One mourning in september. (Here Below).

At 10:07, on the morning of September 11 in New York City, we were evacuated from our building just 20 blocks north of where the twin prides of the New York skyline had just been destroyed by a pair of hijacked jet planes manned by 10 kamikaze terrorists. In addition to killing all the passengers, the terrifying crashes took the lives of over 5,000 people and wounded 8,700 others.

It was a tragedy of hideous proportions, plunging the city and country into heart break. All the kinds horses and all the kinds men might be able to put the pieces together again, but could they ever restore that precious American intrinsic - the feeling of safeness, carefreeness, and invincibility?

With friendly neighbors north and south, vast oceans east and west an awesome military might, and monumental wealth, how could anyone hurt us?

Someone did -- an evil, nameless, and faceless presence: insidious, inhumane, and ruthless -- a presence that has to be identified, sought out, and stamped out, just the way another hideous presence was stamped out 60 years ago.

In the four days we sat at home and roamed the streets, we had to relearn the phenomenon we discovered in 1947: New York is a marvelous mixture of the best and worst of everything, but when it comes to crunch time it becomes as deeply and lovingly patriotic as Toonerville, Kansas.

Attack America and New York will put away its big-city nuttiness and wrap itself in the American flag, just like every other town from the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans white with foam.

We were overwhelmed by what we saw less than one mile from the burning stumps of the Twin Towers:

* The American flags flying from windows, poles, store fronts, one-story houses, two-story houses, and tenements.

* The heartbreaking photos of hundreds of missing loved ones posted on every street-corner mailbox and flat wall radiating out from the immense hole in the ground that once was the World Trade Center.

* On a Friday night vigil, hundreds of people turned out with votive candles and bouquets of flowers to place beneath the photos of the lost beloved ones.

* The supermarket under our building posting on its from window the names of the 2,600 injured people that had passed through St. Vincent's Hospital on the corner.

* The TV shots of the incredibly heroic city firemen digging away hour after hour in the inferno of rubble and twisted steel piping. People began crying in the streets when they learned that 250 of them never returned from their initial sally info the black hell of the burning buildings.

* A mayor named Rudolph Giuliani ceaselessly organizing, explaining, condoling, from early morning to midnight and often beyond, keeping his city together for another day, and then another, and then another - an exhibition of leadership that could only be described as awesome.

* The President of the United States, without anyone twisting his arm, promising to deliver $40 billion to the stricken city.

To the many friends of Scholastic Coach everywhere -- advertisers, subscribers, contributors -- bless you for your phone calls and e-mail letters expressing your concern over our well-being.

As Pete Hamill, the prose laureate of New York City, wrote in his column on Sunday, September 16:

"On Tuesday, New York was knocked down. On Wednesday, it was groping for its mouthpiece. On Thursday, it was on one knee. On Friday, it got up."

We shall overcome. God bless America.