RE: 9-11 By Marshall Massengale October 07, 2013
In 2001, I was fifty years old. Harry S. Truman was President of the United States the year I was born. On 9/11/2001, I was working a temporary job--between stints of regular employment but glad to be working just the same. Being on the east coast of the US in the same time zone as New York and Washington, I arrived at work in time to hear the news as it happened. Sensing how America would react to the unbelievable events that were unfolding before our very eyes and ears, our management sent everyone home for the day. I was at work when I heard the first news reports and when the second plane hit the tower. I reached home in time to turn on the television and watch live as the first tower fell . . . and then the second. Over the next several days, as more news and pictures came in, the truth began to sink in. We, as a nation, were at war. The horror of it all was incomprehensible. There were the images of people in sheer desperation plunging from the sides of the buildings, the sound bites of bodies hitting the side walks, endless replays of video of the planes plunging into the sides of the twin towers, glass and debris showering down. You couldn't help wondering what you would have done in the very same situation that people at the scene found themselves in that day. When I left my home that morning I had reflected briefly on how my life might have gone on the way it was before I lost a good paying job in the Internet business had things not gone bust during that summer. Instead I was working part time in a telemarketing call center. But as events began to unfold in New York City, in Washington, DC and in a small rural area of Pennsylvania, I began to get a different point of view of who I was in a much larger picture. Surely, those who went to work at the WTC and the Pentagon that morning, along with perhaps many who boarded the ill-fated airliners, had hopes and dreams of their own to fulfill. Perhaps many were filled with a sense of purpose, others with the satisfaction of achievement and surely there were those who, like me, were just glad to have the opportunities to be where they were. However it may have been for those people as they began their day, fate would hold them to a sudden and irrevocable turn of events. You and I have the luxury of looking back upon the the history of our great Nation and coming to some understanding as to what it means to be an American by the events that have shaped and molded us as a people. We can study the events of 9/11 and see the resolve that enabled us to hunt down and prosecute the likes of Osama Bin Laden. This was the same resolve by which the American people prosecuted the perpetrators of the Pearl Harbor bombing, the sinking of the Lusitania, and the terror and inhuman treatment to which the Colonists were subjected by the King of England. While it may be true that neither you nor I was in New York City or Washington, DC or on board any of the airliners commandeered by the terrorists on 9/11, we can take to heart the deepest meaning of those events. And if you can feel in your heart the true significance of events of 7 Dec 1941 or 7 May 1915 or 4 July 1776, then you are a true American. Be proud always. Kind Regards, Marshall H. Massengale
Received September 30, 2013 - Published October 07, 2013 Related Viewpoint:
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