Snellville Remembers 9/11: James Williams

James Williams, music minister at , said he didn’t have a significant connection to Sept. 11, 2001 -- no more than the next guy.

Since then, however, he has created music in worship, or in concert at Dacula High School, where he is choral director. Any American, he said, would say the event changed them.

"It is my hope that 9/11 is not forgotten, but remembered eternally," he said. "It was a horrific act, but one that brought us together not only as Americans, but as human beings.

"The strength and camaraderie that grew out of those events was staggering, and I hate that it took an event of that magnitude to do it."

A recent school trip to Ground Zero took him back. "The scale of those city blocks that were leveled, the thousands of people affected -- it still was so hard to imagine even almost 10 years later.”

One of the mothers was particular affected. She had a son – a Marine -- who died in service a few years later. Students on the trip heard first-hand accounts. 

“Some of them prayed, some took pictures, many just stood there in amazement at the construction site,” he said.

(Editor's Note: This article is featured on Huffington Post, as part of 911 profile stories on how the day has affected you and your neighbors.)