Thinking back on September 11, 2001, I have it better than most. I’ve shared elsewhere about how my sister was stranded in Pakistan working for the UN helping Taliban refugees, and how after waiting it out in Europe for flights back into the US to resume after they’d been halted, she finally made it home. My story has a happy ending. This is not to say I was unaffected: of the people I knew of in the Trade Towers that day, two made it out alive, and the one who didn't was the father of a classmate.
I grew up in Bayonne, a smallish town of 60,000 people separated from the Manhattan skyline by only the Upper New York Bay. That may sound like a lot of people, but you couldn’t walk down the town’s main street on a summer night without running into someone you knew. Many commuted daily into the city to work at places like Windows on the World, Cantor Fitzgerald, and the Port Authority of NY/NJ. One of them, Marcy Walsh, the subject of one of the most iconic photos taken that day, was a few years ahead of me in high school.
I recently read recently that there were over 750 people from New Jersey alone who died that day, and as I scrolled through the pictures, I recognized many surnames and wondered if they were related to people I had grown up with.
No one in my hometown was unaffected. We were young adults at the time and the world was a very different place. I wouldn't own my first cell phone for another year, not that it would have made a difference that day: mobile phone traffic was completely overloaded up and down the East Coast, and would continue to crash cell tower networks for days.
I had moved to Virginia Beach 3 years earlier, but still visited often. I remember calling my Mom, who because she worked for the Department of Defense, was able to get a secure line and make a 3-way call to my best friend at the time. He was working for Major League Baseball off of 6th Avenue and, incredibly, was at home that day. I felt so much relief knowing that he was safe, and away from all of the madness. We only spoke for a few minutes, because the line was desperately needed for defense preparations being made. My Mom never really talked about what that day was like for her, but years later we went to see the Nicholas Cage movie World Trade Center, and she broke down sobbing in the theater.
I can’t stress enough that America was a different country back then. People loved George W. Bush. I hadn't voted for him, but he won me over with his love for Jesus and his steadfast determination to take a nation, still in shock, by the hand and tell us that we would survive, heal, and find the people accountable for this horrific act. I remember hearing first hand accounts of black men and white men walking together in Times Square in the days that followed. Embracing. Crying together. And of rescue workers deliberately hiding under rubble, so that the K9 officers could be encouraged periodically to find someone alive. Word had gone out that the dogs were getting visibly discouraged, finding body after body.
I was in massage school at the time, and we got reports from MERT (Massage Emergency Response Team) members who had driven all through the night and over hundreds of miles to offer trauma massage to the overworked EMTs. As evil as that day was, it brought Americans together in a way I had never seen before, and churches were overflowing. Perhaps what amazed me most were the people who cried with America from the heartland, thousands of miles away, who had never set foot in New York City. They sent aid and manpower, as if they had experienced personal loss. And that was the thing: they HAD, because we were all Americans. Stories began to emerge of the heroic acts of so many brave men and women who gave their lives not just at the Towers, but on United Flight 93, and at the Pentagon. There was such unity in those days. There was no mistaking good for evil.
Which brings me to the point of writing this. I didn't think it was ever possible, but people have forgotten what happened that day. With time Bush's legacy was marred by the war in Afghanistan and the weapons of mass destruction debacle, but even more disturbing were the conspiracy theories that cropped up. That the Jews had done it, that the government had done it, and the worst of all: that no one was actually in the Twin Towers the day they fell. I remember wanting to scream at the ones carelessly promoting these ridiculous stories. These people were real. I knew them. They mattered. And anyone promoting such lies was displaying the ultimate disregard for not just the families left behind, but for the victims themselves. They were being no better than Holocaust deniers.
And all the while a new generation was coming of age; last year marked the first time that the anniversary would be observed by adults who were born post-9/11, with no recollection of life before the Manhattan skyline was forever altered. And the truth seems to have become muddled over the years. Anyone who advocates for anything less than open borders is likely to be called narrow-minded and full of hatred. We now have been hearing that Islam is a religion of peace for so many years that anyone who dares question this mantra is guilty of bigotry, while Christianity is met with open hostility and disdain.
We're so afraid of offending people that we have ceased to have real discussions where opposing opinions can be laid bare and debated for the purpose of trying to understand one another and find truth. We stumble over ourselves to let people into this country who haven't been properly vetted, and when our current administration wanted to take a few months and relook at those policies and procedures, people nearly lost their minds.
We're told it's shameful to refer to ourselves as a Christian nation because it is a microaggression and drives people to their safe spaces. But it's truth. Most don't realize that when our forefathers wrote our constitution, it was intended for men and women who had Judeo-Christian values. There's no need to apologize for that. It's what has made our country blessed and prosperous.
I wake up every day recognizing my country less and less. What's right is wrong and what's wrong is right. And yet, the Bible indicates that this time would come - the end of days. I'm not troubled for myself, because I know Jesus paid for my sin and I have eternal life no matter what happens. But for the people I love who haven't quite picked a side, who try and straddle the fence to please everyone and offend no one, it's for them that I lose sleep some nights.
The generation that came before me has often lamented that removing prayer and Bible reading from schools is when this started. Maybe they're right. Because faith comes by hearing the Word of God, and for those kids who didn't go to church on Sundays, they were at least hearing about God. They were hearing about what is right and what is wrong. There was a moral standard, and if people lived contrary to that standard, they at least had the decency to be ashamed of their actions. Today we have people parading it out for everyone to see, full of pride and without respect for anything, including themselves.
A few years ago on the anniversary of the attacks, I wore a shirt with stars and stripes to work. I had a few people comment on how patriotic I looked, but I'm not 100% sure they made the connection of why I made that fashion choice. I realize that it falls to my generation, as well as the ones who have come before, to not allow September 11, 2001 to be marginalized, distorted, or forgotten. We need to tell our stories of what the world was like before. When people could still reason together. When being a God-fearing American was not something to be ashamed of.