I remember I slept late. 10 o’clock in the morning. I’m brushing my teeth in my residence hall bathroom. A dude ran in and said, “Someone attacked the World Trade Center; they think 50,000 people are dead. I said, “C’mon, man. That’s not funny. Don’t joke about that.” It was real.
It’d been a couple years I think since a guy drove a truck into the parking garage of the World Trade Center that contained a bomb. I remember when the USS Cole got attacked the previous year. We knew it was Islamic-flavored terrorists.
I went toward the front desk. We always had news summaries on a standing whiteboard. Above the news, there was a note: “In spite of everything that has happened, we are committed to treating everyone with respect, no matter their religion.” I was proud to see that. I’m still very proud it was there. In those days, it wasn’t normal to try to offend political opponents on purpose.
It wasn’t that the day was so hard; it was too shocking to feel anything. The days and weeks that followed brought out the emotions. Every time President Bush spoke, it felt like I was on the verge of tears. He went to Ground Zero a few days later. He gave a speech that ended, “In the past few days, we’ve seen and heard from our first responders. The people who did this will hear from all of us soon.” They started to chant, “USA! USA! USA!” It went on a long time, to the point where I was uncomfortable.
I remember the special joint session of Congress on the 20th. The president spoke again. It’s been 25 years, and I still can’t even read the thing without tears.
I remember when the World Series started. Yeah, nobody hated the Yankees then. I remember the president throwing out the first pitch. Perfect strike. F— yes, Mr. President. The Arizona Diamondbacks winning Game 7 was oddly cathartic. We didn’t need a storybook ending to be Americans. We were OK. Baseball could be weird, like it’s supposed to be.
We became defiant. We understood that if we lived in fear, they would win. It became a punchline eventually, but we weren’t going to let them win, and we didn’t.
You didn’t have to watch the footage to be sad; it just would grab you in a moment. I still haven’t been to New York, but it feels like home. It always will, I imagine.
We really did that goofy thing where we gave a thumbs up or a nod if we saw someone with an American flag shirt or hat on. This went on for months.
A few years later, Darryl Worley recorded “Have You Forgotten?” Like a lot of country songs from the time, it laid the patriotism on a little thick. But the line, “Some went down like heroes/In that Pennsylvania field” wrecks me every time. They were the fourth plane, meant for the White House.
I’m a practicing Catholic now, but who I am today is pretty much who I was then. Death is hugely clarifying. I might think a person is kinda stupid, with stupid ideas. But I would rather help them see that they have stupid ideas, as opposed to murder them. That’s still the America I believe in.
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