Take some time to remember 9/11
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I always have trouble getting work done on 9/11, no matter how many years have passed since 2001.
On the day it all happened, I was working as the Chicago reporter for PRWeek magazine, frantically trying to get through to the main office in New York and wondering where everyone I knew -- coworkers, family and friends -- was. In the days following, I was writing about how public relations and marketing campaigns for consumer goods ground to a halt while news focused on the tragedy and its aftermath.
And, by the end of that week, I was in New York (via a Greyhound bus), moving my mother to Chicago, something we had planned long before but which took on new urgency.
I was born and raised in New York. I went to a high school named Xavier on 16th Street in Manhattan. It’s a Catholic school where a lot of police and firefighters send their children. An incredibly close-knit place, I went to college with three high school classmates and keep in regular touch with many more even today, more than 35 years after I graduated. On 9/11/2001, 65 people associated with that school – alumni, parents and other relatives – died in the Twin Towers.
Yesterday, I happened to hear from a high school friend who told me how he spent two weeks at Ground Zero (he’s a volunteer firefighter as I recall) right after 9/11 searching for remains of his closest friend. Another high school friend works for one of the engineering companies that was involved in cleaning up the site. Three of my cousins worked in the area then, one in the U.S. Customs House that was also destroyed.
Even though seven years have passed, it’s all still very real and very immediate in New York. I suppose I worry that the rest of the country is forgetting. Of course life has to go on and we all have jobs to do, but I wonder if Sept. 11 shouldn’t be a national day of remembrance. Turning it into a holiday when we’re all off from work doesn’t seem right somehow. That doesn’t say tribute as much as it does, ‘oh boy I get to sleep late today.’
What do you think, how do we market the idea of a national day of remembrance where we pause from our daily routines? Am I completely off base on this?
Comments
John, I had forgotten that your school was in Manhattan- In response to your poignant posting today, I will say that the tv coverage and remembrances went a long way toward reminding my children this evening. They are older now and get a new chance to grasp what happened and see the horrible images. I would hope that keeps up, just as every January 19 we hear Moartin Luther King Junior's speech. Any war is horrible, and perhaps they should all be televised or "YouTubed" so that kids see it and the horror is made palpable. I don't want it to engender generalized hate, but rather to engender a widespread aversion to war, and a move toward understanding one another. When two cultures collide so violently, someone needs to pay attention. Just my opinion.
Posted by: Catherine Leonard | September 11, 2008 10:52 PM
John, I appreciate your article and agree with your thought of a national rememberance day for this tragic event in our history.
From Pfizer in New Jersey, I witnessed many colleagues in our auditorium crying in grief of their loved ones fate as they watched TV as the Towers collapsed. Later I witnessed the smoke of the Towers from a NJ viewpoint as I headed towards home to my church where I could pray. Ten days later, I spent a day serving meals at a ground zero restaurant to those helping to find the living and the dead at the site. My friend of 22 years, Joe Deluca, perished in the Flight 93 Shanksville Pennsylvania disaster. I visited there later to pay my respects and support their memorial cause. These were reality checks.
Today, as a Knights of Columbus Officer I am pleased to report that our Supreme Council resolved that September 11th be observed each year as a World Day Of Prayer For Peace-September 11th.
Posted by: Gary Port | September 15, 2008 8:34 PM
My thoughts now?
Well I recall buying two small flags the following Sat and distinctly recall
thinking this patriotic mindset -- the kind our parents would recognize from WWII -- would not last.
I thought I will be embarrassed to have these flags. Embarrassed.
Maybe that same Saturday certainly some Sat not too long afterward, 3 weeks? We went out to dinner.
The sense of unease and quiet was expressed in everyone's faces, more important there was a seriousness.
And I knew that too would not last.
Why did I know these things? Well I know my generation and I know that of my parents and yours.
I know what both are made of.
You and I are still those marginal men betwixt our parents and our peers.
Over time, I've come to love my parents and grandparents and uncles andaunts more and (many, not most of) my peers less.
That's what I take away from 9/11.
Posted by: Len Oreto | September 22, 2008 10:23 AM