9/11+12

[rickps]

I’m a born and bred (hatched and brewed?) New Yorker.  Grew up close enough to the Big Apple so that the skyline was a familiar sight.  I can recall it pre-Trade Center and then as the more modern day twin shining monoliths marking Manhattan’s southern tip.

In the mid 1970s I worked in lower Manhattan and had many occasions to take business meetings in the towers.  On one memorable occasion, friends and I went to the roof observation deck at sunset to watch the lights of the city come on below us.  It was dazzling.

As with most of us, I vividly recall the morning of September 11, 2001 and the days that followed.  I remember watching the lunchroom television at work broadcast one tower fall and then the next.  It was impossible.  Things like this didn’t happen in the USs biggest city.  The thousands of people…

Each year that passes I expect that the memories will fade a bit as “now” becomes history.  It hasn’t.  I was watching a documentary of those heroic folk who ran into the rubble (“the Pile” as it was called) to save what lives they could and it all came back fresh.  During this morning’s staff meeting, I momentarily choked as I reminded my crew of how important it is to remember.

We must remember those who were lost, those who were saved, and those who were heroes.

Comments

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

Yes, we must remember. We live with the action taken in the aftermath.

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to picture what the national sentiment would have been on December 7, 1953, 12 years after Pearl Harbor (and 6 months before I was born). Yes, there was a 4 year world war then, but that Day of Infamy must have been still as fresh on many people's minds as our generation DoI was, although not with internet bombardment.

[ricksf.livejournal.com]

Interesting speculation. Hawaii wasn't a state and was thousands of miles from mainland US. War was brewing. Targets were military. Yet the brutality was the same. The attack without warning was the same. The desire to terrorize was the same. And the silent tears I saw flowing from many eyes were the same at the Arizona Memorial as they were at Ground Zero.