Today Is September 11, 2006: In Memoriam
Barry F. Hess
September 11, 2006
I'd like to preface this piece by saying that while i have and always will have strong views in both areas I have never been one to preach my religous or political views onto others...it's just not who I am. But at the request of several friends and strangers I am posting the following column I wrote on a private website...
Today is Monday September 11, 2006.
As I look outside at a beautiful blue sky and feel a mild breeze blow through my hair I can not help but to feel the eerie similarities between this day and that fatefully day exactly five years ago.
I was just waking up in my small dorm room as a freshman at Bloomsburg University, my two roommates Mike and Jim had already left for their 8 am class and I was getting ready for another routine day in college.
I opened the blinds and cracked our window to let in the mild September air, I remember thinking to myself what a nice day it was just as my two roommates came running into the room.
With an uncertainty and fear I’ve never heard in either of their voices they asked me to turn on the TV, something both of them had been instructed to do by their professors, who sent them home from class.
Monday Night Football was the last thing I watched on Monday September 10, 2001…The Giants vs. The Broncos and when I clicked the TV on to Channel 6 I saw the flames shooting out of the World Trade Center buildings and all I could do was stare, in silence and awe at that small television screen.
What I, and millions of Americans all over the country, saw was the most audacious series of coordinated attacks ever to take place on American soil…terrorists high jacked four planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center Towers, The Pentagon and what would have been the White House had it not been for a group of heroic passengers on Flight 93, who fought off the terrorists that high jacked their flight and crashed the plane into an empty field in Pennsylvania.
Hundreds of firefighters, police officers and Port Authority workers lost their lives as they battled to save the lives of others and thousands of innocent victims, whose only crime that day was getting up and going to work, were murdered in cold blood simply because they were Americans, enjoying the freedom and democracy our fore fathers like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson fought for hundreds of years ago.
A feeling of sheer fear and helplessness overcame me in a way I’d never experienced before in my life…a feeling that multiplied ten fold when I received a phone call from my dad, telling me to pray for all those people in New York and that he was going up there …to what was now nothing more than a mass grave in the middle of downtown Manhattan.
Unable to leave Bloomsburg because the major roads and highways leading back home were closed by the military for days all I could do was sit in my room and watch the horror unfold right before my very eyes.
Women and children leaped in joy and threw candy in the streets of Pakistan and Iraq and Iran and shouted Allah Ackbar…God is Great…
Feelings of rage and hate encompassed my very being coupled with the helplessness and frustration that came with being away from my family at the time of the most significant event in American history since I’ve been born.
In the days following the tragedy the facts of what happened began to come out one by one and new words that were previously foreign to our vernacular like Al Quidea and Taliban and Osama Bin Laden quickly became just as normal as Sunday breakfast.
In the days and weeks and months that followed September 11, 2001 there were no Republicans, no Democrats, no whites or blacks or Asians…just Americans.
United as a single people we all vowed to become different people that day…we all vowed to change…five years after the fact I can’t help but think…just how different are we and have we really changed at all?
In the five years since that fateful day we have waged war on the evil that attacked us that day as well as the evil that supports those who attacked us.
We see signs and posters that say “Never Forget” and yet I can’t help but to think as each day passes and the horror of that day moves further and further back in our minds that many Americans have, in fact, forgotten.
They have forgotten that the freedom we so proudly enjoy every day can slip through our finger tips within a blink of an eye if it is not defended vigorously by men with guns who stand on a wall and say..sleep tight tonight, everything is going to be okay..I’m here to protect you.
They have forgotten that there are people in this world that hate us for the simple fact that we are free and they have vowed to do anything they can to ruin our way of life.
They have forgotten that these attacks, which were unprovoked and cowardly in every sense of the word, have changed our way of life forever.
As those images and sounds and feelings enter all of our minds again as we reach the fifth anniversary of September 11, 2001 we all need to remember just what it is we are fighting for.
As I’m writing this I can hear the faint sound of a church bell tolling in the distance, no doubt in memoriam to those that lost their lives five years ago today.
You may have asked yourself, why?
Why, God, have you forsaken us?”
But God has not forsaken us…he has awakened us…awakened us as a nation, awakened us to an evil that we were previously blind to.
And though those steel symbols of power and freedom and glory and the American way have crumbled to the ground we as a people will not.
The cowards that attacked us on that day believed they could extinguish the American Spirit and put out our flame of freedom forever but we have and must continue to show them that the American Spirit is alive and well and our flame was not burned out on that day but merely dimmed a little bit…while we were asleep.
But we are awake now and we need to stand together, united as a people, and show the rest of the world that we will not go quietly into the night…we will not fall without a fight, we will live on, in freedom and democracy and countries like Iraq and Iran and North Korea will be put on notice…WE ARE AMERICANS AND WE WILL NOT BE PUSHED AROUND OR COWER IN FEAR BUT STAND TALL AND PROUD AND TOGETHER AS A PEOPLE SAY “WE ARE AMERICANS, WE HAVE EARNED OUR FREEDOM THROUGH BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS AND NO ONE, ABSOLUTLY NO ONE, IS GOING TO TAKE THAT AWAY FROM US………..EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Today is Monday September 11, 2006.
As I look outside at a beautiful blue sky and feel a mild breeze blow through my hair I can not help but to feel the eerie similarities between this day and that fatefully day exactly five years ago.
I was just waking up in my small dorm room as a freshman at Bloomsburg University, my two roommates Mike and Jim had already left for their 8 am class and I was getting ready for another routine day in college.
I opened the blinds and cracked our window to let in the mild September air, I remember thinking to myself what a nice day it was just as my two roommates came running into the room.
With an uncertainty and fear I’ve never heard in either of their voices they asked me to turn on the TV, something both of them had been instructed to do by their professors, who sent them home from class.
Monday Night Football was the last thing I watched on Monday September 10, 2001…The Giants vs. The Broncos and when I clicked the TV on to Channel 6 I saw the flames shooting out of the World Trade Center buildings and all I could do was stare, in silence and awe at that small television screen.
What I, and millions of Americans all over the country, saw was the most audacious series of coordinated attacks ever to take place on American soil…terrorists high jacked four planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center Towers, The Pentagon and what would have been the White House had it not been for a group of heroic passengers on Flight 93, who fought off the terrorists that high jacked their flight and crashed the plane into an empty field in Pennsylvania.
Hundreds of firefighters, police officers and Port Authority workers lost their lives as they battled to save the lives of others and thousands of innocent victims, whose only crime that day was getting up and going to work, were murdered in cold blood simply because they were Americans, enjoying the freedom and democracy our fore fathers like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson fought for hundreds of years ago.
A feeling of sheer fear and helplessness overcame me in a way I’d never experienced before in my life…a feeling that multiplied ten fold when I received a phone call from my dad, telling me to pray for all those people in New York and that he was going up there …to what was now nothing more than a mass grave in the middle of downtown Manhattan.
Unable to leave Bloomsburg because the major roads and highways leading back home were closed by the military for days all I could do was sit in my room and watch the horror unfold right before my very eyes.
Women and children leaped in joy and threw candy in the streets of Pakistan and Iraq and Iran and shouted Allah Ackbar…God is Great…
Feelings of rage and hate encompassed my very being coupled with the helplessness and frustration that came with being away from my family at the time of the most significant event in American history since I’ve been born.
In the days following the tragedy the facts of what happened began to come out one by one and new words that were previously foreign to our vernacular like Al Quidea and Taliban and Osama Bin Laden quickly became just as normal as Sunday breakfast.
In the days and weeks and months that followed September 11, 2001 there were no Republicans, no Democrats, no whites or blacks or Asians…just Americans.
United as a single people we all vowed to become different people that day…we all vowed to change…five years after the fact I can’t help but think…just how different are we and have we really changed at all?
In the five years since that fateful day we have waged war on the evil that attacked us that day as well as the evil that supports those who attacked us.
We see signs and posters that say “Never Forget” and yet I can’t help but to think as each day passes and the horror of that day moves further and further back in our minds that many Americans have, in fact, forgotten.
They have forgotten that the freedom we so proudly enjoy every day can slip through our finger tips within a blink of an eye if it is not defended vigorously by men with guns who stand on a wall and say..sleep tight tonight, everything is going to be okay..I’m here to protect you.
They have forgotten that there are people in this world that hate us for the simple fact that we are free and they have vowed to do anything they can to ruin our way of life.
They have forgotten that these attacks, which were unprovoked and cowardly in every sense of the word, have changed our way of life forever.
As those images and sounds and feelings enter all of our minds again as we reach the fifth anniversary of September 11, 2001 we all need to remember just what it is we are fighting for.
As I’m writing this I can hear the faint sound of a church bell tolling in the distance, no doubt in memoriam to those that lost their lives five years ago today.
You may have asked yourself, why?
Why, God, have you forsaken us?”
But God has not forsaken us…he has awakened us…awakened us as a nation, awakened us to an evil that we were previously blind to.
And though those steel symbols of power and freedom and glory and the American way have crumbled to the ground we as a people will not.
The cowards that attacked us on that day believed they could extinguish the American Spirit and put out our flame of freedom forever but we have and must continue to show them that the American Spirit is alive and well and our flame was not burned out on that day but merely dimmed a little bit…while we were asleep.
But we are awake now and we need to stand together, united as a people, and show the rest of the world that we will not go quietly into the night…we will not fall without a fight, we will live on, in freedom and democracy and countries like Iraq and Iran and North Korea will be put on notice…WE ARE AMERICANS AND WE WILL NOT BE PUSHED AROUND OR COWER IN FEAR BUT STAND TALL AND PROUD AND TOGETHER AS A PEOPLE SAY “WE ARE AMERICANS, WE HAVE EARNED OUR FREEDOM THROUGH BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS AND NO ONE, ABSOLUTLY NO ONE, IS GOING TO TAKE THAT AWAY FROM US………..EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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