September 11th Reflections:

I know I'm a few days late.

This is where I was last year on 9/11, working a West Chester University of PA home football game with WCU EMS. It was 9/11/10, exactly 9 years after the attacks that changed America. One thing I hadn't known until then was that the First Officer of Flight 175 (2^nd flight to be hijacked and flown into the Trade Center Towers) was a graduate of my school, West Chester University. Not only that, he was the quarterback during two impressive seasons for WCU Football. These days, the prime benefit of a home football game is a chance to see the WCU Marching Band play. If you actually want to watch a football game, you might as well go somewhere else.

Anyway, Michael Horrocks was a noted graduate of WCU. A year ago, they unveiled a statue of him throwing a football. The statue is larger than life, at 7 feet tall, apparently just like Mr. Horrocks. His statue sits along the path that all athletes walking to and from the locker rooms will walk down.

Anyway, the video above is a well-done student production. At 8:20 in the video was a C-130 flyover. The video doesn't do it justice. The planes seemed to fill the sky, and the sound was deafening. As the game went on, I was following Twitter on my phone, and noticed a tweet from 22EMT22, retweeted by TheHappyMedic, mentioning Michael Horrocks by name. Turns out, William, an EMT from Sacremento, CA, knew members of the Horrocks family, and he seemed to appreciate knowing what WCU was doing on that day.

It's been 10 long years since that day... yet I can still remember it like it was yesterday.

Michael Horrocks
3/24/63-9/11/01

And the motto on the plaque:
Honor Him
Never Quit
Love the Game
WIN

And here's the actual text.

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