Journeys with Jaye

Remembering 9/11 – 6 Years Later

On 9/11/2001, 19 Muslim terrorists hijacked 4 commercial airplanes and coordinated suicide attacks against the United States. 2,974 civilians died in the attacks, and another 24 are missing and unaccounted for.

2,998.

To begin to get a sense of that number, go to Dale Roe’s site and mouse wheel down the list of names. It takes an agonizingly long time to get to the bottom.

Here are their faces.

Above: This image was displayed during the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

I visited Ground Zero in the spring of 2002, during the Tribute in Light. By that time, the pile of buildings was largely gone, and in its place was a massive hole in the ground. The site where the buildings fell almost looked like a normal construction site, but it only took a quick glance at the nearby buildings and trees to get a reminder of where I was. Papers, window blinds, and other unrecognizable debris still covered the trees, and the sides of all the surrounding buildings were still black with dust.

The line of visitors wrapped around the corner and down the street. The closer we got to the site, the more I was struck by the silence. It was heartbreaking to pass by the posters of the missing, made by desperate family members, and still hanging there months later. For many, hope by then had shifted from finding them alive to finding remains, and about half of those families never even got that. In the months that followed 9/11, poignant messages to the victims covered the wooden construction barricade walls, stretching all the way down the street. As I read them, I felt like I was intruding on many intimate final goodbyes – some were filled with regret, some were filled with pride, but almost all of them ended with “miss you.” When we reached the ramp to the observation deck, it was like reaching the end of a funeral procession. The only thing you could hear was the distant beeping of a construction truck, which seemed to echo in the cavern below.

A firefighter and a construction worker passed by the ramp and quietly proceeded through a nearby gate towards the site. Even without the uniforms, you could tell them apart from the visitors, just by looking at their faces. It was their grim resolve that carried the debris and the remains of the fallen out of Ground Zero, and had returned a sense of normalcy to the site – at least on the surface. The recovery and clean up effort would have been viewed as one of the most impressive in history, and a source of pride, had it not been overshadowed by the circumstances of its existence.

Right as we were leaving the observation deck, as if on cue, a Buddhist monk began chanting a prayer. Heads bowed, the line of visitors stopped moving. You just knew that people of every religion were quietly reciting their own prayers. This was sacred ground.

It’s hard to settle in for the long struggle. Hard to keep your eye on the ball. For some, it’s hard to even believe what happened. The summer of the shark attacks has returned, just as it had in the summer of 2001. We’ve been able to slip back into the luxury of routine, but it couldn’t happen without American heroes, like the recovery workers at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the passengers on Flight 93, and those in the Armed Services. There’s not a single day that I don’t take a moment to think about 9/11. It’s one of our darkest days and one of our most brilliant days. Those that died deserve the highest tribute.

Posted by jayernh under Archive | Comments (1)