It is the anniversary of 9-11-2001. In the not too distant future, the kids will read about it, see it in the history book and maybe documentaries, and react to the event that changed this country and possibly this world kinda like my kids reacted to Vietnam.
They couldn't see the point for all the fuss. They didn't understand the climate that the anti-war protests, and the civil rights movements, were born in, and from. One rarely can perceive froma book what really went on. If we try to keep the emotional content under control, then we fail to express the feelings of the people. Cut and dried reporting of such events as 9-11 rarely give the student any sense of impact. We all know that from sleeping through history or government classes.
I will try to capture some of the emotions I went through that day, because I know the generations to come will not "get it" without some input like this.
I was at my job that morning. I worked for the Army, civil service computer jockey for a commissary. As I was walking past, trying to get the day in gear, one of my co-workers looked up and said to me "A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center." She seemed dismayed, but I kind of shrugged it off. A Piper Cub had hit the building before, and damage was relatively minimal. not long afterwards, on the radio in the computer room, they announced that a second plane had hit the towers. This smele dlike trouble at that point, but the true blow camefrom theone that hit the Pentagon> My dad used to work there....I played in the halls there whn I was a little kid....
Everything stopped. no one knew quite what to do. The gates of the base were closed immediately. One of the workers tried to leave and had to come back to the building. My first real thoughts were of my nephew and his girlfriend, both who work in Manhattan. My second thoughts were of other friends who lived there. I called my step-mom and demanded that she do what I could not from my job site- "Find Troy- whatever it takes- find Troy!" She lucked out, before communications became nearly impossible. He hadn't been able to get to work due to the first crash, and he and a friend watched the second one from the roof of their apartment building in Brooklyn.
His girlfriend ,now his wife, was one of those many who had to walk home over the Brooklyn Bridge. Atleast we could give the news to his badly shaken sister, mom and father. The rest...well, the horror had only just begun.
The towers started to lean, and then crumble. All we had was radio up in the office, and it sounded like something out of Orson Welles' 1938 radio show of the "war of the Worlds." It was unbelievable. It was unreal. It had to be a bad hoax, no?
It was nearly 1 o'clock before I saw the footage on the TV in the breakroom. Nothing was being done. Everyone sat in mute silence watching over and over images of the crashes and the collapse. I sank into a chair and started crying, just unable to comprehend the level of life lost, and the devestation. Our greatest city, a target, one of the most amazing buildings in the world, gone..... I didn't know what to think. I don't think any of us did. If one watched the most realistic horror action film, and tripled the emotional involvement one could experience, it wouldn't come close to what this nation felt that moment. For an astounding moment, we were all, colour, religion, social status unmentioned, looking in the same direction, of one mind, and one shattered heart.
The enemy did not understand then, or maybe even now: you united us in a way nothing else could probably ever have. It will be your own downfall in time.