9/11 21 years. We tend to mark major anniversaries. But why should this year be less important? It isn’t. And yet I wonder: Is this still a day that stops us in our tracks? We will never forget where we were when we heard, when we saw, when we cried. But so much has passed between then and now. 9/11 changed our nation forever. But so too have events that followed. History marches in only one direction — forward — in lockstep with our lives. Still, I am drawn back. I know that it will be so for as long as I am here. That bright, sunny morning — a postcard of a New York day that turned hopelessly dark. I smell the smoke. I hear the screams. I see the faces of the perpetually missing in walls of photographs. I touch the void. I think of the mistakes that preceded 9/11. And the mistakes that followed. I think of our national goodwill and how it was squandered. I wonder at a unity that has dissipated to acrimony. I mourn for those who died that day. And those who perished in the wars that followed. One of which was a misguided war of choice. The folly of Iraq still haunts us. What if? What if? What if? The questions accumulate. We ask despite knowing there are no answers. Fate can be cruel. And on that day the cruelty left us all altered. I think especially of those who lost friends and loved ones. The personal emptiness they have had to face is greater than our collective grief. Let us never forget that. For the rest of us, we lost a sense of invulnerability. How could our mighty nation be thus attacked? Today the vulnerability of terrorism remains. But it is crowded with a long list of others. Our country is precarious. We feel exposed. At risk. And it is not only for us as individuals. Our national freedoms, Our constitutional rights, Our public health, and the very mechanisms of democratic governance are under threat. We yearn for stability knowing it will be ever elusive. But strength and resilience are possible. We saw that then. And we can see it now. For those of us who were lucky enough to emerge from the tragedy, steady we must be. Steady. Steady. Steady. To carry on the memory of those who perished into the challenges ahead. _______________ On the 10-year anniversary of 9/11, I recorded some remembrances of that day for a special program on my newsmagazine "Dan Rather Reports." I share a few selections here. The memories are as fresh now as they were then.
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Thanks for your memories of that day and thanks for the comments of those who shared their memories.
I was teaching first grade in Tucson, Arizona on that day. It turned out to be one of the most difficult days of my 40 year career. I found out about the attack about 10 minutes before I opened my classroom to my students, not enough time in the rush to get to school and through the office area to get any information beyond that a second plane had just crashed into the WTC. I spent the entire morning in my classroom with my students, who knew almost nothing about it and were not able to understand it at all, trying to keep things normal. (That would extend into the coming days. To six year olds in Tucson, those buildings on the television on fire and crashing down seemed like just another explosive movie scene, not reality.) Some parents took their children out of school, so I couldn’t even teach the planned lessons because so many would have missed them. I had to put together lessons on the fly that the students present could benefit from and the ones absent wouldn’t be hurt by missing.
We had no TV reception in the school and I was not about to turn on the radio as that would not have been normal for my students at all, so I was on a total news blackout all morning. All the other teachers and adults on campus were in their classrooms with their students and doing their jobs, also trying to keep everything normal for the kids. The office sure wasn’t going to be making any PA announcements in an elementary school about what was going on. There were rumors going around school of another plane in the air headed for DC (which ultimately crashed in PA). My brother worked then for the NSA in the DC area. We didn’t know if the attacks were going to continue around the country and we had military installations in the Tucson area that could be potential targets.
At lunch I got about 20 minutes of news that had been taped by the librarian during the morning at a parent’s house near the school, then I was back in the news blackout of my classroom for the afternoon. At least I knew then that all airplanes had been grounded and the attacks were most likely over.
When the students went home, I quickly cleaned up my classroom, prepped for the next day’s lessons and went home to spend the evening catching up on the day’s news. That’s was when I saw the father of one of my students on TV giving blood for attack victims at a local donation center. I have to laugh about him having the leisure to go donate blood when I think of the day I had caring for his little one.
Thanks to you journalists who were on the radio in my car that morning on the way to school and on the TV at lunch and that evening at home for keeping us all informed. I thought I had a long day teaching, but yours was much longer!
I can't help but think those people who were in NYC ON that day will never forget the sights, sound and smells. I would think that is the stuff nightmares are made of. It doesn't compare in enormity but I remember as a teller in a bank being held up at gunpoint. I didn't want to go to work the next day, and if someone came in that I didn't recognize I would start shaking. After leaving banking I never go into a bank without looking around the lobby, looking for anyone who looked suspicious.
I would think New Yorkers would have an instant moment of fear when they heard planes. I think those memories would stay with a person.
That said, I remember the love, the patriotism, the charity that I saw in those New York people who in the face of adversity showed the rest of us Americans what true Americans are made of!