Remember, Respond, Recover- wallofamericans.com

On this Memorial Day, I took a brief moment to reflect on a website we created on September, 12, 2001. It was the day after our lives changed forever from the first terrorist attacks on American soil. The night of September 11th, 2001, I could not stop thinking that I had to do something to honor all those who had died. "We have to create some sort of online "memorial" to all the people who had died", I thought. If nothing else, we have to help unite the survivors against this terrible act and all that they stand for. We knew we could do it, and we knew we could do it quickly. The next morning, I brought the idea up to the CWS design team and we got started at 8am.

Within 24 hours, we developed and launched www.wallofamericans.com. It was the only way we knew how to cope as a bunch of "20 something" guys in Rochester, MN. It was all we could do to try to help in some sort of small way. The site was a huge success and thousands of people began posting messages and personal stories about the loved ones they lost. People even volunteered to help input and verify the data of those missing. We were so excited that our "contribution" had helped in some sort of way.

Our 10 seconds of fame came on September 11, 2002, when the site was featured in a New York Times article. The article discussed several different websites that existed such as ours, and how they had memorialized the victims of 9/11. It was truly an honor to be interviewed and recognized for what we had done. It was also the first time CWS had received any sort of national press... and the New York Times is as big as it gets!

Today, the site still exists exactly as it did in 2001. As you can image, the traffic has reduced significantly as most Americans are quickly distracted to other items of interest. The site is full of personal messages left by mothers, fathers, husbands, wives and children of people who lost their lives that day. It also includes a guestbook of posts from thousands of people all over the world. On this Memorial Day, take a brief moment out of your life to learn more about one of the victims: www.wallofamericans.com