Laura Bell Bundy experienced history in the making on Sunday night (May 1), as she was in Washington, D.C., over the weekend to participate in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer, along with hundreds of other women, some who were affect by the disease and still going through chemotherapy.

Despite having a very early flight on Monday and being exhausted from walking almost 35 miles in two days, she put on a sweatshirt and jacket over her pajamas and grabbed her phone to join the growing crowd of revelers gathered in front of the White House, following the announcement that a Navy SEAL team of military operatives killed the mastermind behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Osama bin Laden.

"I thought, 'What am I doing in bed? I have to see history! I have to be a part of this! I'm in D.C. of all places,'" Laura Bell tells The Boot. "How weird is that I happen to be in D.C. at that moment?"

Giving nearly a play-by-play of what was going on to her Twitter followers, she wrote, "It's been a completely life-altering weekend. [Walking] 32 miles and being at the White House last night."

When we asked her what it felt like surrounded by the sights and sounds of all of the rejoicing taking place, she described it as a collective unit. "It really felt like when people win the NCAA tournament or Super Bowl, where they're screaming and hanging out of their cars. People were screaming and hanging out of the sunroofs of their cars with American flags," she explains. "There were a lot of people doing this: screaming and honking their horns and singing ... all kinds of patriotic songs and you could see there were people like me. I was totally alone. Most people were with someone, and everyone was walking towards the White House in a pack going together. There were a lot of young people, college-aged students, which was weird, because I was looking at them and thinking that they couldn't have been older than 12 when this happened and how they've lived their whole life with this, almost."

Laura Bell was right in the middle of the devastation and destruction that was a direct result of this terrorist's actions ten years ago. "I was in New York on September 11, and I was 20," the singer-actress recalls. "You know what the [President] Obama speech said about people coming together and loving each other and supporting each other in that time of crisis? It was like that in New York, and it was also really devastating to New Yorkers, to the economy, to everything, and I was a part of that, and it was really weird being a part of this night 10 years later. I don't know if it was bringing up some of those old feelings for me a little bit and the intensity of that mixed with the intensity of this [that I was experiencing]."

While she felt an urgent need to be among the people assembling in front of the White House, Laura Bell did not partake in the exultation. "I was alone, and it was almost like a group party thing that everybody else was doing, and I decided that I was going to document it," she notes. "I was just going to be the objective person documenting. It's my obligation to report to my Twitter followers, [laughs] because I kept getting messages to keep sending pictures.

"When I finally got to the White House, it was crazy! There were a lot of people from the Marines singing their Marine song," she describes. "People were bursting into 'God Bless America,' 'Star Spangled Banner' and 'I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy.' My favorite was 'Ding Dong, bin Laden's Dead,' [set to] the theme from 'Wizard of Oz.' It was madness. People made signs ... there were camera crews documenting this from all over the world. There were people yelling for Obama to come out. I think there was a feeling of vindication. That's what it is for people: 'Justice has been done.' That's what it feels like."

Even though she was in the midst of all of this controlled chaos, the Kentucky native felt like she was a witness to it. "I was awe-struck! I was having an out-of-body experience. I was taking it all in, and I saw people of different ages, religions, ethnicities, everything," Laura Bell says. "There was a woman from Kenya there, and she was talking about how her people had been attacked by bin Laden and his people. I was asking people questions, and I saw this guy that had been fighting in Afghanistan in one of my pictures, and he's standing there looking at all of it silently, and he's missing a leg. My heart broke, and I hope he felt like, 'OK, I lost my leg for a good reason.' I hope that the soldiers who fought now feel like there was a real reason they were doing it. They can be reminded that all of their efforts were not in vain. That may be the most important thing."

What is one thing Laura Bell will take from her experience? "There's a unity that comes from it, and there's also a remembrance thing, which is what I liked about Obama's speech talking about the people who were affected by the events that happened as a result of this man; not just September 11th, but what has happened to them since -- being raised without parents and brothers and sisters ... It was just an emotional and life-changing weekend."

if(typeof AOLVP_cfg==='undefined')AOLVP_cfg=[];AOLVP_cfg.push({id:'AOLVP_76788967001','codever':0.1,'autoload':false,'autoplay':false,'displaymnads':true,'playerid':'89761511001','videoid':'76788967001','width':476,'height':357,'playertype':'inline','stillurl':'dynamic','videolink':'#','videotitle':'dynamic','videodesc':''});

More From TheBoot