My dear readers from countries other than the United States, please permit me to concentrate on my country today. If you are looking for my Music Moves Me post, please click here.
Today marks 22 years.
These anniversaries will become fewer and fewer, because that is how life progresses. This year, though, there will still be ceremonies.
I believe we've reached the point where September 11 is only the day on the calendar between September 10 and September 12. When someone makes an appointment for September 11, or mentions something they are doing on September 11, our mind doesn't catch on the date for a moment. That isn't a bad thing, but people of my generation will remember 9/11 for the rest of our lives.
There are still thousands of people who were impacted by the events of those days.
I remember that evening, too, sitting with my preteen son in front of a computer and reading headlines from newspapers all over the world. It was front page news everywhere, our American tragedy. Now, newspapers die everyday and we are connected by social media, something we could not have imagined on September 11, 2001.
For our grandchildren, perhaps they will ignore a plaque in the
lobby of their high school honoring the alumni who died that day. This is the plaque in the lobby of my high school with 11 names of alumni who died that day.
But, more likely, they will have their own way of remembering, perhaps
the way we who were not alive for Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941) still
remember and honor that day.
One of the names on that plaque in my high school is Christian Regenhard. He was the youngest New York City fire fighter to die on 9/11. He was one of those who ran to danger, making it possible for others to escape and live another day.
Of the 11 people
who
went to my high school that died that day, two of them left pregnant
spouses.
Yes, we who remember, remember September 11, 2001 in
different ways.
My father in law was born on a September 11 (although he was no longer with us on that day.)
On September 11, 2016, I visited his grave and took these pictures of a 9/11 memorial on the cemetery grounds.
Other people I know (family and
friends in New York City, where I grew up) lost loved ones, friends, neighbors.
There
were the children in a nearby elementary school and a nearby high school
to the World Trade Center in New York City. The story of the students of Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan is especially poignant.
There were the Sarasota, Florida children who had been gathered with then President Bush to listen to a story time before he was called away. They are also children of 9/11.
There is comedian Jon Stewart, still fighting for health care for 9/11
responders who are still dying from their exposures that day, and the
following days. We must never forget them. Too many people in power seem to have forgotten these men and women.
Maybe you, my reader, don't remember because you weren't
yet born, or were too young to remember, and have no personal connection
like the children of 9/11. After all, it's been 22 years.
But history doesn't forget.
And I won't, either, until the day my memory or my body fails.
A whole generation has been born since then. A generation that thinks of 9/11 the way I think of Pearl Harbor, something that happened to my parents.
ReplyDelete...last night 60 Minutes had a remembrance of 9/11. It was moving.
ReplyDeleteI am not American but I remember where I was when I heard the news. I was driving my car in Markham, ON and went into Markville Shopping Mall where there were public televisions to watch it unfold. Think of all that has happened since, a war in Iraq, Osama bin Laden assassinated, ISIS, the handing back of Afghanistan carte blanche and the re-enslavement of women there, and the descent of America’s mayor into pitiful state of ridicule and disdain. And yes, for many, it’s just another date in history.
ReplyDeleteI'll never forget watching the horrible attack happen live and how I felt after. Have a meaningful September 11th.
ReplyDeleteThe class I'm covering currently, of 9th graders--they were born in 2009. I didn't mention it to them, and only a couple mentioned it themselves. Can you believe it's been 22 years?
ReplyDeleteI remember that it was a beautiful day, with the sky as clear and as blue as can be. I was hanging laundry outside whenhusband called me from work to ask whether I'd been watching TV, which I had not. I had two very young children at the time. We went to the library for story time, but the story time lady didn't come, so the kids and I spent an hour there doing puzzles and reading. The few people there spoke about the events in hushed tones. When we got home, I did my best to keep them away from the TV, while at the same time stealing moments in front of it myself as the whole nightmare unfolded. My husband and I spent the day worrying about a good friend who worked in one of the towers, and felt an immense rush of relief when we finally heard, at 9 that night, that he had made it home safely.
ReplyDeleteAnother friend was a NYC firefighter with one of the first companies to arrive on the scene. He survived the day because his commander sent him to the river to fill the water tanker. The commander went into the burning tower and died. That day left our friend completely messed up, both physically and mentally, still to this day.
On Monday, my husband and I wondered for how long New York will continue to have the yearly ceremony where relatives of victims read out the names of every person who died. Or at least for how long the NYC local TV affiliates will cover it. This is the first year I did not watch at least some of it.
Still, what I remember most about that day is how beautiful the sky was, and to this day, a beautiful sky in late summer brings that day to mind.