I went to bed last night thinking today was going to be a very difficult day. In a very strange way, I’m happy I was right.
I remember bits and pieces from when I was that young. I remember UCLA basketball games and Dodger games. I remember a few birthdays. I remember chunks of Elementary School. In terms of news, I remember the day Clinton was re-elected. I remember listening to radio news reports during his impeachment. I remember the first World Trade Center bombing. I remember watching the news the night the USS Cole was bombed. I remember watching Gore concede the election to Bush.
I remember 9/11 perfectly…
It was a Tuesday morning. A couple days earlier I had broken a toe, and the wimp 12 year old that I was, I needed a boot and crutches. I remember waking up around 9:30. School started at 8 I believe. My parents, who were in D.C. that morning, had asked the person who was staying with us to keep us home. I knew something had to be wrong for my parents to hold me out of school. We then got a phone call that it was okay for us to go to school. There was a typical California haze that morning. It cleared up that afternoon to what was a rather beautiful day.
We arrived at school and I made my way on crutches to my classroom. I remember my teacher being a lot more reserved than she normally was, and everyone knew that something had happened. Stephen S. Wise had made an executive decision that the teachers were not to explain what had happened that morning, and that they were to instruct any students who did know not to speak about it. They wanted each student’s parents to have to explain the situation to them. To this day I still have mixed feelings about that decision, because we arrived at lunch, and as 6th graders do, we started spreading rumors. I remember sitting outside Hershenson Hall, as all the 6th graders did for lunch, and hearing things about the Sears Tower being attacked, and NYC being bombed, and the Pentagon being destroyed. I’m sitting there, distraught, as I knew my parents possibly were near one of the attacks. After lunch I asked to be excused from class, and I ran to the office to call my parents. They didn’t answer. The much weaker than today cell network was jammed, and it probably would be today also. So I went the next few hours not knowing anything. I would later learn that my parents were in the Capitol building when United 93 was still in the air.
I got in the car to go home, and immediately grabbed a cell phone and called my parents. My mom answered, and at this point I yelled, “WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?” And she was still very distraught and she passed the phone to my dad who explained to me that terrorists had hijacked 4 planes, and they had sent 2 into the World Trade Center in NYC, 1 into the Pentagon, and 1 had crashed in Pennsylvania. I asked him if he was ok, if they were safe, and they said they were. Then I got home. I hopped as fast as I could to my room, turned on my 19” box TV, and that was the first time I saw the carnage. I saw what was left of the WTC, and replays of the planes hitting the towers. I remember it was as if time stood still. Its impossible to be a worldly 12 year old; to be able to comprehend what you were seeing. Hell, most 50, 60, and 70 year-olds couldn’t comprehend it.
Charles Krauthammer has said that the 90s, after the dissolution of the USSR, was really a break from history. There were no “major” conflicts or events. There was Desert Storm, Bosnia, Oslo,Rwanda, Oklahoma City, Kosovo, Clinton’s impeachment. There was economic prosperity around the world, save for Japan. When I say “major”, I mean nothing to fundamentally reshape the country. Then, as my age group was entering the time when we would get a sense of what was going on in the world around us, we were thrust into a war that has not only defined our first few years of cognizance, but may come to define our lifetimes. One day, when my children are old enough to comprehend the gravity of the events, I will tell them this:
“One September morning, 19 cowardly men successfully attacked the United States. They ended a lot of innocent lives, and caused unbelievable destruction. They attacked us because they hated us, because of our understanding of commerce, and because of the growing level of promiscuity in the country, and because of the concept of globalization, and the western ideals that we were spreading, and they hated so many of the Judeo-Christian values at the core of the existence of so many citizens in this country.
And you know what? They failed, because America went on. We still went out and spent money, and watched movies, and went to sporting events, and traveled, and went to concerts. We walked, not in fear of another attack, but with a sense of unitedness. A patriotism that grew so remarkably strong in those weeks after the attack. We walked knowing our country was resilient, and that we would not cower in fear, but bring justice to those who ended so many innocent lives. We would fight to defend our way of life and the freedoms we hold so dear.
And nearly ten years after the attack, those same people who danced in the street at the news that Usama Bin Laden had attacked the United States, were dying in the streets, fighting for our way of life. Fighting for the same freedoms that they cheered the attempted destruction of that fateful September morning. And we didn’t say, ‘Tough shit. You’re on your own.’ No, we supported them, and we even went in to help, because those are the values that we instill in this country. We never seized land. We didn’t install a puppet government. In some ways we succeeded, and in some we failed. The strategy was far from perfect, but what we need to remember is that a lot of good people lost their lives making sure that Americans could sleep soundly, trying to make the world a better place, and making sure we could continue bickering about how to make this country a better place. And we didn’t always get it right, but we did the best we could.”
As we remember the victims, first responders and soldiers who lost their lives in the wreckage and aftermath of 9/11, I want to say that my prayers today are with the family members of the brave members of United 93, if not for whose bravery, my parents might not be alive today.
“Let’s roll!” and God Bless America
