9/11 remembered

Today is the 12^th anniversary of the attacks that took place on New York City and Washington, D.C. Four airliners total, one plane was forced down into a Pennsylvania field.

September 11, 2001 is a date we will remember the way we remember the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, HI on December 7, 1941. Which means, in 50 years (or less) most high school students won’t be able to tell us where “9/11” took place or when.

There will be commemorative ceremonies around the country, the two most prominent being in New York City at Ground Zero and the other in that Shanksville, PA field where Flight 93 finally met its end.

There are a number of memorial essays and editorials on the web around the world commemorating this date, including I’m sure, a few that celebrate the date. All each of us can do is remember with our own experiences that fateful day.

For me the day started after the first plane hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center. I had no idea we were under attack until I had washed my face and did the other, normal, morning routines.

That Tuesday was supposed to be about getting some newsletters prepared for bulk mailing; i.e. putting on the mailing labels and one piece of tape each to seal them shut.

A colleague from the service organization was due to come over early, so I made a pot of coffee and got the 500-plus newsletters out and actually started preparing some.

At the time I lived with my brother Carl. He had left for work before 6 a.m. and as was my custom, I waited until he was out the door before getting out of bed and starting my day. I considered it a courtesy to stay out of his way so he could get going in the morning with no interference from me.

Some time before the second plane hit Carl called and told me to turn on the news, so I turned on CNN.

The North Tower was burning and then there it was: the second plane hitting the South Tower. I stood transfixed with labels and newsletters in my hands, amid stacks of mail assembled by zip codes surrounding my feet. And the phone, the handset from a wireless land line.

At some point I grabbed the remote and started checking all the usual channels, the labels, newsletters and phone still in my hands while I delicately avoided messing up the stacked newsletters on the floor.

It seems amazing what details we remember when recalling these big events. Where were you on November 22^nd, 1963? I was in my second grade classroom waiting for class to start after lunch when Miss Kowski came in crying, telling us all to go home.

She told us President Kennedy had been killed and then wept. Our principle, Mr. Morrissey, wanted to know where we were going. We told him Miss Kowski was sending us home. He let us go.

Usually Mr. Morrissey was a hardass who liked to frighten we elementary school children, but on that day even he was in no mood to be an asshole.

So it’s with even greater clarity that I remember where I was and what I was doing on September 11, 2001. Who can forget?

Later that morning that colleague arrived. I don’t recall exactly what time, but it was before 9 a.m. local time.

When I opened the door I asked her if she had seen what was going on. It was surprising to see her actually. Anyone who had been near a TV or even a radio had to know what was happening 2,760 miles away, it was the only thing that mattered at the moment.

She said she didn’t know. My colleague didn’t watch, listen to or read the news because it was too depressing for her. Well, I wasn’t turning off the television and quite frankly, “she is going to find out sooner or later and it might as well be now.” So I told her and invited her in.

We both stood in the middle of the stacks watching the news. Every now and then I would change channels, just for different views of the same horrific event. After a long time, at least a half hour, this colleague looked at me and asked, “What are we going to do?”

She had such a horrified and sad expression when she asked, looking for some direction. I was the wrong person to ask. There was nothing we could do from that little condo. I looked at the newsletters surrounding the room and said, “We get these newsletters ready to be mailed.”

So, with coverage of the events unfolding on September 11, 2001, the two of us labeled and sorted the 500-plus newsletters, concentrating on the task at hand, not the terror gripping the East Coast.

Eventually we finished and had the newsletters sorted in their trays. The woman left, her face drawn down in terrible grief. I wondered if she would be okay, driving the 30-plus miles home.

Then I sat at the table, drinking coffee, eating lunch, trying to make sense of an act that defied all sensibility. With the attack on Pearl Harbor, the attack was on a military installation. That, in some crazy martial logic, made sense. Attack the military.

This attack was on civilians, two towers with tens of thousands of civilians in them, workers and tourists, in what had been the tallest buildings in the U.S. And they used civilian airliners as missiles, killing nearly 300 people just in those four jets.

Some years earlier author Tom Clancy wrote a trilogy of novels, two of which had terror attacks eerily similar to the events of 9/11 and the days after. In Debt of Honor a disgruntled Japanese pilot flies a loaded airliner into the capital during a presidential speech.

In the follow up novel, Executive Orders, terrorists use biological agents to mount an attack. Thoughts of both novels revolved in my thoughts. Tom Clancy had predicted the airliners being used for attacks and the use of biological weapons for terror. It seemed … crazy that a novelist could picture such acts but the intelligence agencies couldn’t?

As time went by we found out exactly what our intelligence agencies knew before the attacks, but on 9/11 and the days that followed, with the anthrax letters getting mailed to Congress and various news organizations, it was incredibly staggering to think our government didn’t see this coming.

About 11 months earlier the same terrorist organization had attacked one of our warships in Yemen. Two years before that they attacked two of our embassies in Africa. Eight years before 9/11 terrorists exploded a bomb in the underground garage of the World Trade Center.

And Tom Clancy basically outlined for us, in two of his novels, how the terrorists would attack us. How could the CIA, FBI, NSA and the military intelligence be so blind?

Turf wars. You’d think we were all on the same side, but with so much money at stake for each agency, sharing knowledge, which is the same as power, was (and is) not done. That’s why we got the Department of Homeland Security. And the problems still aren’t solved.

But here it is, 12 years later. The intelligence and leadership failures aside, I remember three thousand people died, of all nationalities, races and religions, died on our soil as a result of 19 terrorists and their organization.

The passengers and crew of United Flight 93 tried to take over the plane, causing it to crash in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. That field is now a national park, with a moving memorial to the 40 passengers and crew that stopped at least that one plane from reaching its target.

Maybe one of these days all the wars and acts of terror will stop. Maybe we’ll all treat each other with dignity and respect. Maybe one of these days we’ll remember 9/11 and think about creating peace in the world, not retaliation; think about our nation as united, not a fractured collection of uncompromising opponents. Our Earth a place to protect, it’s many nations and ethnic diversity one people, not a collection of warring factions.

As Apollo 8 Astronaut Frank Borman put it, after he returned from his December 1968 trip to the moon, “When you’re finally up at the moon looking back on earth, all those differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend, and you’re going to get a concept that maybe this really is one world and why the hell can’t we learn to live together like decent people.”