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Days of Infamy

 


We have just passed the 25th anniversary of September 11th 2001. It is one of those dates forever etched in my mind.

I recently completed the performance run of a play with a dozen teenagers in the cast, and I realized that none of them were alive when September 11th happened. For them it is just one of those historical events that old people talk about. It is the same way I feel about Pearl Harbor. It was a tragic life-changing event. But what’s missing is the personal visceral imprint on the psyche that happened on that day in September of 2001. Anyone who was alive when Pearl Harbor happened would have that same visceral feeling about it. The world was a different place before December 7th, 1941, than it was after. Roosevelt called it “A date which will live in infamy.”

There have been a number of dates that live in infamy. You can go through history and find these life-changing events periodically: the sinking of the Lusitania, the attack on Fort Sumter, the beheadings of King Louis XVI, or King Charles I. But it is especially true in the age of mass media when events like this can spread through the country like wildfire. This means that everyone pretty much knew what happened within a day. When Louis XVI and his wife were beheaded, it might have taken weeks for news of this to reach every person in France let alone the rest of the world. With radio and news services, word of Pearl Harbor, or September 11th, or the assassination of JFK were quickly known by everyone.  And word travels even faster now with the internet and social media.

Reading about something in a history book is not the same as watching it unfold on live TV. For one thing, in the history book you know how it’s going to end. As we watched 9/11 happen, we didn’t know what was going to come next. We didn’t know what the response would be. We didn’t know when or if life would ever get back to normal. And living through it makes an emotional imprint. All those immediate stories of heroism, of sacrifice, of loss, they don’t carry the same impact when they are told from a distance. Reading about an event years after the fact, seldom makes you cry.

So, for those of you who weren’t alive for 9/11, know this: there were real tears in our eyes that day. Something was broken, and it wasn’t just buildings. And those of us who were around back then sincerely hope that you never have to experience something similar.

Star Liner

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