I remember that morning. I was still asleep at the time of the first impact. A short while later, a few minutes before 6 AM, my radio alarm sounded. The first words I heard were, “plane crashed into the World Trade Center…”
There was more, but I was already out of bed and on my way to the television. As dramatic as that sentence was, I sometimes wonder at my reaction. Sure, it would’ve been a big deal if a small Cessna had accidentally flown into a big building. But somehow, instinctively and immediately, I knew that it was bigger than that.
My wife and I stood watching, not even thinking to sit down. The kids asked what was happening and we answered tersely, told them to watch and listen. We stood in silence as the first tower crumbled down upon itself. It felt like the end of the world.
I was late to school that morning, arriving a few minutes ahead of the students. Our school had previously scheduled an assembly for that morning. It would become a very different assembly than the one that had been planned. The normally rambunctious middle school students filed into the gymnasium quietly, worried, scared, somber. They walked or sat, hushed and quiet, and waited for adults to answer the deep, serious questions swirling around in their heads and in their whispered conversations.
Besides being a gifted musician, Dave (our band leader) was a kind and empathetic man. He knew instinctively what he needed to do. He picked up his saxophone. As the students continued to file in and sit down, he began to play, all alone on the gym floor. Soulfully, wordlessly, he played 'America the Beautiful' with as much intermingled pain and pride as I have ever heard in a single song. He gave us a way to feel and express the conflicting emotions we all were trying to deal with. A few students cried softly.
When everyone was seated and Dave had finished, Nancy (our vice principal) came to the microphone. If anyone there had a reason for concern or fear, it was Nancy. She knew it. We all knew it. She was from New York City, and had the accent to prove it. Her family was there. A brother worked in Manhattan; friends did business in the Twin Towers. Nancy knew that hundreds of adolescents and more than a few adults in that gymnasium 3000 miles west of Ground Zero were taking their cues from her.
Nancy was honest about her fear. She was human, and she cried a little as she affirmed for us how terrible this thing was that had happened. She was strong, and she assured us that although there would be pain and grief, we would survive. We felt the raw emotion she shared with us, and somehow that made our fear and pain more manageable. Children and adults alike, we trusted Nancy. We believed her when she said we would come through this crisis. We didn’t believe her because she was the vice principal, but because she was Nancy. We knew her. We cared about her. We knew she cared about us. We trusted her. We saw her standing tall and resolute even with tears in her eyes, she who had the most to lose… That is when we knew that no matter how bad the situation seemed we would be okay, so we stood a little taller and held our heads up, too.
Dave and Nancy got those kids through the day.
We did not watch the television coverage. No one thought it would be a good idea to see the tragedy over and over again for hours upon hours, so we turned the televisions off. We talked, though. We put the lesson plans aside, and we talked. Students opened up with their fear, their frustration, their confusion, their anger. Adolescents and adults forgot the generation gap that sometimes divided us as we all experienced something utterly new, together.
We learned about the tragedy at the Pentagon. We learned about the crash of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania, which we didn’t yet know would be remembered as the first victory in the War on Terror.
With decades more life experience than all my younger friends, I tried to help them wrap their minds around the events of the day, to put it into some kind of perspective. As a history teacher, I made the obvious comparisons to the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, to the battle of Antietam in 1862. I told them about my generation’s traumatic introduction to tragedy on a national and global scale, the assassination of President John Kennedy. Now as then, I told them, a change had been thrust upon us suddenly, unexpectedly, and it was a change that could never be undone.
I told my students that they would remember this day for their entire lives, that it would become for them a dividing line between the “before” of their youth and the “after” of their young adulthood. We mourned together.
In days that followed we talked about how Americans had stopped their partisan politics and their regional rivalries. Southerners who used to enjoy talking bad about The City realized, perhaps for the first time, that underneath the differences we were all one. Democrats who used to complain bitterly about Republican plans and attitudes realized, for the first time in a long time, that there was more uniting than dividing us. African-Americans, Latinos, Anglos, Native Americans, Asians, Americans of every ethnicity realized that our differences were insignificant in the face of the tragedy. A writer for the New York Muslim Examiner wrote an article entitled, “Condemn the Terror and Pray for the Victims.” We became just people, just American people. We took a break from the artificial attitudes and prejudices that divided us and, at least for a little while, decided we’d best get along with each other because we were all in this together.
If only for a moment, we were united in our grief and in our resolve.
We listened in awe to stories of firefighters and police in New York and Arlington who gave their lives to save others; we revered them and hoped to be worthy of them and their sacrifices.
We shortly realized that the victims were not only Americans, but good people from all over the planet. The targets were, after all, the World Trade Center, and the victims included persons from 90 nations and all major world religions. We realized that the attack was not only against the United States of America, but an attack against civilization and even humanity itself.
We watched outpourings of support around the world. In a momentary break with three centuries of tradition, the Coldstream Guards at Buckingham Palace in London played 'The Star Spangled Banner' at the changing of the guard. Despite recent differences in the international arena, the President of France stated, “All French people stand by the American people.” The Chancellor of Germany declared “unlimited solidarity” with the American people. Even some who were not particularly friendly toward the United States – Russia, China, and the Palestinian Authority, for instance – condemned the attacks, and offered their support.
Our NATO partners invoked that part of the founding treaty of the Alliance which declares that an attack upon one nation is an attack upon all. Whoever would have believed, when the NATO Alliance was forged in the aftermath of World War Two to protect democracy in Europe, that the first time Article Five of the Treaty of Washington would be invoked would be in response to an attack on the United States?
The world had been turned upside down.
Before the decade had expired I would leave the classroom and return to uniform. First in Baghdad, and later throughout Europe and the Middle East with NATO, I would do my part to stop terrorism.
Some of those students who met harsh reality in my eighth grade classroom that day became no longer students, but comrades in arms in Iraq or Afghanistan. Today they are, in fact, 23 years old. They and their peers have borne the brunt of the wars of the past decade. How little we all knew on that fateful morning.
Ten years on, we know we have survived. We struggle to balance the need to protect our people with the need to maintain personal freedom in America. We fight to eradicate the international scourge of terrorism, and worry that we sometimes overstep the bounds of international law. We struggle to pay the bills incurred in the War on Terror. But we are still here, and we will go on.
Often underestimated by our enemies, we tend to underestimate ourselves as well. Beneath the political debates, we are Americans. Beyond the complaints and controversies we allow to play out on our front pages, we really are strong.
A decade has passed and here we remain, still strong and free. Thanks to Dave and Nancy, ordinary people who became extraordinary when their strength, comfort, and wisdom were needed. Thanks to the first responders who selflessly acted out their love for neighbors, nation, and humanity. Thanks to the soldiers and sailors who have left the comfort of home to take on the responsibility of defending our America. Thanks to allies and people of good will around the world who stand with us. We go on.
This Sunday, ten years on, I will grieve again. When I finish grieving, I will give thanks for our abiding strength, our enduring freedom, our allies. I will give thanks for hope that is timeless, for the miracle of compassion in the face of hatred, and for the blessings of liberty and brotherhood.
May God continue to keep us all - people of faith and commitment, of hope and good will - safe through this ongoing storm. May we always resist the urge to hate, and never fail to answer the call when those who work evil must be stopped. I thank God for friends, family, and freedom. I thank God for people throughout the world who believe in human rights and liberty. I thank God for the opportunity to build a better tomorrow.
On September 11, 2011, God bless you. God bless all people who believe in freedom, human dignity, and love, wherever they may be. God bless those who stand courageously against assassins who preach hatred. And finally -
God Bless America.
Gryphem
Beautiful writing, G. I really enjoy your dual perspectives as a teacher and as a NATO officer.
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