uh, finished. So, so Iraq happened, did that, uh, and about six months afterwards, we got notification that my unit was going to Iraq, which wasn't a surprise,

new as early as 2002, we were going to be fighting in Iraq and knew that that the war would not be

like the first war with Iraq, where we just pulled everybody out. Like we were actually invading Iraq,

and we were going to have occupation forces. I don't think, you know, I certainly couldn't predict that occupation forces would be so contested. I thought it would be more like Germany or Japan,

“where we helped rebuild the government and got out. I even on my part looking back, right?”

This is a different culture. Um, you know, we hadn't defeated them the way we had the Germans that were Japanese. They, they just completely different situations with the analogy kind of fell short, ended up fighting in Iraq. So, you know, lost some, some good friends there. Um, lost some, some real, some real buddies, uh, both in my unit. And again, you know, sister national guardian that some of those guys that I served with that ground zero split off into a different unit.

When we went to Iraq and they came as we were leaving, lost guys there. Um, so, you know, it was, it was a huge impact in the near term. Uh, it kind of changed my determination. I ended up staying in the military. I did more Homeland Security missions. Uh, got my degree and ended up going to Afghanistan. Uh, saw, you know, uh, a longer term situation there. And all through that, and, you know,

even at first, after I got back from Afghanistan, which was, uh, end of 2008, really beginning

of 2009, like, had a re-entered civilian life. Uh, I was still pretty much in favor of all this

my view of foreign policy was shaped largely at the time by that event. I mean, it, it, there was a reason why President Bush and, but he wanted to do across the world was enormously popular. I mean,

“overwhelming, like 80% or something. And, you know, I think some of us look back and, you know,”

wonder where the wisdom was, the sum of that. But I mean, it doesn't take away that. I mean, there's such phenomenal heroism that was displayed on September 11th, and then unbelievable tragedy. You know, it was just both those things. You know, I, I was think of it when I, because, you know, I grew up in New Jersey, Northern New Jersey, so I, you know, friends of my high school who got out of the towers, you know, a good family friend of mine from church who died in the towers. And, um, you know,

there's all these different stories, you know, the closer and you lived, the more connections you probably had. And, um, but I remember sitting in this congressional office who were kind of watching

the first tower fall and how surreal that was. And, you know, I'm sitting there, I feel like, you know,

growing up in New York, I had a connection. And then my, my boss, she was there next to me watching

“it, and she had lived in, you know, Manhattan for a while. And I just remember me, you know,”

when it started to fall, I catch in my breath, and she just like let out this cry. It was just, you know, beside herself, because it was just, you know, how could this be happening? And it's just kind of the natural reaction. Yeah. I mean, it turned out afterwards I learned there were five people that I knew from very well to pretty well, um, who died in the collapse, uh, of the collapses. Uh, one guy I went to high school with that I knew really well. Another guy that I, I hung

out with immediately after high school, uh, because we both pretended to go to college, um, some kids I went to grade school with or or at least they were in the local Catholic school. And we, you know, we played in the same sports leagues. Um, so that was, you know, that was impact the learning at, uh, I remember you're interesting fact about September 11th and just kind of the, the, the, the vibe in the city between the various emergency services, uh, and just, in some part because of the

way they work, uh, when we, when we showed up that first day and into the second day is more and more

folks from our unit filtered into the army, uh, almost every one of the police officers came in several of whom were in, you know, serious leadership positions, um, but even though they had the opportunity to work with the NYPD and probably as the weeks and months went on, collect overtime, they all chose to take the military leave and come into the, to the armory and lead troops and work long hours, maybe longer hours without overtime with less chance to go home. But all of the firefighters,

all of the FDN like guys, uh, responded to the fire department. And so there were guys who we had no idea what happened to them, uh, and like my friend Sean, uh, I remember, for instance, we'd been there for four or five days in, you know, just wondering where somebody was, where Sean, where's Chris and Sean just came walking up in his bunker gear, uh, and like we were just, like overwhelmed with relief to see him. And, you know, after, uh, after the, our deployment down there,

my, uh, might puttune leader, my lieutenant had spent the first four or five days looking for a sister, um, and there were some false leads, but ultimately she had died in the collapse of the

“second tower, I think. And it wasn't till, you know, late September, two or three weeks after the”

attack, after we had been home for at least a week, that they were able to, uh, to have a ceremony of funeral for her, uh, and they had the funeral where she lived with her husband down in rock away. And if you know anything about New York, uh, rock away is, uh, full of, uh, firefighters. It's a suburban community within Queens, uh, probably the most densest neighborhood with New York City firefighters as local residents, lots of NLIPD live there too.

Um, so not only did my entire entire unit turn out, uh, but lots of the local community turned out because she and her husband lived there, um, FDNY Piper, you know, the classic scene playing

amazing grace. And I never saw so many grown men cry in one place at the same time. It was just,

it was a moment where we were all finally allowed to feel what we were feeling for the last three or four weeks. Yeah, that was, you know, it was an amazing time. Uh, it was, you kind of saw the best of America in that aftermath. Um, you know, I still look back on that and I very mixed feelings about all, all the subsequent stuff that happened. But I have, uh, there was just a purity of emotion and, uh, American spirit and camaraderie. And people really did come together. And, you know,

if you ever wonder if America can do that because right now, sometimes because it's a division, you kind of want, like, oh my gosh, like, could we ever come together as a nation? And it happened then. And, uh, it was, it was stark and people, you know, uh, I talked to a lot of people who,

subsequent to 9/11. And I'm always surprised how, excuse me, how many people

“their story is to why they joined was in response to 9/11. It definitely, you know, there's”

we have a lot of mutual friends who are in that story. Yep. And, uh, it was such a powerful time. I still can't believe it's 25 years. Maybe they should ask it an old man. But it's such a it's incredible. There is, there is something to that to that number. There really is like, it's not half my life, but it's getting pretty close. And, uh, well, is there any other, uh, before as we wrap up like, are there, you know, as you kind of

reflect on the day, or is there any other lessons, or even just memories specifically, you'd love to share with folks? Yeah. I mean, it was, it was definitely a time of grieving. It was a time of anger. Uh, and as you put it out, it was a time of unity. And unity in the face of a foreign thread, an external threat, you know, you know, ironically an old Arab saying me and my brother against my cousin, me and my cousin against my tribe, me and my tribe against everyone else. Um, we kind of

had that, um, yeah. And that was, that was good. You know, American flags came out and hung from porches, uh, down at Ground Zero, you know, local restaurants set up tables to give out food. Uh, my wife, you know, one of the stories I tell about her is she was working him in a hadnet, uh, the bookkeeping job had to walk over the 593 bridge that day. Uh, she didn't know what to do. So, she just went to have the grocery store and bought bread and coal cuts in every day. She

would come into Manhattan with Seran rap, coal cuts, and given to any emergency workers who were around who are hungry, um, millions, it wasn't millions. Probably millions of people across America did stuff like that. I mean, we got socks and underwear, we're just laid out in tables, everywhere. People from all around America were responding. Um, it's a shame it takes that external threat, um, you know, and that's tough, but, but people did it. And people contributed. People really

wanted to be part of it. And, you know, America, it's America, it's not just 25 years, it's America's 250 birthday, which is kind of a weird parallel number, right? It's 10% of our nation. It's not just half of my life, but it's 10% of our nation's history, um, has been in this post-war new normal. And as you pointed out, there's a lot of division that's grown up in that 25 years.

And some of that was always under the surface, uh, I always, uh, I'm always leary of the good old

days, um, kind of mantra, you know, there was always division. And the things we're never perfect,

“um, there were some things that maybe were better. Uh, but I think America has great days ahead of it.”

And, you know, I hope that we can unify around agreed principles, right? That's part of our project this year is sharing a therapist principles, the foundational principles. We want to do that and find ways to, to cross divides for, for great solutions. Um, and, you know, we did that in some ways after September 11th, uh, but, but our instincts went in the wrong direction. You know, we were led by people who, uh, I don't know that they took advantage of America's fears and America's anger, uh, but

because of America's fear and America's anger and their own ideas about how the world should be ordered. We ended up making some mistakes. So, there were good things that came out of it. American unity, um, there were bad things. It's certainly dominated our history. It's dominated my life, uh, and, you know, as probably some of us have noticed, it's hard to talk about some of these things, um, some parts of them, uh, you know, and, uh, and this is one of those things that, you know,

a lot of things are lost to some of the younger generations, a lot of history. Um, this is something that I hope, you know, just sharing today, uh, can help some of them connect to that because it really is important to our history and our history is really important to where we go, uh, and, you know, we need to overcome some of these divides and make sure that we're headed in a direction where we don't just have a history, but we have the future. We're not going to have

a future if we forget our history. Totally agree, John. Well, I hate John Burns. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks so much for sharing like your personal story and weaving that with like, you know, how we move forward in American history. So, appreciate you sharing that with us on this, uh, it's important and historic day. Well, David, I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about this and it's gotten a little easier over time, so good. Well folks, if you like this episode and

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