Twenty years ago Saturday, the 9/11 attacks took place. Two decades later, it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t remember where they were when they first heard the news.

Scotty McCreery was a second grader. 

“I think they even let us out of school early…” he recalls. “I’m still so young at that point. So, I had the basketball in my right hand. And I was like, ‘Can I go see if Michael wants to play or something?’ And Mom’s like, ‘No. We have to sit down and watch the news. Something terrible’s happened.'” 

Luke Bryan had just moved to Nashville ten days earlier.

“I was in the bed and my sister woke me up kind of frantically on the phone,” he remembers, “and she goes, ‘Hey, turn on the news.’ A plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center.”

Meanwhile, Keith Urban was in Florida on vacation, having stayed over after playing a show.

“I remember that morning,” he reflects. “I didn’t turn the news on, and I’m really grateful that I didn’t because I had a few extra hours before I was aware of this reality that was going on that would change everything… I couldn’t take it in. It was too surreal.”

Since air travel came to a halt, Keith was stuck in the Sunshine State until his bus could come and get him.

“My mom was staying with me at the time,” he remembers, “and she was panicked and worried about me being away, and was anxious for me to get home.”

For Luke as well, it was “a really trying time” when he just wanted to drive home to be with his family in Georgia.

“It was certainly something that shook the whole world,” he says, looking back on that day. 

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