Deer In Headlines: Special Edition

By Gery L. Deer

Twenty-five years ago, I watched the world change on a television with a screen barely three inches across. I was at work in Dayton on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, staring at that tiny picture as smoke poured from the World Trade Center and reports came in so quickly that none of us could quite comprehend what we were seeing.

The night before, I had flown home from a weekend event in Las Vegas. I had considered staying another night and flying back Tuesday morning, but I couldn’t find a flight that worked, so I came home Monday instead. I’ve thought about that decision many times over the years. I wasn’t booked on one of those planes or knowingly in danger. Still, there is something unsettling about realizing how close ordinary life can brush against history without our knowing it.

By Tuesday morning, ordinary life was gone for thousands of people.

Nearly 3,000 people died that day. Thousands more survived, carrying memories most of us can only imagine. Firefighters, police officers, paramedics and ordinary people ran toward devastation while others desperately tried to escape it. Families waited for telephone calls that never came.

My friend Joe was a New York City firefighter. He lost his entire company that day. September 11 changed him, as it did countless others who survived the attacks, worked in the wreckage or lost people they loved.

I speak to Joe every anniversary. There isn’t much I can say that makes anything better. Maybe that’s not the purpose. Sometimes remembrance means simply being there, acknowledging that someone still carries something the rest of us have the luxury of remembering only once a year.

For many survivors, Sept. 11 never really ended.

People who worked at Ground Zero during the rescue, recovery and cleanup were exposed to toxic dust and debris. Years later, cancers, respiratory illnesses and other diseases became another terrible legacy of the attacks. Others have lived with trauma, grief and survivor guilt, wondering why they came home when friends and coworkers did not.

America carries scars from that morning, too.

We went to war. Security tightened. Surveillance expanded. Airports changed. Fear became woven into public policy and everyday life. Suspicion grew toward people who looked, dressed or worshipped differently. Political leaders learned just how powerful fear could be when people felt threatened.

It would be too simple to blame today’s bitter political divisions entirely on Sept. 11. History doesn’t work that neatly. But the attacks changed the political soil of America. Fear, nationalism, distrust and the willingness to trade restraint for promises of security became increasingly powerful forces in our public life.

Some historians and political observers have drawn lines from the post-9/11 era through the wars, economic instability, immigration battles and declining trust in institutions to the political extremism we see today. Those lines aren’t always straight, and there are many other causes. But pretending those years left no political legacy would be equally simplistic.

Perhaps remembering Sept. 11 requires more than remembering what happened to America that morning. We should also consider what happened to America afterward.

And remembrance should never belong to one political party, ideology or movement. Those who died that day were Americans and visitors, Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, people of different races, religions and backgrounds. Terrorism did not stop to ask how anyone voted.

Neither should remembrance. If we are to truly honor those who lost their lives, and all who are still living in the aftermath of that day, we must do our best to always be the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

Tomorrow, monuments will be visited, names will be read and flags will fly. Television networks will replay images that many of us still find difficult to watch. A generation born after the attacks will encounter Sept. 11 as history, while the rest of us remember exactly where we were.

I’ll remember a three-inch television in Dayton and a flight home the night before.

And I’ll talk to Joe. Because twenty-five years later, remembrance isn’t about politics. It’s about people. It’s about those who died, those who survived, and those who still carry that morning with them… to make sure they know we haven’t forgotten.