Rocky Myers remembers it as if it were yesterday.  

He left his sister’s Rhode Island home on a Wednesday and boarded a train for New York City, planning to sight–see and spend the night. It felt like living in a movie.  

He saw a play on Broadway. Hailed a cab to a deli. Then made an impromptu midnight trip to the top of the Empire State Building on a chilly October night.  

It was from there, standing more than 1,400 feet above the city and looking southwest, Myers could see the smoky columns rising from lower Manhattan.  

It was the vestiges of the World Trade Center. The Sept. 11 attacks happened just six weeks earlier. 

“I looked out over the ruins, and you could still see it smoking,” he recalled. “In the back of our hotel, there was a fire station. There was an easel there with pictures of all the firefighters they lost.” 

The experience stayed with him long after he returned home. 

On Sept. 11, 2002, Myers was taking one of his customary morning walks when the memories returned. The attacks still felt raw. As he thought about the smoke, the fallen firefighters and a city struggling to heal, inspiration struck.  

He wrote his first poem in years.  

It had been years since he had picked up a pen for that purpose, but the Sept. 11 remembrance kindled a new passion.   

Over the next decade and a half, Myers authored more than a dozen poems focused on holidays — Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Easter — and other events. He wrote some religious odes, personalizing psalms for people who lost a loved one.  

But that first poem, titled “9/11 Remembered Forever,” remains one of his favorites.  

“I lived in California [at the time]. I was up early [and] seeing it live,” he said. “They showed the pictures from the World Trade Center, the people running, the dust, and finally the collapse. It was terrible.”  

Another side of the Rock 

Long before he was known as a poet, local pickleball players knew Myers best as the guy carrying a paddle.  

After moving to Glennwilde in 2012, Myers quickly became one of the city’s most recognizable advocates for the fast-growing sport. He taught beginner clinics, introduced residents to the game and spent years urging city leaders to build dedicated courts at Copper Sky. 

As for that nickname? It dates back to before he could remember.  

Born Victor E. Myers Jr. in Mississippi, he was only a few months old when his mother took him to Hawaii to reunite with his father, a Marine Corps pilot stationed there.  

“My dad said, … ‘we ought to give him a nickname.’ The locals referred to Hawaii as The Rock, so my nickname became ‘Rocky,’” he said. 

The name stuck. 

School friends called him Rocky. Pickleball players called him Rocky. And for more than a decade, he became one of the most familiar faces on Maricopa’s courts. 

The pen is as mighty as the paddle 

Myers never had a complicated strategy for writing.  

The poems simply arrive when they arrive.  

Ideas would come to him while out on those morning walks or during time behind the steering wheel. A line would pop into his head. Then another.  

When they did, he hurried home to write them down before they slipped away. 

“I just started thinking about it, and it kind of came to me,” Myers said. “I would get a verse or two and then go from there. I usually had something roughed out in two or three days. Then I could refine it.” 

Over the years, he shared new poems with friends, family members and fellow pickleball players. His original “9/11 Remembered Forever” poem was even shared by InMaricopa on the event’s 15th anniversary.  

Myers may not write as often as he once did, but the poems remain close at hand. He can still recite many from memory — the same memory that carried him back to a chilly October night atop the Empire State Building and inspired him to pick up a pen all those years ago. 

Our 4th of July  

By Rocky Myers  

Today is the 4th of July  

So fire up the barbie and let’s eat apple pie  

We slice up a big, cold watermelon  

This is about patriotism that I’m telling  

This is our country’s story  

As we proudly fly old glory  

To our shores our founders did come  

To live in this land with freedom  

So on this historic day of 1776 July Four  

The Declaration Independence they did score  

Declaring our freedom on the 4th of July  

They fought hard for our freedom to buy  

This is the day our freedom was made  

And we celebrate the 4th with a parade  

In the parade are colorful floats and cars  

Fly our flag with its proud stripes and stars  

We love this country with all its riches and perks  

As we light up the sky with bright fireworks