Thirteen years. Thirteen years ago today. I remember waking up, to the image of a burning high rise that I had seen so many times in my life. For those of us who spent enough time in NYC to no longer consider ourselves tourists anymore we had stopped looking up. They were just two more pillars that reached the sky over our Athens our Rome, so beautiful to so many, but common place to us. There it was, burning. My first thoughts were of a plane taking off from JFK or La Guardia, having trouble with the engines and falling to gain altitude, knowing in my heart that people were dead. I sat there with my fraternity brothers staring dead paned into the screen as the second plane hit. It was in that moment, as my heart sank into my chest and with full knowledge that the first had been no accident, that my worry turned to fear. I spent the next couple of hours trying desparately to get through to my sister who if I remember correctly lived in Hell’s Kitchen and worked in Midtown. The four miles in between didn’t seem so far with planes being used as bombs. I was frantic that the Empire State building would be next, only a short walk from her office. As I called and texted and called and texted the news began to report of another plane going down, this time near Washington. My fears at this point begin to turn to rage as I dialed over and over. Another plane down in the middle of Pennsylvania. I remembered being told as a child that Binghamton would be one of the top ten targets of the Russians were war to break out. Something about first IBM then Lockheed Martin’s headquarters being there. I always dismissed it as tale tails told to us kids to make us feel more important growing up in such a depressing place. But those stories started coming back to me in that instance and I feared that my childhood home might be next. I finally heard from my sister. At this point I don’t remember if it was a call or a text, I just remember crying. She was safe. My parents were safe. I was safe. The next few months were spent in front of a television. Watching firefighters search the rubble for survivors, watching our president remind us that if we stop our lives then the terrorists win, watching the Yankees march to the World Series almost single handedly holding up the hearts of a massively wounded city, watching the World Trade Center flag, battered and torn raised over the stadium before our President threw out the first pitch. Our country was stronger in those moments then we had been in a very long time. Republicans, Democrats, young, old, Black, white, nothing mattered except the Red White and Blue coursing through our veins. It may sound terrible but that was the most proud that I was to be an American in my entire life. We were truly One Nation for just that brief moment in time. It of course was short lived. As the president beat the drums of war against an enemy that had nothing to do with that attack on us the old divisions came back. There was a sentiment that either you were with the President or you were with the Terrorists. And so we went. We split our forces, half to get the men that attacked us that fateful day and half to get another. It took us three years to kill Saddam Hussein and nine and a half to kill Osama Bin Laden, but they are both now dead. In that time our country was torn in half, our Conservative and Liberal rift has never been larger. The money spent on those two wars and the lack financial oversight here at home while they were going on threw us in to one of the worse economic times since the Great Depression. Right blaming Left and vice versa, we stand here, thirteen years later, a country divided. And on no road towards coming back together. Sometimes when someone cuts you so deep like we were all cut that day the scar is worse than the cut. If I had one wish for our country today it would be to remember how we all felt in the months after 9/11. To find a way to come back together. Tau Kappa Epsilon, Declaration of Principles, Chapter Nine: We believe that the essential elements of true brotherhood are love, charity, and esteem; love, that binds our hearts with the sturdy chords of fraternal affection; charity, that is impulsive to see virtues in a brother and slow to reprove his faults; esteem, that is respectful to the honest convictions of others and that refrains from treading upon that which is sacred to spirit and conscience; these are the triple obligations of every brother in the bond.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 16:41:35 +0000
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