Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office to Mark 25th Anniversary of September 11 with Remembrance Ceremony
By Mike Sparks
Do You Remember Where You Were on September 11, 2001?
September 11, 2001, is one of those days forever etched into my memory. I had recently left Nissan Motor Manufacturing after eight years and started my own business, MidTnAutos.com, which was Tennessee’s first dot-com car dealership.
That morning, my wife Felicia called me.
“Did you see what happened? An airplane flew into the World Trade Center. Remember your dream?”
She was referring to a troubling dream I had shared with her and our sons, Preston and Payton. I’m not willing to share the details publicly, but if someone asks me personally, I’ll tell them. Yes, it sounds strange. But there are numerous accounts of people having premonitions before that tragic event. I know what I saw in that dream. I know what I felt.
Like many Americans, at first I didn’t fully understand what was happening. Then I turned on the TV in my office and watched the second aircraft strike the other World Trade Center tower.
At that moment, everything changed.
I knew this couldn’t simply be a tragic accident. America was under attack.
As a new business owner who had just stepped away from the security of an eight-year career at Nissan, another thought immediately entered my mind: What would this mean for our country? For our economy? For our future?
None of us knew what the coming days, months, and years would bring.
I remember holding Felicia’s hand and praying with her and our two sons like I did each morning. Across America, millions of families were doing the same thing—watching, praying, trying to comprehend something we never imagined we would witness on American soil.
Starting MidTnAutos.com had already taught me something about change and resistance to it. When I began the business, the State of Tennessee initially challenged my use of “.com” in the business name. Today that sounds almost humorous, but at the time the internet was still new territory for many people, including government. It reminded me then, as it reminds me now, of President Ronald Reagan’s famous words from his 1981 inaugural address: “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
But whatever disagreements Americans may have had about government, politics, or policy, September 11 reminded us of something much more important.
We were Americans first. Everything else came after.
I think of Darryl Worley’s song “Have We Forgotten?” and I believe we have. I often see much hate and a lack of civility. Elected officials bickering over petty things, some even coming to blows (I blame overinflated egos and excessive pride). A media that fuels division instead of reporting truth. The days of Walter Cronkite bringing us the news with integrity are sadly over. I’ve even had Antifa show up in front of my house at 4 a.m., protesting and terrifying my wife and neighbors. I’m curious: who paid them? I would love to debate anyone or any group on this topic. Possibly they could set it up at MTSU campus.
But then I remember perspective. I remember flying with General Max Haston to the Mojave Desert and NTC—the National Training Center—where soldiers prepare for real combat. I was thinking about my friend and Nissan coworker, Army Staff Sgt. Asbury F. Hawn II, and thousands of others who gave their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ironically, that’s was the night Antifa showed up.
Is that not crazy? Felicia handled it well. I was proud of her, because I had told her about my four life insurance polices and where to find them and not to spoil our kids of something happened to me which naturally had her very concerned. The day before I flew out I had received a phone call from a prominent Nashville attorney telling me “Sparks, you know you’re kinda a target. We’re hearing chatter that Antifa members are on a flight to Nashville from Chicago. Be careful.”
Freddie was 35 years old, from Lebanon, Tennessee, assigned to the 3rd Squadron, 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment of the Tennessee Army National Guard out of McMinnville. On August 13, 2005, his Humvee came under attack by enemy forces using rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire in Tuz, Iraq. He was killed the next day, August 14, along with Spc. Gary L. Reese Jr. and Sgt. Shannon D. Taylor—three American soldiers, three families forever changed, three empty chairs at dinner tables across Tennessee.
Freddie, his fellow soldiers and 3000 others gave everything so that we could argue with each other in our legislatures and on our front lawns. He gave everything so that we could have the freedom to forget what it means to be American.
That’s what haunts me. We’ve traded unity for ideology, civility for rage, common cause for tribal warfare. Meanwhile, the graves fill with those who died defending the very country we’re tearing apart with our own hands.
In the aftermath of unimaginable evil, we witnessed extraordinary courage from firefighters, police officers, first responders, members of our military, and ordinary citizens. We saw strangers helping strangers. Churches filled with people praying. American flags appeared on homes, businesses, and vehicles throughout the country.
For a brief period, the things that divided us seemed far less important than the things that united us.
Twenty-three years later, perhaps that is one of the lessons worth remembering most of all.
We should never forget the nearly 3,000 lives lost that day. We should never forget the first responders who ran toward danger while others were running away. We should never forget the service members like Freddie Hawn who went to war in response, many of whom never came home. And we should never forget how Americans came together in the days and weeks that followed—not as Republicans or Democrats, not as rich or poor, but simply as Americans.
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