By Kenny Mitchell
Publisher
I remember vividly the morning of September 11, 2001.
If you were alive on that day, odds are you do too.
I was at the Tribune office that morning. We were working on our next issue, it was just another day. Then, I got a phone call from my wife, and the world changed forever.
This was before the days of instant news on a phone in our pocket. We barely had internet at the Tribune those days. So, I went home and got a tv, checked on my family, and then came back to watch as the drama that changed our lives forever unfolded.
If you don’t know, we had local people in the twin towers that day. I will always know. I remember the voices of their loved ones as we wrote the stories that week. I remember the trembling words of my friend June Storey. I remember the fear in my wife’s voice as she sat with our three young children. She asked me, “Are they going to come here? Kenny, are they going to come here? Kenny…please come home.”
Odds are, you remember the fear too. You remember the gut punch and horror as one tower fell, and then the other. You remember the shock at seeing the fortress of our nation’s defense, the Pentagon, smoking and scarred.
Of all the things I remember from that horrible day, it is the bodies falling. The bodies of fellow Americans. The bodies of our brothers and sisters who were forced to make the incredulous decision to either jump from hundreds of feet above the ground or be burned alive. That is my most traumatic memory. Those are the images I dream of sometimes still today.
As we pause to remember 9/11 again this year it is hard to imagine that it has now been almost a quarter century since those towers fell. Next year it will be twenty five years.
Our babies from that day are grown now. There is a whole new generation of young people who were not born yet. Our world has changed; our country has changed. Some changes for the good, and some not.
In recent days I have pondered much on the fact that we have forgotten how we felt in the days after the Twin Towers fell. In the days that followed there were tears, grief and astonishment. But there was also a sense of America like no other I have ever felt.
We put aside our petty differences and intolerance and we came together to be fellow Americans. We donated our money, we gave our blood, and we demanded retribution. Together.
We rallied around our first responders in those days. We watched the NYFD on Saturday Night Live and daily news shows, and whether you liked the Yankees or the Red Sox, you loved the firefighters of the NYFD and all of the other firefighters who ran into the flames that day, We cried for them, we respected them, and we honored their sacrifices. Together.
Since those days after 9/11, we have repeated those “American” times in other days, like Desert Storm. We have relived the days that we were simply proud to be called Americans.
Where are those days now? Why is it that we have to have some tragedy to come together? My mind goes back a few weeks to the devastation and loss of life on the Guadalupe River…Camp Mystic…Kerr County. We came together then, as Texans…as Americans.
So, I ask again, why is it that we have to have a tragedy to come together? Why are we so often a nation of red or blue, Black and White, liberal or conservative? Why do we allow things like race, creed, religion, social status or neighborhood divide us and build walls between us?
Every single time I hear about, read about or witness the divisions in our country, I think about 9/11. I ask the question posed by Alan Jackson of “where were you when the world stopped turning.” And, I remember.
To fix our country, we all need to remember. Not just on the anniversary of the day, but every day.
We all need to remember.
