The Summer of '96

It was ten years ago that TWA flight 800 crashed off the coast of Long Island. At the time, I was studying in Italy and my summer there was coming to an end. I, along with the rest of the students, were to be leaving in a few weeks and the announcement that an American plane crashing, possibly due to terrorism, was quite disheartening.

Very little information was available to us. The American newspaper we could get our hands on were old issues of USA Today. There were reports that it was a bomb or a missile. Whatever it was, it wasn't something that you wanted to think about as you had to head across an ocean. I had images of hijackers and explosions.

Fortunately for me, by sheer coincidence, my flight back was with two guys I had met in Italy whose fraternity I joined when I got back to America. We laughed and joked the whole way back. TWA flight 800 and all those people that died became just a memory.