#NeverForget# 25 years later, and I can still feel the moment. I was on an 8:47am United flight, waiting on the runway to take off to LAX from Newark. Then we saw it … the first plane hitting the tower … then the second. I watched it unfold from my seat on the left side of that aircraft, unable to process what was happening. The terror came later, when we knew what had happened and when I couldn't get a call through to my family. There were several hours of silence while they didn't know if I was on one of those planes. I'll never forget that helplessness. We were subsequently locked down in the airport and watched the towers collapse from a lounge window, watching our country break in real time. My town then, Darien, CT, lost so many that day. Friends and neighbors; people with families and with futures they never got to live. We carry all of it still … the fear, the loss … and for me, the profound gratitude that I was on a runway instead of in the sky.