On September 11, 2001, at 7:00 a.m., I went to my job as a supervisor of twelve social caseworkers and six secretaries at the Texas Department of Human Resources. About fifty minutes later, one of my caseworkers came running down the hall to my office, in tears, telling me we had been attacked. At first I couldn't make sense of what she was saying. She had had her radio on in her office and had heard the awful news from New York.
When I finally could understand what she was telling me, I turned on my own radio and Bob Edwards on the NPR station that I routinely listened to delivered the news, haltingly, in a voice that told me he could hardly believe what he was saying. Two planes had been commandeered by members of al-Qaeda, a global Islamist terrorist network, and had been flown into the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center in New York. We were indeed under attack.
Soon the news came that the attackers had also struck Washington where the Pentagon was hit. The bad news just kept coming as we learned that another plane headed for Washington had crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. In that case, we later learned the passengers on the plane had realized what was happening and had fought back. That plane, it is believed, had been headed toward the U.S. Capitol or the White House but the bravery of ordinary citizens prevented it from completing its mission.
Were there other attack planes headed toward other cities? My thoughts, of course, turned to Houston. Would we be attacked? Did I need to go and pick up my children to have them with me? I called my husband, the newspaper editor, who I knew would still be asleep after working the night before on the day's paper. He would now have perhaps the biggest story of his career to edit.
On December 8, 1941, a day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt had gone before Congress to request a formal declaration of war against Japan. In that speech, he had described December 7 as "a day that will live in infamy." The statements after September 11, 2001 were perhaps not as eloquent but no less heartfelt.
As long as this nation endures September 11, 2001 will be another day that lives in infamy in its history. Twenty-five years later we remember those who died that day. Let us strive to honor them by doing our civic duty to try to make this country a nation that lives up to the ideals expressed in its founding documents and is truly worthy of their sacrifice.
Since Blogger is still not adding new posts to the reading list, the only way I can see whether people have new posts is to go to a previous comment and click on it, or go laboriously down the complete blog list. This is the fourth day of the problem and I hope they fix it soon. Hard to believe that 9/11 was twenty-five years ago. It’s ironic that Canadians stepped up to help in a major way, and subsequently sent troops to Afghanistan and lost almost 130 of our young people. And we are portrayed as “nasty.” The relationship between our two countries is never going to be the same again, Dorothy.
ReplyDeleteI hope that is not true, David. This, too, shall pass.
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