Staff Writer

As the towers of the World Trade Center in New York lay in a crumbled pile and a diminished Pentagon stood injured in Washington, ‘America the Beautiful’ stood

stunned.

News of the tragedy swept across the nation by way of television, radio broadcasts, and telephone calls, and people thousands of miles away were feeling a common pain.

"My first concern was my family," Aaron Young said. "I’m from D.C., and I couldn’t get in touch with my family. I’m worried." Young, an ROTC student at Troy State, got pulled out of school in 1991 to serve in the U.S. Army in Saudi Arabia.

Although the targeted areas that were attacked seem like they’re a world away, the Pike County community sympathizes tremendously for the victims and their families.

"It has deeply upset us," Schella Kelley said. "We can only imagine what those people are going through. We have prayed and cried about it all morning."

Kelley, who works at First Baptist Church of Troy, is joined in her concerns by Pastor Ed Walter.

"It’s a tragedy that this has happened to our country," Walter said. "It’s frightening to see that what has happened around the world has happened to us," Walter said.

Walter said he agrees with a statement made by a government official this morning on television which said that this is a wakeup call for America.

"It will show how strong or how weak our military is." he said.

Even after the attack, Aaron Young and Mike Jones still feel it is a neccessity that we continue to be involved in intervening in certain world affairs.

"I think that we have an unspoken duty, as the center of democracy and the strongest nation in the world, to get involved in helping other countries," Jones said. "I support our government’s actions 100 percent."

Jones added that he couldn’t see the logic in turning our back, as a nation, on any country. "It would be a shortcoming of the U.S. if we didn’t get involved."

"I can’t imagine what kind of animals could mastermind this," Jones said.