REMEMBERING 9/11 TWENTY YEARS LATER

You may read my recollection of 9/11 written ten years after that momentous day by clicking on the link below.   I was not blogging in 2001.  (Also, to read history of 9/11 click here.)

https://joared-along.blogspot.com/2011/09/911-remembered-10-years-later.html

Comments written then triggered still strongly felt reactions from readers though a decade had passed.  

This 20 year anniversary of such a tragedy continues to elicit from me only slightly tempered emotional feelings as I've felt on 9/11 every year since 2001.   

I had no loved ones, friends, acquaintances, whose lives were taken, but like so many across this nation, around the world, we didn't know what was happening ... what might happen ... where ... when ... who ... why?    

Reliving the experience I wrote about, I again felt the increasing anxiety I felt then about what was occurring as I was viewing on television events unfold in real time that morning.  I was simultaneously speaking on the phone with my daughter in Virginia as the east coast atrocity came to the Pentagon, much closer to her.  Was my son and family safe in middle America?   What about family who I learned later could actually view the Twin Towers out their window?   At some point it even crossed my mind to wonder if we were safe on the west coast?

Like many, I never imagined such an attack could or would ever occur on our shores.  I had been a mere child on December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor, (click to read event history), the day that has lived in infamy, so did not fully grasp the significance of that event at the time, unlike 9/11 when I was an adult.   

Also, on the Hawaii attack we did not have the immediacy of visual television news capturing the real time tragedies as occurred on 9/11.   Radio broadcasts, newspapers were dominant news sources.  I think most of us have wanted to believe that our shores would never again be subjected to such a foreign attack.  9/11 proved we were wrong.  

Domestic terrorism as we experienced January 6th is what we are subjected to today.  We cannot rule out foreign forces will continue to be of concern.   Our democratic republic is under assault but largely from within.  Truth has been trampled as leaders have let the American people down.  

We have ceased to be united as a people despite our differences, unlike how we were after December 7th, then for a short time after 9/11 before actions taken then went askew.  There is a truth to the saying, "United we stand, divided we fall."  We are long overdue for putting our country over political party. 

May we preserve our nation intact with a government as prescribed by our Constitution, not led by a one person leader who perceives and promotes himself as omniscient, God-like.    

Meanwhile, we remember 9/11, the lives of those taken from us, honor the national heroes who rendered aid.  

 

May we never ever have to experience any tragedy even remotely like this again.