Patriot Day

Since today is Patriot Day I thought it would be appropriate to share a column I wrote during my days at the newspaper. While I mostly took pictures, I wrote an occasional article or column. This column sums up my feelings about 9/11 and the surrounding time. This article originally was published in the Idaho State Journal Newspaper on September 11, 2003.

Reflections

Thousands died; millions watched. The Poynter Institute wrote. “For each of us there are occasions — a wedding, a child’s birth, a family tragedy — so compelling that details are forever etched in memory. Few events define all of us. Sept. 11, 2001 did.”

Every American will always remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. Images from 9/11 have been burned in our minds and in our hearts. We thirsted for information, as we sat glued to our television sets and devoured newspapers, longing to be able to make sense of the tragedy and our new world.

It is hard to believe that is has been two years since that surreal day when our world was turned upside down. In many ways the world has changed, in many ways it is still the same. The anniversary this week has caused me to reflect on what this day has meant to me both now and in the future.

I spent the one year anniversary in, of all places, an airport. Some colleagues and I spent the day interviewing passengers, taking pictures and writing stories about the mood of the airport, before we boarded our flight to attend a journalism conference in Texas. Because of fear of a repeat attack a lot of people thought we were crazy to fly on that day.

McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas was much less crowded than usual and everything went at a slower pace. While nothing out of the ordinary happened, there was an underlying thread of concern and trepidation in the minds of most of the people we talked to. Heightened security was ever present at the airport, but overall it was business as usual. I felt a sense of history as I stepped onto the plane that day, and I couldn’t image a better way to have commemorated the events.

Another day not too many months later, I stood at Ground Zero and saw where so many lost their lives. While there were many tourists like me taking pictures and milling about, the site possessed a reverent feeling and there was a stillness I don’t think I could ever describe.

To anyone unaware of what had transpired there, it might have looked like an ordinary construction site partially covered in snow. The sidewalks were littered with flowers and memorials left by people from all over the country and patriotic murals adorned the walls of nearby buildings. The neighborhood too showed scars from the blast with many buildings noticeably damaged or boarded up.

While I was visiting friends in New York City, the World Trade Center site was high on my list of places to visit. Being a journalist is was sort of a pilgrimage — to see where the biggest news story of our time had taken place — one that has impacted the industry and the world in so many ways.

For some in our group though it as not on their list. Maureen’s boyfriend, John, was supposed to have been in the towers that day. John works at the American Stock Exchange located a stone’s throw from Ground Zero. Every Tuesday his office would have a breakfast meeting at the Windows on the World restaurant. On the morning of 9/11 his alarm clock didn’t go off making him miss his usual train. By the time he got to work the meeting had already started so he decided to bypass breakfast and go straight to his desk. Because of that he was able to make it out the neighborhood that day. No one in Windows on the World did.

John lost nearly everyone he worked with that day and literally had to run for his life. No doubt he is sometimes haunted by memories of the horror he saw, and perhaps feels guilty that he lived when so many of his friends did not. This is something he has to deal with on a daily basis. Every time he goes to work and gets off the subway, he has to see the buildings are no longer there — knowing he is alive because of a twist of fate.

Maureen probably had a similarly hellish day wondering if her boyfriend was in the building when the planes hit, wondering if he made it out. Which was why Maureen didn’t want to go to Ground Zero with us, and why we didn’t press her. She went to pick up John from work and they waited on the street corner for us before we went on to other attractions.

As more years pass how will we remember 9/11? Will Patriot Day become just another holiday? Will Americans always pause to remember the sacrifice of so many? Who knows what the future will hold? Perhaps spending the day with those we love and reflecting on what happened will be the best way to observe the holiday. However, my mind will always travel back to that snow-covered hole in lower Manhattan littered with flowers. The only remaining part of the original building were two beams, and they were formed in the shape of a cross.