Remembering 9/11

I get a Daily Digest from one of the Yahoo! Groups I belong to. Most of the time, I glance over it quickly because it's filled with silly jokes, useless information and platitudes. Today was different.

In the Digest today there was a link to a tribute site for the terrorist attacks of September 11. I followed the link and waited for the Flash Movie to download. Since I'm still on dial-up I had plenty of time to wait. The file was 7mb! I had more than enough time to nuke another cup of coffee.

Emotions that were long dormant welled to the surface as I watched the images and listened to the ethereal, melancholy sounds of Enya. I sat watching the images with tears streaming down my face. Everything just came flowing out.

Remembering where you were on that horrific morning is an essential bookmark of our time. Although I am a baby boomer -- technically -- I don't remember where I was when Kennedy was shot. I was only 3 at the time. I vaguely recall the RFK and Martin Luther King assassinations but again, I was a young boy at the time. I didn't quite grasp the enormity and repercussions of those heinous acts. I was miffed that my favorite TV shows had been preempted by news coverage. I do, however, remember where I was when the Challenger exploded.

On September 11 2001, I was collecting bills for St. Francis Hospital at AFNI. My desk was near the east wall of the cubicle farm where we labored. I remember the weather was crystal clear, calm and soft. It seemed to be a morning like any other.

Jen arrived at work about 10 AM. She was the first to announce about what had happened. She had heard the bulletins on her car radio. At first, I dismissed her reports. 'Oh, that's just Jen' I thought. She always was prone to exaggeration. Gary, who sat in the corner of our vast cubicle farm both confirmed and conflicted her story. Unlike the Museum of Science and Industry we were not permitted radios and of course there were no TV's anywhere. It was on the radio that I first heard of the Challenger explosion.

So we turned to the Internet. Internet surfing was strictly controlled and supposed to be only for business matters. Gary, the resident know-it-all in our area, was first to log on. He stood at his desk and read aloud what he was reading on his monitor. I threw caution to the wind, as did most of my coworkers and opened Internet Explorer. I surfed first to cnn.com and I was disturbed to learn that the site apparently had been deluged. They were down because too many people were trying to access the site at the same time. This fact almost made me panic. It surely must be true! Maybe Jen wasn't exaggerating.

I frantically thought of alternatives. I rejected sites related to newspapers such as The Pantagraph and The Tribune. Then I turned to CBS News. There, I saw the first frightening images. The news was sketchy at first and until the second plane hit the north tower, the news reports weren't really sure what had happened.
When my break time arrived at 10:15, I made a beeline for my car and tuned the radio to an all-news AM station from Chicago. They reported that O'Hare and Midway were both closed and the Sears Tower had been evacuated.

It was a difficult day to work. I got very little done. When I finally got home, I watch the images in shock over and over again on the various networks.

I think I was in a state of shock at first. When the shock wore off, I found I was angry. Now, please understand something. I am a pacifist. I am a dyed-in-the-wool liberal. I believe in gun control. I think the Second Amendment is outdated; created for citizens in the 18th century who needed guns to survive and manage their environment.

But I wanted blood revenge. I wanted those people responsible killed and by any means possible. And I was shocked at myself for feeling this way. I had never felt this way in my life. I wanted them dead.
When the stories of heroism began to surface over the next few days, my anger and fury turned to grief. I was especially mesmerized by the story of the passengers on Flight 93 which crash landed in Pennsylvania and how they had attempted to wrench control of the aircraft from the hijackers.

Seeing the flash movie again reminded me of the work we need to do to free the world from terrorism and the conditions that allow it to breed like mold on bread.

Here's a list of mirror sites for the 9/11 Tribute Flash Movie.