9/11

     Every generation has one of those life-changing moments; things are lost in chaos and confusion - or there's cheering so loud that could tumble buildings.  Those moments when you remember every breath you took, where you were, who you were with and what you felt.  For my parents' generation, it was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the failed journey of the space Shuttle Challenger, the fall of the Berlin Wall and Neil Armstrong's words as he walked on the moon.  My grandparents' generation was that of Pearl Harbor, "I Have A Dream" by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the announcement of the first ever Eath-orbiting space satellite by the Soviets.

     My generation, which is even different from that of my sister's - six years my junior, has witnessed both remarkable and terrible things.  Yet we, like those before us, have those moments where your life changed in the blink of an eye.  We witnessed the first presidential inauguration of an African-American man, a well overdue yet revolutionary event.  We watched as people ravaged our schools and movie theaters with firearms and bombs: Virginia Tech, Columbine High School, Bath School and the Aurora movie theater.  We watched natural disasters in Japan, Haiti and New Orleans sweep away buildings and lives as though they were nothing more than paper.

     The major event that everyone has in the back of their minds today is September 11th, 2001.  Today, eleven years ago, Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners and crashed two of them into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon and one into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people. The United States subsequently declared a War on Terrorism on October 7th.

     If you ask anyone in my college classes, most of them can tell you where they were on this day, eleven long years ago.  However, there is a growing number of people who can't.  Ours was the last grade old enough to remember every detail.  Most students younger that us can't remember where they were or who they were with.  They only remember the panic and the fear in their parents' eyes.

     I was sitting in Mrs. Cross's fourth grade class when my principal came over the loudspeaker.  Everyone usually whispers through afternoon announcements, but even as children we sensed something wasn't right.  The teachers were tense and business-like as they herded us to our buses.  I went home on the bus and I walked through the door to find every television in the house (all three of them) tuned to a different news channel.  My mother's eyes were glued to the screen, the home phone clenched in her hand so tightly her knuckles turned white.  The networks kept playing the same footage over and over: two towers, with thick grey smoke pouring out of them.  I only recall staring at the television screen, waiting for the picture to change.  How do you tell a nine, ten year-old what has happened?  How do you possibly explain that?

     We have been the generation defined by this event. However, there is a serious gap in our education about it.  It took a long time before anyone would tell us anything; I didn't fully know what happened until I was a sophomore in high school - nearly eight years after it occurred.  Even today, teachers rarely broach the subject.  They show clips of a documentary but no one has ever sat us down and explained what went on.  This is partly because it's somewhat of a sore subject, and partly, in my opinion, out of fear that they will explain it wrong.  In all the confusion and the panic, we were forgotten. We often get lost in the shuffle.  No one explains jury duty or taxes or political issues to us; they leave it up to us to figure it out on our own without the proper resources to do so.  The generation who is defined by this event...was forgotten.

     I have been very fortunate in life that though I have lost many people in my twenty years of being alive, I have never lost one to a tragedy such as that.  My uncle in Greenwich Village made it home safely from work that day; my stepfather accidentally missed his flight to Washington DC and was safely on the ground.  I was very lucky, but I know that not everyone was as fortunate as I was and my heart goes out to all those who lost someone that day.

     This post isn't a complaint though.  Todays post is about the unsung heroes of that day eleven years ago.  I stumbled upon a mini-documentary last year about the evacuation by water of an estimated 500,000 New Yorkers (Click HERE to view the video).  Narrated by Tom Hanks, it depicts the panicked residents making their way to the waterfront in Lower Manhattan and boarding ferryboats, Coast Guard vessels, and civilian boats that came to rescue as many as they could.  It's not a story you hear about every day, and I highly recommend watching the twelve minute video.

     And so, eleven years have passed and we have experienced a lot of those types of moments that take one's breath away - in more ways than one.  Airport security is an ordeal and a half, Osama Bin Laden and Kim Jong-il are no more, we are scared to go to the movies, NASA ended its shuttle program...  Eleven years later, the Iraq War is over.  We came together as a nation and we rebuilt.  And eleven years after 9/11, we still haven't forgiven ourselves for allowing such a tragedy to take place.  So today we tread lightly, talk a little softer, hug our family a little tighter and take note of this date in the hopes that history may never repeat itself.

9/11 Memorial Reflection Pool; Credit: ABC News