Remembering 9/11
No day shall erase you from the memory of time. ~ Virgil
Inscribed on the blue tile wall at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum
Last month marked twenty-five years since nineteen terrorists boarded commercial jet planes, hijacked them, and flew them into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington D.C. A fourth plane bound for the Capitol was thwarted by courageous passengers aboard the flight, who wrestled control of the jet, taking it down in a Pennsylvania field.
The unimaginable attack claimed the lives of 2,977 innocent souls. These were not soldiers on the battlefield, but civilians, men and women sitting at their desks, drinking coffee, preparing to start their workday. The magnitude of the loss and the anguished accounts of those who survived and those who perished are unbearable to hold. In the ensuing years, thousands more have died of illnesses directly related to the collapse of the towers.
As a native New Yorker, my family and I had personal connections to the Trade Center long before the assault. While the Twin Towers rose in lower Manhattan, they became a source of pride in our already-storied city. We marveled when Philippe Petit, the French highwire artist, strung a tightrope between the buildings and enthralled the world with daredevil trips back and forth without a safety net.
During college, my husband was featured in the World Trade Center newsletter as a salesman at Hoffritz cutlery store, located in the building’s lower level. I attended several meetings at Windows of the World and interviewed for a job at a company on the 101st floor.
I was living in Colorado on the morning of September 11th. Walking briskly into the middle school where I taught, a colleague caught up to me, anxiously sharing the news of the carnage unfolding in New York. I turned on my classroom television just moments before the second plane slammed into the South Tower.
My thoughts immediately went to my nephews, both students at universities not far from the Trade Center. They would be among the thousands of New Yorkers fleeing across the Brooklyn Bridge to evacuate lower Manhattan. Days later, we learned that our family friend’s son had canceled his Monday flight to attend his child’s preschool conference. He would board American Airlines Flight 11 the following morning, the first plane to slam into the North Tower.
In the months before September 11th, we discovered several of the terrorists lived blocks from my husband’s parents in Delray Beach. They frequented the neighborhood Gold’s Gym. Patrons recall their detached demeanor and their habit of exercising in street clothes and shoes.
There were heartbreaking reports from home of vehicles left behind in railroad stations across towns and communities on Long Island and Westchester County. Cars that moms and dads, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters parked in the lot to catch the commuter train into the city that morning, never to return. My own town had several cars that remained for months, family members unable to move the vehicle that had last held their loved one.
Recently there have been attempts to neutralize the events by describing the terrorists as hijackers, while some extremists have suggested that America had it coming. This rhetoric is abhorrent. While speaking at a press briefing that day, Jessica Tisch, the New York City Police Commissioner, made clear that on September 11, 2001, there were terrorists and there were victims. She cautioned those who sought to revise history and blur the lines between good and evil.
Future generations must understand the truth of what happened that day. Initiatives to write accurate curriculum for school instruction are now underway. Those of us who witnessed in person or watched the unfathomable events of that day unfold from afar, will carry emotional scars in our hearts forever.
It has been twenty-five years since nineteen terrorists carried out the deadliest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. On that day, evil men with their stated intent of destroying western civilization, turned the iconic towers into lethal infernos and destroyed the lives of thousands of men and women who got up that morning and went to work.
What memories do you carry from that horrific day?
Bit by bit, that’s all she wrote…