Mel said after word of the attacks got out, a friend called and said, “Now aren’t you glad we have a Republican in office?”

“Um, it was a Democrat in office during Pearl Harbor, and his response was much the same,” had been Mel’s response, promptly shutting the friend up.

“We’ll be going to war over this, no doubt,” Mel asserted to me now. I nodded, still numb from the morning’s shock.

She told me a horrific story – a secretary at one of her daughters’ schools had a son who worked on one of the highest stories in a building of the World Trade Center. When the first tower was hit, he called his mother. “It’s all right, Mom. That wasn’t my building.”

Then there was an horrific sound, and she never heard from him again.