It wasn’t my first year of teaching, but it was fairly early in my career when I finished a lecture on the Great Depression and a “good” kid raised his hand and asked what the Depression was like. I was a bit flummoxed. I said, “Weren’t you listening? I just finished telling you all about it!” He said, “Yeah, I know that, and I thought it was interesting. What I meant was, what was the Depression like for you? I know you were a little kid then, but you must remember something?” This was around 1984. I was born in 1959. It’s generally accepted that the Depression was certainly over by the time the United States entered the Second World War in 1941, if not even a few years before.
The student wasn’t kidding. He wasn’t being disrespectful. He just had no sense of how old I really was and the no understanding of the relation of time to history.
In 1984, the Vietnam War had been over for little more than a decade. As I came of age, the question for all young men was, “If called, would you go to Vietnam and serve?” I had decided that I would not volunteer but if I were to be drafted that I would answer my country’s call. Both the war and the draft ended before I was asked to make that decision.
I mention Vietnam, because to the students in my classes in the 1980’s, talking about Vietnam was the same to them as relating facts about the Civil War. It was just really “ancient” history for them, although fresh for me and a little raw yet for the country. In 1984, the memories of Pearl Harbor were still vivid for most adults. I taught school with several veterans, some of whom fought hand to hand in the Pacific against the tough and fanatical armies of the Japanese in World War II.
By 1984, the ambush of Pearl Harbor was more than forty years in the past. What once had been an occasion for pause, reflection, speeches, parades and commemorations was fading into distant memory. I see the same thing happening to 9/11.
We have just passed the 23rd “anniversary” of 9/11. The terrorist attacks on that day in 2001 took 2753 American lives in New York, (of which 343 were New York firefighters) 184 at the Pentagon and 40 aboard United Flight 93. The people on board United 93 attempted to take control of the plane back from the terrorists. They failed but their sacrifice certainly saved either the US Capitol or White House from attack. Another 360 NYFD personnel have died since then from 9/11 related causes and 80,000 people have been afflicted physically or mentally due to the events of that day.
I was in my classroom that morning. My first period that day was a preparation period, and I was doing what teachers do with their prep time. I made some copies on the copy machine, corrected some papers and recorded some grades. I wrote some notes on the blackboard (yes, a blackboard in those days), when an English teacher named Doug Ellwein came to my door and said, “Mel turn the TV on.” “What channel?” I responded. “Any channel” he replied, and he was gone.
I turned on the television to see smoke coming out of the North Tower of the World Trade Center and to hear the TV commentators talk about a plane that ran into the building. As a history teacher I was immediately reminded a similar crash on July 28, 1945. A B25 bomber was flying over New York in a dense fog and hit the Empire State Building by mistake. The plane crashed into the 79th floor of the building, killing the crew of three and also eleven people inside the building. Elevator Operator Betty Lou Oliver survived a fall of 75 floors in her elevator when the plane hit the building. Back then there were no elevator buttons, a person sat in the elevator all day long and ran people up and down from floor to floor. These elevator operators were sometimes known as “indoor aviators”. Ms. Oliver has the Guinness World Record for the longest survived fall in an elevator. So, I thought this contemporary crash was maybe something of that sort.
In the news, around that time, there had been stories about drunk airline pilots and also about two Northwest Airlines pilots that were sober but so busy playing video games that they overflew their destination of Minneapolis and landed in Toronto, Canada instead. I thought perhaps it might have been a negligent circumstance like that.
Year’s before I had read a fiction short story about a cockpit crew eating an in-flight meal and getting food poisoning thereby rendering them unable to fly so a heroic passenger had to take over. I thought, in a more charitable moment, maybe something of a medical nature had happened to the crew causing the accident.
As I was running those scenarios through my mind, the second plane hit the Twin Towers. This time, the plane crashed into the South Tower. Then there were reports of the Pentagon being hit. Next, United 93 went down in Pennsylvania and all flights in the USA were grounded and all international flights were told to go back to where they came from.
The events of 9/11 led to our two decades long military involvement in Afghanistan. New measures involving the TSA and other security protocols became standard at airports and all around the country. The police became militarized in their equipment and tactics. US military personnel began patrolling some airports and transit stations (subway and train stations) to provide security. The Patriot Act was passed, and the Department of Homeland Security was established. The National Security Administration increased their remit and began to eavesdrop on an expanded list of conversations, including those of some Americans. The FBI developed a more robust anti-terror division. Many public buildings began to restrict access and to require those entering to go through metal detectors and other security devices and procedures. Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House was closed, access to the fence at the South Lawn was restricted and the White House became a forbidding barricaded bastion. There were other changes as well as that restricted and redefined American liberties and the fabric of everyday life in the United States.
We used to commemorate 9/11, reading the names of the dead, having moments of silence with civic events like speeches and gatherings. Where are those now? Just as few people these days know that December 7th is “Pearl Harbor Day”, and no one does anything anymore to remember the events and people of that traumatic and tragic day of American history; 9/11 is rapidly falling into that category.
There are those who say, years have passed and it’s time to “move on”. Perhaps so, but “moving on” is different from “forgetting”. A flag at half-staff, when flags are at half-staff so often these days and for a myriad of things, just doesn’t seem to be enough to mark the day that the world changed forever, when our country was attacked on our own soil with the result of thousands of casualties, American liberties have since become permanently curtailed, daily life is now rife with the risk of terror wreaking havoc out of the blue and ordinary Americans need to be eternally vigilant and suspicious of their fellow citizens and surroundings just in case, because one never knows…
The events of 9/11 should never be forgotten.