Like many Americans, 9/11 had a major effect on our lives at the time.
On the morning of September 11th 2001, Greg was an extremely junior officer serving the first months of his first tour of duty on a US Coast Guard cutter patrolling off the coast of Haiti. He was performing counter-migrant and counter-drug operations as a ship driver and a boarding officer. 24 hours later Greg was off the Coast of Louisiana boarding cargo ships looking for bombs. A year later he was recruited into the new field of counter-terrorism operations in the US Coast Guard.
Tiffany was a senior cadet at the Coast Guard Academy getting ready to graduate and take her first tour onboard a cutter stationed in the Pacific Northwest. The Coast Guard missions she had trained for 4 years to accomplish were no longer the primary missions she would perform in that job.
Since then a decade has passed. We received our honorable discharges, Greg started and sold a business and Tiffany became a leading sailing instructor. We sailed across the Pacific Ocean. A few months ago Greg was in New York for 36 hours and he gave up some sleep to see the World Trade Center site. Neither of us had ever been and it seemed a good idea to at least see the location where the event that shaped our military careers happened:
