Remembering 9/11 Twelve Years Later
On the 12th anniversary of 9/11, many of us ask each other “Where we you when the towers fell?”
It seems surreal to me to know there is a generation of children who are twelve now who have no memory of that day because they weren’t born yet. I am sure my veterans of foreign wars feel the same way. How many of us can say where we were when Pearl Harbor was bombed or when hundreds of US Marines died in the Tet Offensive. Or where we were when JFK, RFK and Martin Luther King were assassinated. I can’t tell you where I was when Elvis died or Marilyn Monroe.
But I can tell you where I was on 9/11/2001.
I was home. I’d stayed home from work because I was sick, and I was in bed when the phone rang. It was my husband calling from his office at Penn State’s Powder Metallurgy Lab. Something had happened in New York, he told me. Would I please turn on the TV and tell them what was going on because the internet on campus was overloaded and no one could get any information. There was no TV in his part of the lab.
I got out of bed and turned on the TV. On the screen was a horror I could not imagine. It looked like something out of a disaster movie. The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were engulfed in flames. Paper, and people, were falling from the burning buildings (yes, they showed this on national TV. I think the cameramen had no idea what they were actually filming, either that or they were in shock just like the rest of us.)
My husband told me he had me on speakerphone as I relayed what I was seeing. Not long after, the South Tower collapsed.
In 1986, I was a sophomore in high school, and my teacher turned on the TV for the class to watch the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger. As we watched excitedly, we witnessed the shuttle explode on national TV. I remember the announcer saying there had been a malfunction, to which I thought, “No, the whole damn thing just blew up.”
Fast forward to 2001, and I hear the announcer say that something has fallen off the South Tower, to which I thought, “No, the whole damn tower just fell.”
We were all in shock. Crying. I don’t think any work got done that day. Mark may even have come home early. I don’t remember much of what happened after the North Tower went down. I remember being riveted to the TV, watching the destruction of the towers and the Pentagon. It would be some time before the crash in PA would be tied to the same attackers.
We were in a daze for days. Trying to make sense of it all. A former exchange student from Japan called us in a panic to make sure we were OK because he didn’t know where Shanksville was in relation to us.
But if we are to remember the horror and the death of that day, we must also remember the hundreds of courageous acts of selflessness and bravery.
We must remember the first responders who ran into the buildings to rescue victims trapped inside, and the Search & Rescue dogs that went through the wreckage looking for survivors: http://huff.to/1fZmTIZ
We must remember the people who carried the handicapped on their backs out of the buildings and the guide dogs who led their owners to safety. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salty_and_Roselle
We must remember BOATLIFT, the single largest maritime evacuation in history, made possible by hundreds of volunteers who drove their boats into the debris cloud to lower Manhattan to pick up the terrified, stranded survivors. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDOrzF7B2Kg
If 9/11 horrified and demoralized us, it also proved that we as a people are the best when things are worst. Thousands died that day, but tens of thousands LIVED. Over 17,000 people were in the WTC complex that morning, and the vast majority of them survived. All of the children in the daycare center in WTC 5 were evacuated to safety, as were all of the children in the daycare centers near the Pentagon. 500,000 were evacuated from Lower Manhattan by boat. There were 22,000 people in the Pentagon that morning. The death toll at the Pentagon was under 200. That means 21,800 of those people got out alive.
9/11 was an unbelievable tragedy, but it was also a triumph. The death toll could have been in the tens of thousands, but the courage and bravery of the first responders, and ordinary people helping each other, saved thousands that day. And that is something we should never forget.
It seems surreal to me to know there is a generation of children who are twelve now who have no memory of that day because they weren’t born yet. I am sure my veterans of foreign wars feel the same way. How many of us can say where we were when Pearl Harbor was bombed or when hundreds of US Marines died in the Tet Offensive. Or where we were when JFK, RFK and Martin Luther King were assassinated. I can’t tell you where I was when Elvis died or Marilyn Monroe.
But I can tell you where I was on 9/11/2001.
I was home. I’d stayed home from work because I was sick, and I was in bed when the phone rang. It was my husband calling from his office at Penn State’s Powder Metallurgy Lab. Something had happened in New York, he told me. Would I please turn on the TV and tell them what was going on because the internet on campus was overloaded and no one could get any information. There was no TV in his part of the lab.
I got out of bed and turned on the TV. On the screen was a horror I could not imagine. It looked like something out of a disaster movie. The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were engulfed in flames. Paper, and people, were falling from the burning buildings (yes, they showed this on national TV. I think the cameramen had no idea what they were actually filming, either that or they were in shock just like the rest of us.)
My husband told me he had me on speakerphone as I relayed what I was seeing. Not long after, the South Tower collapsed.
In 1986, I was a sophomore in high school, and my teacher turned on the TV for the class to watch the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger. As we watched excitedly, we witnessed the shuttle explode on national TV. I remember the announcer saying there had been a malfunction, to which I thought, “No, the whole damn thing just blew up.”
Fast forward to 2001, and I hear the announcer say that something has fallen off the South Tower, to which I thought, “No, the whole damn tower just fell.”
We were all in shock. Crying. I don’t think any work got done that day. Mark may even have come home early. I don’t remember much of what happened after the North Tower went down. I remember being riveted to the TV, watching the destruction of the towers and the Pentagon. It would be some time before the crash in PA would be tied to the same attackers.
We were in a daze for days. Trying to make sense of it all. A former exchange student from Japan called us in a panic to make sure we were OK because he didn’t know where Shanksville was in relation to us.
But if we are to remember the horror and the death of that day, we must also remember the hundreds of courageous acts of selflessness and bravery.
We must remember the first responders who ran into the buildings to rescue victims trapped inside, and the Search & Rescue dogs that went through the wreckage looking for survivors: http://huff.to/1fZmTIZ
We must remember the people who carried the handicapped on their backs out of the buildings and the guide dogs who led their owners to safety. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salty_and_Roselle
We must remember BOATLIFT, the single largest maritime evacuation in history, made possible by hundreds of volunteers who drove their boats into the debris cloud to lower Manhattan to pick up the terrified, stranded survivors. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDOrzF7B2Kg
If 9/11 horrified and demoralized us, it also proved that we as a people are the best when things are worst. Thousands died that day, but tens of thousands LIVED. Over 17,000 people were in the WTC complex that morning, and the vast majority of them survived. All of the children in the daycare center in WTC 5 were evacuated to safety, as were all of the children in the daycare centers near the Pentagon. 500,000 were evacuated from Lower Manhattan by boat. There were 22,000 people in the Pentagon that morning. The death toll at the Pentagon was under 200. That means 21,800 of those people got out alive.
9/11 was an unbelievable tragedy, but it was also a triumph. The death toll could have been in the tens of thousands, but the courage and bravery of the first responders, and ordinary people helping each other, saved thousands that day. And that is something we should never forget.