Never Forget

Mark Grimsley posted the lyrics to “The Rising,” Bruce Springsteen’s brilliant tribute to the firefighters who died at the World Trade Center, on his blog today, with an image of a grieving firefighter sitting by the rubble of collapsed Twin Towers, being comforted by two angels. It was a simple but incredibly eloquent and moving way to remember those who gave their lives in the hope of that others might live. They don’t call New York’s firefighters “The Bravest” for no reason.

We should not–no, cannot–ever forget what happened on September 11, 2001. The world as we know it changed forever that day. And thousands of normal people who were just going about their daily routines lost their lives as a consequence.

I spent the night of September 10, 2001 in Fredericksburg, Virginia. I spoke to the Rappahannock Valley Civil War Roundtable on the Battle of Tom’s Brook that evening. I’d been on the road for a few days–I’d spoken to a Roundtable in Pinehurst, NC, and then had a few days of battlefield stompling. I was scheduled to go home on the morning of 9/11.

My plan was to take I-95 to 395, go past the Pentagon, pick up the George Washington Parkway, cut the corner, take it to the Beltway, follow the Beltway to 270, take 270 to Frederick, and then pick up I-70 at Frederick. My house sits about a mile north of I-70 here in Columbus, so it’s pretty much a straight shot on 70. If all had gone according to the original schedule, I would have passed by the Pentagon at just about the precise moment that the American Airlines plane slammed into it.

However, at that time, I was in the process of finalizing my arrangements with the dean of American Military University, who asked me to stop by the office to meet me on the morning of 9/11. So, I drove up to Manassas from Fredericksburg to meet with the dean.

I called Susan on my cell as I was driving. The first plane crashed into the World Trade Center while we were talking, and we were still on the phone when the second one also hit. She was watching it all unfold on the Today show, and she described the events to me as they occurred. AMU’s offices are right next to the Prince George’s County airport, and by the time I got out of my meeting, the Pentagon had been hit and United 93 was down. When I walked out of the meeting, there were armed guards everywhere around the entrances to the airport, wearing camouflage fatigues and toting automatic weapons. It was a chilling sight, to say the least.

I quickly realized that my original route wouldn’t be a good possibility. I also heard that due to the crash of United 93, the Pennsylvania Turnpike was closed, and that was my normal route. I had to find a new route.

I decided that the best bet was to take I-66 to its terminus in Front Royal, pick up I-81, take it north to Hagerstown, and pick up I-70 there. I would take 70 to Hancock and then get I-68, which goes through the mountains of western Maryland and West Virginia. I-68 ends in Morgantown, WV, where I would pick up I-79, take it to Washington, PA, get I-70 there, and finally make my way home. And that’s what I did.

As I was driving west on I-66, I was in the left lane at one point. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw a convoy of black Chevy Suburbans with red and blue lights coming up behind at a very high rate of speed, so I pulled over to let them go by. By then, they were already saying that Cheney had been taken to some undisclosed safe location, and I couldn’t help but wonder whether these vehicles had something to do with that (I subsequently learned where that “undisclosed location” is, and it’s not likely that they had anything to do with it). They whizzed by me like I was standing still.

I have to admit that I was glad that I took such a long and roundabout route to get home. I felt safer going through the West Virginia mountains, figuring that I would be safe out in the middle of nowhere. What was really strange was not seeing any aircraft in the sky. I was listening to NPR all day, so I knew as much as anyone did, but I hadn’t seen any of the horrifying but now familiar video. I also couldn’t reach Susan on the cell phone because the cellular telephone system was in bad shape from the combination of losing cells in New York and from its being horribly overloaded.

I finally crossed into Ohio about 5 PM. I stopped to use the bathroom at a rest stop, briefly asking the Ohio State Highway Patrol trooper how he was doing. When I came out, I looked up in the sky and saw a single large plane surrounded by multiple fighters and knew that it could only be Air Force One. Now, I am no fan of the current occupant of the White House–I think that he stole the 2000 election and took office without having being elected and my opinion of him has only gone down by leaps and bounds since then–but I have to admit that I was glad to see him that day. It gave me a small measure of comfort.

I finally got home about 7:00 that evening. It had been a long and brutal day, and I finally saw the horrific videos I’d heard about all day. I just wanted to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head.

Susan’s cousin was on the 22nd floor of the South Tower when it was hit. If she hadn’t been in a meeting there, she would have been dead, as her office was on the floor that was hit. Or there was my friend Mark’s sister, Jennifer. Jenn had just gotten off the train from New Jersey and was cutting across the plaza at the WTC to catch the subway, completely unaware of what had happened–she was underground when the plane hit–and was yanked out of the way by an alert policeman, or else Jenn would have been hit by the body of someone who jumped from one of the floors above the conflagration. To this day, nobody knows whether that nameless but nevertheless heroic policeman survived. My friend Jim Nolan–a lifelong New Yorker–saw the whole thing from his office window in mid-town Manhattan and then had to walk home to Queens. “Look what they’ve done to my city,” he thought.

Indeed. Look what they’ve done to our world. It will never be the same again. I will save my rant against the present administration for tomorrow before leaving the topic for good. Tonight, it’s not appropriate.

We can never forget the firefighters, the policemen, and the employees of the firms headquartered in the WTC. We can never forget the civilians and the soldiers and sailors of the Pentagon who gave their lives. We can never forget Kevin Levin’s cousin Alisha Levin, who died at the WTC. We can never forget the flight crews of the airliners that crashed, or the innocent passengers who filled those planes. We can never forget the heroic men and women of United 93 who saved the White House or the Capitol from a horrendous fate. And we can never forget the people who lost loved ones in these tragic events.

For a brief, shining moment, as we poured out our grief, we Americans permitted the better angels of our nature to shine through. Instead of partisan politics, for once, we united and came together. The generosity of people in this time of crisis was staggering (just as it was in the wake of Katrina). It’s really a tragedy that we need a disaster of nearly unprecedented scale to bring us together, but it seems to be the case.

We must never forget. For those who fail to learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them.