On this solemn day, we pause to remember those who lost their lives during the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and the many patriots who have perished in the conflicts in Iraq and Afganistan since that terrible day. We reflect on our nation, our freedom, and the common bonds we share as Americans.
How has 9/11 changed or affected you, and the way you and your family lead their lives? Please be respectful with your comments.
I would like to salute the 343 brave New York Firemen who died trying to save Corporate America including some of my fellow company employees that were stationed in the TWIN TOWERS!
I would also like to salute Commander Dan Shanower from Naperville for sacrificing his life.
I knew him personally and heard his famous words!
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FREEDOM IS NOT FREE!
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God Bless the firemen, Commander Shanower and the hundreds of others who lost their lives on that FATEFUL DAY!
I remember vividly that the day was much like today. Bright sun, a bit of fall in the air. I got the first hint of what was happening from a community service officer (still works for the city, don’t know his name) who was subbing for the school crossing guard on Loomis, as I walked my then 5 year old to Kindergarten.
As we crossed the street, he asked me if I heard that a plane had struck the World Trade Center in New York. I hadn’t, and it wasn’t until I was back home, watching the horror unfold, that I realized the enormity of what had befallen us, and understood that the security we as a country felt, due to our separation by two oceans, was gone forever.
I did what probably everyone did at that moment. I called my wife, who was in North Carolina on a business trip. I reached her immediately, (which never had happened before, or since!), and she told me all meetings were cancelled, and they were trying to decide what to do. In perhaps my most lucid moment that day, I told her to go rent a car. Ultimately, she didn’t have to as her co-workers commandeered a rental vehicle, and 6 of them wound their way home to their respective states via Pennsylvania.
Perhaps, it’s because of the fact that I first heard of it walking my daughter to school, but I often remember wondering that fall, a lovely and glorious one, as I watched her and her young classmates blithely unawares of the tragedy that had occurred, joyfully march off to class, What will be their future? What has fate in store for them?
These are still open questions, yet to be answered, for them, and, for this country.
This is a day of remembrance; for those who lost their lives, those that had the unbelievable fortune to escape, and the incredible hero’s that day and thereafter, public servant and ordinary citizen alike. I honor them all, (thank you Chuck Wherli), the living, and, the dead, in New York, Pennsylvania, DC, and elsewhere, who, by giving their very life, or in a simple act of kindness and comfort, showed the true greatness of the country.
I have the utmost respect for everyone who lost their lives in the attack, from the people working in the building to the firefighters and police officers who sacrificed everything in the line of duty. I still clearly remember my reaction the morning of September 11th, 2001. I was getting ready to go to work, and flipped on the TV while I sat there quickly scarfing down some frosted mini wheats with a measly sprinkling of milk, having gotten the last of the gallon.
My reaction was confusion, not confusion of what would drive someone to do something like this... but confusion as to why the TV station I was watching was playing a movie so early in the morning. I watched for a few minutes, trying to figure out if what I was watching was Die Hard, or some similar attack on New York City action movie I'd never seen. I remember thinking how realistic the special effects were and how interesting the cinematography was, using the news anchors to progress the plot of this mysterious movie I'd never seen before.
Looking at the clock and realizing I was on the verge of running late, I figured I'd look up the TV listings when I got to work if I still at all cared what movie it was, assuming I didn't forget about it on the way. Being pressed for time and originally turning on the TV to check the weather to see if I needed to bring a coat with me or not I grabbed the remote and flipped channels hoping the catch the end of some morning news show. Then it hit me.
This "movie" was playing on every channel. It wasn't a movie, it was real. I ended up not going to work, along with nearly everyone else at my company and instead watching the live news coverage with my family. To this day, remembering the feeling of confusion trying to figure out what "movie" I was watching changing instantly to complete horror when I realized what was happening when I changed channels still creeps me out.
Having grown up in this country, living my whole life without any major threat, (I mean, I guess I grew up during Desert Storm, but I don't think anyone ever had any reason to feel at all threatened for their immediate safety or lifestyle.) I've always naively felt immune to this sort of thing. Terrorism? That's the kind of stuff you hear about when you watch the world news and they talk about the Middle East. As cliche as the phrase "in a post 9/11 world" is, I think very few people, myself included would appreciate the things we have in this country as much as I do now without this eye opening experience. Previous to the attacks, I never had any reason to ever consider how much is hanging by a thread that could all be taken away in the blink of an eye by a small band of insane people willing to stop at nothing to destroy America.
I suppose it was a semi-justified sense of false security. After all, who would be dumb enough to mess with the greatest country on the planet? Who would be powerful enough to destroy not one, but two vital skyscrapers in the New York skyline? Before all this transpired, why would you ever worry about something like this happening?
Since then, I've found the reaction of our government as a whole to be somewhat embarrassing. I don't think the Patriot Act makes anyone feel safer. Our retaliation to the attacks by just carpet bombing any area that could possibly be harboring any terrorists was ridiculous, the "war on terror" has been about as effective as the "war on drugs". Dragging Saddam Hussein in to this fiasco further complicated things. So far we've spent over half a trillion dollars on military action resulting in a response from the September 11th attacks.
Are we any safer? It seems to me our senseless aggression in the Middle East has accomplished nothing but giving even more reason for these extremists to hate us and in turn seek whatever retaliation they can.
For Patriot’s day, My daughter Megan’s school suggested the kids wear red, white & blue clothing. When Megan came home today, I asked her about her day at school and if everyone wore red, white & blue. “Yeah, a lot of kids did. It was kind of weird.”
“Why was it weird?”
“I don’t know why we had to wear it.”
“Well, it’s Patriot’s Day in America and wearing red, white and blue is a way to recognize this day.”
Megan thought for a moment and circled around our driveway on her bike. “There was a guy once who walked on a tightrope between the twin towers. Did you know that? He did. Really. But the twin towers aren’t around anymore. They don’t exist. I know what happened with the planes and the twin towers, you know.” She said.
I’ve been waiting for this day. The day that she would bring this up and the day that I knew I would struggle, depending on her age, with how much to tell her about that day. If only she was older than 7 I could tell her how after that day, the world as we Americans knew it would never be the same. For once we had experienced what many, many countries and people experience every.single.day of their lives. The shock, fear, grief and the utter sense of lack of control in your surroundings that once seemed untouchable.
“Oh? What happened?” I wanted to test the waters to see how much she had picked up on over the years. After all, she was wasn’t even 3 months old when 9/11 occurred.
“Well…” she said as she continued to ride around the driveway. “There were a couple of robbers. They robbed the planes and then flew them into the twin towers and it wasn’t even an accident!” Even at her age and even with her most basic explanation of events, I could sense her disbelief at something so unbelievable, so evil.
“Yes, it was a very bad thing that happened. I still remember where I was when I found out about it and saw it happening on TV.”
“Really?” She stopped pedaling and looked at me. “Where were you?”
“Well” I said, choosing my words carefully and letting my memories carry me back to that day. “I was sitting in my bed and you were really little. You were only a few months old. I had you on my lap and I was rocking you. I was watching a TV show and they started showing one of the towers after the first plane hit. And as I was watching, the second plane hit the other building. I remember thinking that maybe it was still an accident-that maybe the second plane got confused in the smoke and hit the tower by mistake.”
“But it wasn’t a mistake.” Megan corrected me.
“You’re right. It wasn’t but I wanted to believe it was. Those were some very bad people that did that. It was a very sad time. Then I took you to your babysitter but after an hour or so, I went to pick you up and brought you home.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Because nothing like that had ever happened in our country before. It was a pretty scary time and I just felt safer having you home with me.”
Megan thought for a moment and then said, “That’s weird.”
I left it at that and we walked inside the house. Someday, when she’s older I’ll tell her more…I’ll paint a more vivid picture of how that day changed our world.
I’ll tell her about how for days, no weeks, I sat in front of the television absorbing the terror others were experiencing; absorbing it to the point where I had nightmares and Jay scolded me to turn off the television to just have a moment of inner peace.
I’ll share the fact that it is because of those events that news programs now have the scrolling news items and headlines across the bottom, providing constant updates.
How everyone on 9/11 and in the days following became all too familiar with the name Cantor-Fitzgerald and how those names will forever be linked to 9/11.
How after that day, some good, decent people had their lives made more difficult simply because of the way they looked or the religion they chose to practice.
That for probably the first time in our country’s history, we had a surplus of blood donations that were meant for survivors- survivors who didn’t exist.
That it wasn’t just the Twin Towers but our Pentagon and who knows what other landmark I would have had to include in that list had it not been for those brave people on flight 93.
That for years after that day, every time I boarded a flight for work my palms started to sweat and even now I am reluctant to fly long distances because I know long flights, with full gas tanks, make the ideal weapon.
And I’ll tell her about the Oprah show that I went to that October that broke my heart. The new widow with a 7 month old baby inside her sobbed and contemplated what her life would be like raising a baby without her husband. My heart ached for her and still does. Every 9/11 I find myself wondering how she’s doing. Has she picked up the pieces? Has she been able to move on?
But for now, that’s enough. For now...
Jen, I understand your feelings and realize that you are much young than I am but our country has been hit hard once before. At 7:55AM on Sunday, December 7, 1941, 183 Japanese warplanes swooped out of a cloudless sky and demolished the US Pacific fleet docked at Pearl Harbor. The overall death toll reached 2,350, including 68 civilians, and 1,178 injured. That too was another day that my generation had experienced as well as 9/11. Like you I will never forget 9/11 nor will I forget Dec. 7, 1941.
God Bless America
I also clearly recall the day 9/11 occurred. I was in bed, enjoying the one day during the week I could sleep past 9 am when my father burst into my room, waking me by blurting out "They just landed a plane on the World Trade Center! You better get out here!"
I was obviously confused. They way he phrased the statement, I figured someone had accomplished an extraordinary feat of piloting and had landed a Harrier (a plane which requires no runway to take off or land; it hovers for a few seconds before it starts its forward motion) on top of one of the towers. I fell back asleep.
Minutes later, my dad came back in and exclaimed, "They just did it again! Bastards! I don't know who's responsible but this is bad. This is really bad. You better get up: your future is being shaped on live TV right now." He was nearly hysterical.
So I got out of bed, and the horror I saw on the TV is something I'll never forget, and not just because the news agencies were OH so kind and showed it repeatedly, over and over. I remember the feeling I had: I wanted to enlist. I wanted to fight. It was a galvanizing force, much like Pearl Harbor was.
Unfortunately, in the years since, I've come to think much like Eli Hodapp (see above). Due to the Freedom of Information Act, we also now know that about six upper level government officials, including the president, knew the attack on Pearl Harbor was coming and they let it happen. They knew it would drive most Americans to war. And it did. Well at least that war had a strong moral ground. We haven't been in a war that does since.
Our country's actions since 9/11 make me seriously question whether or not we knew, and it makes me absolutely ill. To think of all the brave men & women who lost their lives not only in the towers, but in the nonsense war that is Iraq, makes me sick to my stomach. To think of all the huge companies like Halliburton who have made billions of dollars off of this game our goverment calls warmongering.
The Bush administration bullied and scared us into invading Iraq, and our Congress was stupid enough to follow right along. Afghanistan was the right move, and they screwed that up too.
I offer all of my condolances to anyone who lost a loved one or a friend in the horror of 9/11, be they victim or volunteer. But let's honor their memories by changing something, not by following the status quo, which obviously isn't doing us any good. We are NOT safer since 9/11; we are NOT making the world safer.
Love my country, hate my government.
John Schmitt wrote:
"Due to the Freedom of Information Act, we also now know that about six upper level government officials, including the president, knew the attack on Pearl Harbor was coming and they let it happen. They knew it would drive most Americans to war. And it did."
You'd better check your sources. FDR knew that the Japanese were preparing to go to war with the U.S., and that an attack somewhere was probably imminent. There is no evidence that he knew that Pearl Harbor was the target, though, and there were a lot of other places the Japanese could attack (in fact, they DID also attack many of these other targets). While in hindsight, Pearl Harbor seems like an obvious choice, an assault against battleships in port by planes launched from aircraft carriers operating thousands of miles from their home bases was almost inconceivably daring by conventional military thinking in 1941.
I remember the day of September 11th all too well. I was flying that day - on a United flight from O'Hare. We were in the air when the pilot came on and told everyone to immediately take their seats - that we had been ordered to land immediately. In what seemed less than 10 minutes, we were on the ground in St. Louis. As we taxied to the terminal I could see air force fighters taking off 2 at a time. We knew something was very wrong but didn't know what until we deplaned and saw the televisions in the concourse. It was a very scary time - made even more so when we left the terminal to try and get a rental car to drive home to Chicago. Outside the terminal were soldiers with automatic weapons and military vehicles with 50 cal machine guns patrolling the roadways outside.
It was the first time in my life that I truly realized that people in the world hate our country and our way of life and want to destroy it.
In the years since, I fully came to believe that there is no way to convince these fanatics that we can co-exist. They simply want us dead and will stop at nothing to accomplish their goals.
Two of my stepsons went to Iraq as Marines. Our next door neighbor in Mahomet, IL was killed. She left behind a 2 yr old daughter. My boys are both back now. That's 5 yrs I'm glad are over. But all the other families affected are hard to think about.
God bless America and bring them home now.
I'm just thankful it didn't affect the upper class too much. To be frank, anyone from lower crust of this nation, wants to fight this war. I don't see any need for it.
I think that even though I was 5 when this accident stricked, that all of the poeple who died during that accident, should be saluted and have a proper burial! They risked their live to save others.