Every person has a first name, a middle name, and a last name. That person has a history. He has a family. He has a mother and a father, maybe a wife… - Salvatore Giunta

I am proud- make no mistake abut that. But even as President Obama places the medal around my neck, pride is merely one of several conflicting emotions. This whole event seems bittersweet, joyous and at the same time almost unbearably painful. I can feel the price of it all now- that little piece of fabric with the star on it, which these people are watching the president bestow on me, cost two people their lives and cost five others life-changing wounds. And here I am, with no scars, no injuries, standing up there receiving all this adulation. I honestly don't know how to handle it. But I have no choice, so I do the best I can.

Like most people, I can vividly recall exactly where I was when I heard the news. It was chemistry class, second period. I was a sixteen-year-old junior, wandering aimlessly through another school day, working halfheartedly on a lab assignment, trying to figure out the density of different liquids, when word filtered down to our classroom. Something about a terrible accident in New York City: a plane crashing into one of the Twin Towers. Suddenly every television set in the school was lit up, and every classroom had suspended normal teaching activities to focus on this tragedy half a continent away. At that point that morning, no one knew what had happened yet. The news commentators- like everyone else- were working under the assumption that the jet had gone wildly off course and experienced some sort of catastrophic failure, resulting in a collision with one of the towers. It wasn't until the second plane ht that the unfathomable became real: This wasn't an accident- it was a terrorist attack, intentional, willful, coordinated, and almost incomprehensibly lethal. To those of us watching, it was our first view of evil.

There were more bullets in the air than stars in the sky. A wall of bullets at every one at the same time with one crack and then a million other cracks afterwards. They're above you, in front of you, behind you, below you. They're hitting in the dirt early. They're going over your head. Just all over the place. They were close— as close as I've ever seen.