Memories are everything. It drives us as well as, sometimes, makes us cry. Some memories are happy and some are sad but any memory is what can make us stronger. Fourteen years ago, do you remember where you were, what you were doing and who you were with? Do you remember the twin towers in New York City? That is what I am getting to and I still remember it well.

It make me feel very old knowing I remember it so clearly and remember how I felt, etc. Memories can have a nostalgic effect so powerful that it can consume your entire being and overwhelm you to a point that you will cry, laugh or just see the whole episode appear before you like a picture show. The sound, emotion and every other thing that goes with it will sometimes seem so real. You can hear a song that will take you back to a time that has long ago passed. Memories certainly have a strong effect.

I remember I was in the radio studio reading my last commercial of the morning, preparing to leave for the day. I remember how a young intern ran into the room and handed me a note. I remember reading the note, while I did the commercial (back then I could do more than one thing at a time). I remember putting the note down and continuing the commercial. The intern picked up the note and gave it to me again. I closed the mike and said I didn’t have time for jokes. She said it wasn’t a joke and I froze. I only had ten minutes left at the station but it turned out to be another five hours that I was on the air. The Twin Towers had fallen.

Memories are everything. Relatives, friends, incidents (pleasure and/or disaster) and just plain craziness. At Imperial Plaza more memories, than I care to imagine, are floating around in the heads of the many people here. Stories about WWII, Korean War, Viet Nam War and just plain life from many, many years ago. When these people, myself included, are gone, so are those memories and the history that was never written. These are people that are in their nineties and early hundreds. I was speaking with a gentleman that was ninety one and he was telling me about the WWII B-29’s. First hand experience. Real life history and not the canned stuff that is shown on the History Channel. Only the stuff that makes good documentaries and the stuff that makes the government look good is there. Not the stuff that falls between the cracks and goes unknown to the generation that doesn’t know how it really was back in those days.

Let us cherish the memories of our self and of others. Memories of others may tell you something interesting as well as something you may not have known. Once that person is called away, that memory is gone forever and it can not be retold the way it was remembered.