I was sitting in my office Sept. 11 writing my monthly editorial when the telephone rang. On the other end of the line was my son, Greg. "You're not going to believe this," he said. "A plane just crashed into a tower of the World Trade Center in New York."

I hung up, quickly logged on to the Internet and got an update. Just a few minutes laterCNN reported that another plane had just flown head-on into the other tower in the World Trade Center complex. Everything that morning seemed like a blur as we gathered around televisions watching the horror created by a band of terrorists unfold before our eyes.

We quickly learned that American Airlines Flight 11, out of Boston, was one of the planes involved in the crash. That news sent a shiver down my spine. I had taken Flight 11 many times to Los Angeles and only a few days before had booked Flight 11 on a trip to the West Coast at the end of the month.

Later, we learned that two of our colleagues at Cahners had died in the crash. They were Jeff Mladenik, vice president of e-development for Cahners' Manufacturing and Electronic Divisions as well as interim CEO for eLogic, another Cahners division, and Andrew Curry Green, business development manager for eLogic.

It was a terrible loss to us both professionally and personally.

Like all other Americans, we were angered and disgusted as details of the cowardly terrorist actions in New York and Washington were reported. It didn't make sense that anyone could have such a callous disregard for human life. The stories coming out of these two cities were heart wrenching.

But beneath all this tragedy there emerged a sense of American pride and unity as we joined together to ensure that these atrocities would not weaken us. In fact, they would make us stronger. Within hours of these crashes, there were long lines of people wanting to donate blood while others went to the World Trade Center site wanting to help in any way possible. This shows all that's good about this country.

And not enough can be said about our own family of distributors and manufacturers who helped in the recovery efforts. You'll be reading about these heroes in upcoming issues of ID.