9/11: The Day of Infamy, Revisited Fifteen Years Later

We all remember the events that took place that day. A day forever immortalized in the public’s memory, the only day that every single American remembers specifically: 9/11.

I remember almost nothing of 8th Grade, but I remember September 11, 2001. I remember sitting on the bleachers during PE, my right hand in a cast from a volleyball accident the week before. As I watched my classmates running laps around our soccer field, a student came screaming out of the main office.

“We’re under attack! Someone’s attacking New York!”

As a rule, assume anything a 14-year old says is just drama. I assumed it was someone “going postal,” another disgruntled employee shooting up an office. It was kind of frequent in my childhood, random shootings on the news.

I was wrong.

We spent the rest of the day watching the events unfold on the news in class. Every classroom had a TV in it, and we were watching the news, waiting to find out what the hell had happened. We screamed as the second plane struck the second tower. For the first time in my life, events unfolding somewhere else in the world affected me on an emotional level. School shootings, genocide in Africa, none of it ever really mattered to me at that age.

9/11 did, and it still does.

That day, 2,996 men and women died, over 400 of whom were first responders from the NYPD, FDNY, and various other government agencies responding to the attacks. Their loss was felt the hardest, men and women who willingly braved fire and debris to save others, complete strangers. They wanted to make a difference, to staunch the wound caused by this cowardly attack, and they paid the ultimate price. In death, they stand as beacons of hope, reminders of what humanity can be in the face of unspeakable evil.

I remember hearing about the deaths of firefighters and police officers at school, and it struck me that they had no reason to be there, other than to be good people, fighting evil the only way they could that day.

That night at home, my family watched the news, as events were continuing to unfold. I noticed she had tears in her eyes, and I, being a dumb teenager, asked “Why are you crying?” Her words rang true, as she looked at me in disbelief:

“Our country is going to war.”

Fifteen years later, we remember the day as a distant memory. The families remember, but have moved on. The rubble is cleared, and a new building stands in place of the Twin Towers. The world changed in an unfathomable number of ways since that day. Many of us recall the lax security at airports prior to 9/11. Hell, there was lax security everywhere. Many of our personal conveniences ended that day in the name of security. Government agencies began wiretapping citizens, US or otherwise, to try and uncover terrorist plots.

Are we better off? Who knows. It seems like there’s a lot more terrorist violence these days, but trends actually indicate the terrorist threat is waning, in Europe and the US both. Especially with the attacks taking place in France and Belgium in the past year, it’s easy to be pessimistic about the progress we’re making dismantling international terrorism. Overall, we’re living in the most peaceful time in human history, both at home and abroad.

So, when is enough, enough? When will we go back to the days when the most you’d see in an airport was an old man with a metal detector? The answer is, maybe never. We may return to a day when wiretaps are no longer necessary, but some new terrorist attack will always be on the horizon. People will remember the events of that September day, and we will grit our teeth, and accept that inconvenience in the name of security is a small price to pay. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments, and tell us where you were during 9/11!

Commemorate the lives of first responders that were lost during the attacks with Navy Crow’s Never Forget Our Heroes Coin. We are but flesh and blood, and when we’re gone, the memories of that day go with us. Get something to remind future generations of the proud sacrifice of the men and women that day, and never let their names be forgotten from the earth.