9/11: 13 Years on...

Every year, one of my annual blog entries focuses on 9/11.  It is my generations Kennedy Assassination.  

Like my parents before me, I can tell you what I was doing and where I was when I got word that the attacks were underway.  I can speak to the wall-to-wall, commercial-free coverage on TV, and the seemingly endless replays of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center towers, and their subsequent collapse.

The identifier of tragedy is interesting between the two evens...the Kennedy Assassination and 9/11.

In 1963, my mother was a college student in Missouri and the one thing she identifies with the assassination of President Kennedy was the drum beats that echoed through the streets of Washington D.C. during the funeral proceedings and processionals.  For me, in 2001, it was the opposite: silence.

One of the ripple effects across the country on 9/11 was that air traffic was ground stopped and planes were ordered to land no matter the proximity to their destinations.  It took about 45 minutes altogether but what was a sound that was part of the normal background noise of Tulsa and indeed the entire country went completely silent and would stay that way for six more days.

My mother speaks of the moment when newsmen in New York got the word about President Kennedy's passing.  They were watching NBC and the great pairing of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley was calling the play-by-play and though he did not read the flash from Dallas that day announcing the death of President Kennedy she remembers Huntley breaking down in tears and how Brinkley was ice-cold and professional when they threw it to Washington.

In 2001, it all took place pretty much in real time, with TV commentators on the rooftops of buildings in New York City and on the ground across the highway at the burning Pentagon and in Pennsylvania where flight 93 went down.  You could see the fear on the faces of the late Peter Jennings, Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw and I remember in particular when a CNN anchor was standing on the top of their building in New York as the collapse of WTC-1 was happening in real time:

"There are no words."  

So here we are 13 years later and we are still looking a threat in the eye and we are not in any way resolved as we were 13 years ago to deal with it.  Will it take another one of these days for this country to realize that we are all in this together, and that if we don't stand together we'll have to see this happen again?

Who knows.  Yes I am a cynic because in 13 years we as a country haven't learned anything.  Next time it happens there will be more loss of life and more images that will be burnt into our memories for the next generation to pain over.

We still have some hope, but not much.

9/11: NEVER FORGET