Remembering 911

As I write this blog at 6:35am on September 11, 2016, the 15th anniversary of an absolutely earth-shattering event, it occurs to me that I may have never written anything about this momentous occasion in the past. 

Our troubled world has endured treachery untold times and will do so again. In his own day, my 6th cousin, President Franklin Roosevelt, contended with an horrendous act of terrorism perpetrated not by the purveyors of a philosophy, but by a nation committed to the enslavement of other nations. Nonetheless, the result was very much the same. Death and Destruction on a massive scale. The loss of untold thousands of lives; in the time it takes to consume a meal or read a chapter in a novel.

“A day that will live in infamy.” 

That same provocative phraseology characterizes the deed perpetrated against the American people a decade and a half ago, as it does that despicable act perpetrated against our nation three quarters of a century hence; and which we will memorialize this year. 

911

A date which will live in infamy. 

The Titanic. Pearl Harbor. The Kennedy Assassination. The Moon Landing. The Challenger Explosion. 

September 11th, 2001 

The latest, (though hardly the least) of those historical happenings on that century old list.

We all remember where we were and what we were doing.
I missed the first two events previously enumerated. My father missed one of them; neither of us having, respectively, been born at the time. 

November 22, 1963

The only day I ‘laid out sick’ from 8th grade. A ‘Stand By for breaking news’ moniker on the television screen; in a day when TV cameras had to be warmed up for live broadcasts. And then the disembodied voice of Walter Cronkite. “President Kennedy has been shot. President Kennedy has been shot in a Dallas motorcade. No other information is available at the moment. Stay tuned.”

July 20, 1969

This same president who succumbed to the assassin’s bullet had predicted it less than a decade before, and claimed before that decade passed an American would set his size 9 footprint on the surface of the moon. Enthralled, I sat in the comfort of my living room and watched the grainy black & white video feed, as Neil Armstrong uttered his short “One small step for man. One giant leap for mankind” monologue, and did that foot and a half backward hop into the six inch thick lunar dust.

January 28, 1986

The warning had gone out. One of the sub-contractors had expressed reservations about launching the Space Shuttle Challenger; hours after the unusually cold overnight weather they were experiencing at the cape. The ‘powers that be’ at NASA chose to ignore the warning, and the magnificent seven boarded their ‘flying steed’ and set off into the unknown. For every launch of every spacecraft ever flown potentially has a bit of the unknown woven into it. A short 73 seconds later… 

Having parked my delivery truck, I had just stepped into a local eatery and as I walked through the lobby two men spoke in amazed whispers. “I suppose it had to happen one day.”

September 11th, 2001 

The latest, (though hardly the least) of those historical happenings on that century old list of precedents.

Our television was on, and (unusually enough) I was helping my wife color her hair in the kitchen. The first plane slammed into North World Trade Center at 8:46am. 17 minutes later the second aircraft barreled into South World Trade Center. Long before the noon hour, two additional aircraft were rudely subtracted from the fleet, and the occupants therein were ushered into eternity. One striking the Pentagon. One falling into an obscure field in Pennsylvania.

3,000 souls succumbed to the events of 911. Twice that many injured; some still bearing the ghastly wounds so callously visited upon them.

Who will ever forget the sights and sounds of what is likely to be the most unforgettable day in the lifetimes of we who either participated in or beheld it; and the subsequent emotions and actions of those who were left behind?

Four jet planes filled to the brim with aviation fuel. A weapon unto themselves. Aluminum, steel, concrete and yes, human flesh vaporized in milliseconds. Hapless souls hanging out of office windows; a thousand feet above the ground. Great fires behind. Empty air beneath. A choice to burn or take the fateful plunge. Falling, twisting bodies. The unmistakable thuds as Mother Earth reached up to receive them. The hundreds of rescue personnel who laboriously climbed those uncertain steps to the top. Their motto: “We have to go out (or up). We don’t have to come back.” World Trade Tower 1 and World Trade Tower 2. Those bastions of height and strength and power. A decade to build. Mere moments to destroy. A couple billion pounds of raw materials and living tissue cascading like a mushroom cloud in reverse. Retired firefighters; fathers of young sons trapped beneath the rubble. Digging. Digging for their boys. Day in and day out; to no avail. For only one of the first responders were ever found, and he having long since departed this earthly sphere in favor of another; and more abiding. 

A fireball caught on remote camera, as one wing of the largest office complex on earth was brought to devastation, and a couple hundred soldiers and civilians in its wake. Those courageous passengers on Flight 93 who, having been informed of the tragic developments of the day, took matters into their own hands; storming the cockpit, sacrificing their lives and almost certainly preventing the loss of our nation’s Capitol Building or the White House, as well as members of the executive and legislative branches of government. Multiplied thousands of military men and women who, subsequently, gave the last full measure of devotion in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The 15th anniversary of 911 was a featured topic on the Sunday Morning television program today, and a tour guide spoke about some people’s perspective that there shouldn’t be any laughing or revelry around and about the memorial pool and the 1776 foot tall World Trade Center building built on the site of the original towers.

And she went on to offer the poignant reflection, 

“Almost 30 million people have visited here since 911. We must never forget. But this place is meant for the living, and I think those who sacrificed their lives in this place would want us to go on living. If in our spirit of reverence and gratefulness for what they did, we avoid laughter, the terrorists win. They who ‘gave their tomorrows for our todays’ would simply want us to go on living.”

A day which will live in infamy added to a lengthening list of days which will live in infamy. God help that we may never add another to the list.


  By William McDonald, PhD. From (Mc)Donald's Daily Diary. Vol. 42. Copyright pending

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