Remembering 9/11 I’ve given serious consideration to what I’d write as an observance of today’s anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and the loss of Flight 93 in a Pennsylvania field. I’m wise enough to realize nothing I could ever come up with would salve the wounds nor would it bring closure to the grief and loss felt just as strong today as it was 13 years ago. There will be ceremonies and moments of silence today, in New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and in communities across the country. There will be speeches and statements and essays much like this one designed to serve as memorials to those lost and calls to remain steadfast in devotion to our country. There will be the inevitable condemnation of those who chose the attacks in the belief it would become the opening salvo in the ultimate destruction of the United States. There will also be the reminders that we are still battling forces which seek our demise. Their names may have changed, but their ambition is still the same. In the days and weeks following the 2001 attacks, there was a unification in this country not seen in decades. Conservative stood shoulder to shoulder with liberal. The working man and woman stepped up their efforts to ensure this country kept moving forward. Ethnic divides fell away and skin color and ancestral claims became secondary to the notion of One Nation, One People. We were Americans. We proclaimed we would not be defeated, we would not be cowed, we would not give in to evil. We declared the terrorists would not win. We got mad. We made plans. We took action. We became the United States of America and no one needed to come looking for trouble with us because we could give as good, and a whole lot better, than we got. At least for a while. It took some time but slowly and surely we all became comfortable in our lives again. Vigilance, solidarity, allegiance, loyalty to country and neighbor diminished little by little. We lapsed back to some semblance of what we were before the attack. The walls, the ones built to insulate and isolate, returned. Fear of the monster hiding under the bed/in the closet/down the street/across the ocean dictated policy and led to decisions still being scrutinized and rehashed. We’re not the same as we were before the attacks. We’re not even the same as we were during the recovery. We’ve changed. Only history will decide if it was for the good. We’re back to the individual benefit trumping the group advantage. We’re back to “what’s in it for me?” We’re back to race differences, wealth disparity and political bickering which benefits no one but the talking heads and pundits. We have our problems. We don’t need, for lack of a better way to describe them, dipwads to create even more challenges to overcome simply because they have nothing better to do than cause trouble. I believe we’re still good people. We have our faults and flaws but the decent, honorable, sincerely patriotic people are still building on our still-solid foundation of freedom and strength to ensure a future marked by peace and progress and hope. I’m part of the unenviable generation who can recall where they were or what they were doing when they heard the news about some of the greatest tragedies of the past century. I was only a toddler when John F. Kennedy was assassinated but I remember when, years later, his brother Robert was killed, as well as the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I remember watching the replays and the commentary when the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after launch. And I can tell you moment by moment where I was and what I was doing when the first reports of trouble at WTC hit the news. I wish I couldn’t. We remember September 11, 2001. Let today serve as the monument to what we have survived as a nation. Let it become the measure of standard to exemplify what we can, and should, become for tomorrow. Jean Henderson Jean Henderson is a columnist for the Citizen Tribune.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 16:18:12 +0000
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