ST. LOUIS — The shock of that September day started for Mark Stillpass as it did for a lot of people.
"I went into the TV room and I just saw it and I couldn't believe it," he recalled recently. "I knew it was terrorism."
What Stillpass volunteered to do next put him in rare company and harm's way.
"When the south tower fell, it dawned on me that I could be going to this now," he said.
As a firefighter with Maryland Heights, Stillpass had recently joined the specialized state rescue team Missouri Task Force One.
September 11th, 2001 would be his first mission with the group.
"It was very hard to leave. You know, I just seeing the tears in my children's eyes, you know, and my wife not knowing that they could be seeing their dad for the last time," said Stillpass.
Before that day was over he and 81 other first responders from St. Louis and around the state had landed in New Jersey. By the 12th of September, they were at Ground Zero.
"The only thing there was dust paper and steel nothing as far as recognizable," he recalled.
While the work was difficult, Stillpass remembers the hardest part was not being able to do what he and the team had trained for.
"We didn't rescue anybody," he said with emotion cracking his voice. "It was a recovery effort. We knew that."
At the end of every twelve-hour shift at Ground Zero for ten days, Stillpass remembers walking past thankful New Yorkers near where he and his team were working.
"Everybody was lining the streets, just, you know, with signs, 'thank you for coming...you're heroes,'" he said. "All that that really hurt me because we didn't do anything."
"And that's, I guess, the thing I learned is the emotional difference that I made for the people. And that's what the Lord, you know, kind of put in my heart," said Stillpass.
"I think all of us look at terrorism a little different that went there, you know," said Stillpass when asked how his service that September changed him.
"I just don't have a high regard for people who want to do destruction on innocent people," he said adding that he believes the country has forgotten what was lost in the attacks.
"Absolutely, yeah, we forgot."
His family didn't forget. Inspired by his dad's service on 9/11, Stillpass's son became a firefighter, and two other family members joined the military and served in the Middle East.
Part of what he hopes the rest of us will remember is how little most of our differences seemed to matter that day 20 years ago.
"Think about that day. Think about what happened. Think about the coming together that we had, that there might be political differences, but we all had one goal that day. We were all on the same page that day. What does it take us to get back to that?" he asked.