by Robert Gillis
Published in the Foxboro Reporter and Boston City Paper, 9/2014

Thursday, September 11, 2014:  According to various web sites, somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 kids across America celebrate their 13th birthday today. I would venture to guess that for most, they’re in the 6th-8th grade, they’re finding their way, and their parents are beginning to wonder when their sweet child was replaced with this independent teen-ager with thoughts and ideas of their own.

by Robert Gillis
Published in the Foxboro Reporter and the Boston City Paper, 9/2011

Earlier this month, I interviewed a former firefighter who worked at Ground Zero a month after the attacks as part of the recovery operations. I taped our conversation and the incredible people at Audio Transcription Center in Boston (http://ttctranscriptions.com/) gave me a transcript back the same day I sent in the tape. 

By its very subject matter, the column is a bit graphic but I did my best to edit and censor that for general readership.

by Robert Gillis
Published in the Foxboro Reporter and the Boston City Paper, 9/2009

“The date, September 11, will forever evoke recollections of unimaginable tragedy, of lives callously lost and brutally cut short and of unspeakable horror and sorrow in the hearts and minds of all of us. … That is why each and every September 11, we as Americans pay tribute to those who lost their lives that fateful day. We gather in unity and dignity to honor the freedoms that we have fought for in the past, the freedoms our loved ones have died for, and those freedoms that we continue to fight for today.

by Robert Gillis
Published in the Foxboro Reporter 8/2004 and the Foxboro Reporter 8/2006 and the Boston City Paper 9/2006.

September 11, 2001 was a death in the family. A death in our National family. And as a nation, we went to the wake and funeral.

The world suddenly seemed so quiet. The commercial-free constant coverage of the attacks and their aftermath. The deaths, my God, the deaths and the destruction. The stories of miraculous survival.

by Robert Gillis
Published in The Foxboro Reporter 9/2003 and the Boston City Paper 9/2007

I never met Shawn Nassaney. He was a good-looking guy, 25 years old, lived in Pawtucket, and was a sales manager for American Power Conversion. Likewise, I never met Attleboro’s Lynn Goodchild. She was absolutely beautiful, a 25 year old administrator for Putnam Investments.

There is a picture of the couple hanging outside the function rooms that bear their names at the Tavern Restaurant here in Plainville.

by Robert Gillis
Published in The Foxboro Reporter September 2002

We remember where we were when we first heard the news.

We remember the anger and pain that resonated through our very souls; cutting deeper than anything we thought we could feel. We were – and are — collectively wounded.

We remember the loss, the scope of the attacks, and the horrendous aftermath.

We remember an orchestrated attack on who and what we are, our very ideology, an enormous loss of life, broadcast as it happened.