There were hints that Michael Jordan would come back – again – to the NBA, this time with the Washington Wizards. That was one of the headlines most of that week. Until Tuesday morning. Whatever world existed before then, in a lot of ways…just doesn’t exist anymore. It went down in a pile of rubble in New York City, as almost three thousand people were killed.
On Tuesday, September 11, at 8:49 a.m. Eastern time, a group of Islamic Al-Queda terrorists hijacked the Boston-to-LA American Airlines Flight 11, smashing it into the north tower of the World Trade Center. United Airlines Flight 75 was also on the same Boston-to-LA course, before it was also hijacked and plowed into the south tower at 9:03 a.m. The planes exploded on impact, and the internal structures of the buildings couldn’t handle such a shock. They collapsed, crumbling into a mass of shattered concrete and flames, leaving behind only the twisted chunks of melted-who-knows-what that always appear after disasters. (This particular chunk in the photo below is stationed now in the Newseum, a D.C. museum about journalism. I snapped it while visiting in 2011.)
Acrid black smoke was everywhere, and frantic stampedes began to escape from the chaos. For many of those in the stampede, they never made it out. America was stunned, its citizens trying to comprehend what had happened why the media outlets tried to explain once they understood it.
As stunned spectators, as a country we prayed harder than maybe we ever had, and watched the news. Gradually we found out that this was not an accident, but instead that unimaginably evil men had done something so horrific, for a reason that nobody could really quite understand. It resulted not in merely their deaths, but also brought an end to the lives of the other 246 airplane passengers, and 2,991 lives lost in total. And then we heard that American Airlines Flight 77 had also been hijacked, ramming into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. at 9:37 a.m. President George W. Bush was speaking at an elementary school in Florida when reports first asked him about what happened. His response to them? Basically, it was “Not right now, y’all. There was something bad that happened, but there’s a lot of kids here, and it wouldn’t be good to scare them too much. I’ll answer your questions later.” 
It doesn’t matter whether you liked him as a president or not. That response ought to be admired right up there with Reagan’s speech about the Challenger explosion. That is how leaders respond to a grave tragedy. This was a quote from Bush’s official statement to the press:
“Today we have had a national tragedy. Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country. I have spoken to the Vice-President, to the mayor of New York, to the director of the FBI, and have ordered that the full resources of the federal government be used for the support of the victims and their families, and to conduct a full-scale investigation to hunt down those folks who committed this attack. Terrorism against our nation will not stand.”
While it wasn’t expressed quite as eloquently as how the Commander-in-Chief said it, that same attitude was held by the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93, which was supposed to fly from Newark to San Francisco. Instead, four terrorists stabbed the pilots to death 45 minutes in, seizing control of the plane and sending it back east. Eavesdropping passengers realized that this was a suicide mission, with the target being the White House. That was NOT going to work. So the passengers and crew led a counterattack, led by Mark Bingham, Jeremy Glick and Todd Beamer. “Let’s roll.” And wIth that, they charged and managed somehow to wrestle control away from the hijackers. The only way to win was to lose. So they dropped the plane immediately, and it plowed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. In sacrificing their lives, they saved countless others, and inspired millions. They became heroes, as did all the rescuers from the NYPD, NYFD, National Guard and wherever else they came from. Some of those rescuers, pawing through the rubble, were lost as well, but there were a lot of lives saved by their efforts.
Throughout the devastation, there was this undeniable sense of togetherness, thankfulness and community. This sense of solidarity is only roughly approximated during the Olympics, if it’s there at all on a national scale. It still happens on a regional level whenever there’s a tornado or ice storm, though. Today, it might be hard to believe in some of the lyrics of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” but it wasn’t then. There wasn’t room for cynicism. There’s just been so many awful things that have happened since – Hurricane Katrina, the Aurora shootings, Sandy Hook, the Boston Marathon bombing – that I think we’ve largely just gone numb to the chaos, because it’s easier than caring. And you have to survive. That means tuning things out by necessity. It sounds bad in print, but that’s how most of America has coped in the years since, when were aren’t quarreling with each other over dismal presidential candidates, abortion, homosexuality and race troubles. I’m not sure if it’s related to the stress of 9/11 or not, but in the fifteen years since, the gap between religious faith and secularism has widened tremendously.
In the immediate aftermath, we sent troops into Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, trying to track down and eliminate ALL terrorists, especially those connected with Al-Queda. That sort of succeeded. Saddam Hussein was deposed in 2004, and Osama bin-Laden was killed on May 1, 2011. Many of those troops signed up to serve because of 9/11.
Some questioned why those troops were sent over there in the first place, which was why Darryl Worley’s song “Have You Forgotten?” was written, in response to those critics. The category of “war stories” became a subgenre of the country music landscape, in one of the aftereffects of that day of horror. In a different mood, Toby Keith captured the anger and rage many felt towards those terrorists with “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue,” and he humanized the soldier with “American Soldier.” The lonesomeness which those soldiers often felt was illustrated in John Michael Montgomery’s “Letters From Home,” while Keith Urban’s “For You” gave voice to the emotions those troops felt. Tim McGraw’s poignant “If You’re Reading This” gave listeners a reality check with its reminder of what the cost really was. And that cost changed those men and women who fought for our freedom, which Worley’s “I Just Came Back From a War” tried to explain.
Two weeks after the disaster was opening night for Saturday Night Live’s Season 28. Two of the new cast members were included that season were Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers. On September 27, NYC mayor Rudy Giulani opened the show with a somber tribute to those who lost their lives, and to those in the NYPD and NYFD taking part in the rescue/cleanup efforts. “We will not give into terrorism. We will not live our lives in fear. Having our city’s institutions up and running sends a message that New York City is open for business. Saturday Night Live is one of our great New York City institutions, and that’s why it’s important for you to do your show tonight.” SNL producer Lorne Michaels stares at him for a minute, unsure. “Can we be funny?” The mayor blinks, then says deadpan, “Why start now?” With that, they sent a message to the rest of the country, that everything was going to be okay. It wasn’t yet; and it probably never would be, ever, but for now, it was all right to do normal things again.
Part of that normalcy involved sports. The Yankees went to the World Series that year, which was just right. They had to be there, in order to restore some sense of order. Sports provided the nation an escape as they never had before, that the nation maybe had never needed before. Gradually, time healed. Part of that healing process involved trying to understand what had happened, and memorializing those who perished. Alan Jackson asked us “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning?)” Todd Beamer’s widow Lisa wrote a memoir about her husband and that day. Poet Laureate Billy Collins wrote “The Names.” The site of the Twin Towers was turned into a memorial.
I was eight when it happened. I was at my grandpa’s trailer, and had just woken up. The second plane was hitting as I walked into the living room. In high school while working for the newspaper I was the main sportswriter for, I was doing a human-interest piece near the anniversary. A wise tennis coach I interviewed said that for my generation it was our national tragedy, and he was right. For our parents, it was when the Challenger exploded. For his generation, it was when JFK was assassinated. For our great grandparents, it was Pearl Harbor. You always remember where you were, what you were doing when you heard the news. It’s non-erasable. People can try to forget about it, the darkness and fear of the situation, and the pain. But how can we appreciate the good times, if we don’t also remember the bad? This isn’t a new idea, of course – King Solomon of Israel said the same thing:
“Light is sweet, and it pleases the eyes to see the sun. However many years a man may live, let him enjoy them all. But let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many.” Ecclesiastes 11:7-8 (NIV)
With it being a fifteenth anniversary today, this seemed like an appropriate topic; that sick feeling in my stomach was back as my mind was replaying all the events. I was going to go with something much more lighthearted and frivolous, but this just wasn’t the right time. Maybe for the next post. This one runs long, yes. But histories have a way of doing that, even extremely-concise surface-level stories like this one. Bottom line, have you forgotten?
Writings of Wesley 