Remembering

As I looked up at the impossibly brilliant sky before heading to an early morning board meeting, I thought to myself, this will be one of the ten best days of the year. Then, when I got into my car after the meeting, I heard that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. How crazy, I thought. How could an accident like that happen when the towers are too big to be missed by even an inexperienced pilot. By the time I got back to campus I could watch – again and again and again, as the second plane crashed, and it became apparent that this was no accident.

I spent frantic hours until I reached my daughter and brother, both of whom worked in Manhattan. I waited for any official directive about closing and tried to calm students, faculty and staff when I felt anything but calm. When I gathered the campus the next day, I said that we needed to allow people to grieve in their own way and that fear and hatred were a victory for the terrorists. Yet not wearing or flying a flag quickly became suspect and Islamophobia and discrimination acceptable, until we were told that only a war would avenge our loss.  

A few weeks later I found out that someone I knew was killed that morning. Her husband and I had been in a fellowship program together; I had been at their wedding. When I finally saw him months later his eyes were still haunted.

9/11 got added to the list of “I remember exactly where I was and how I heard” events. Someone running into my high school auditorium where we were rehearsing the school play to tell us President Kennedy had been shot. Watching the Challenger explode on a TV in the office as we gathered to celebrate the first teacher to fly into space.      

The “Marist Mindset List” of what distinguishes the college class of 2024 was issued on September 9, 2020. Under the category of history & politics is the fact that for today’s incoming students “the world political stage has always been post 9/11.” This is a class starting college during a pandemic, but there is no one moment that defines the “news” of its arrival or its effect on their lives. I wish it weren’t inevitable, but I am sure there will be other individual and history altering events that will be on their ”I remember when” lists.