“The horrible tragedy of Sept. 11 will remain in my memory forever,” wrote Liz O’Herrin of Marshall. “However, it did not fully hit me until I heard a news commentator refer to the attack as the second Pearl Harbor. Those words made my stomach churn.”
O’Herrin was in a class of Marshall High School students who wrote letters to the editor in the aftermath of Sept. 11. She noted that more than a month before the attack, she had decided to enlist in the Air National Guard.
“Two days before I was to be sworn in, planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in a terrorist attack,” she wrote. “Suddenly, the possibility of war was in my face like never before. . . Some people go into the Guard never expecting to actually have to defend the freedom of America. Me? I would gladly die for my country.”
O’Herrin went on to serve in Kuwait, and she just returned from duty in Iraq. She is now a student at UW-Madison.