Today is 9/11/16

Today is 9/11/16

 

A weird thing happened to me yesterday; my bill at McDonald’s was $9.11.  Here we are again, 15 years later, trying to honor something we don’t want to remember  but have to.  The horror and pain of that day never seem to go away. What gives me pause every year is that I meet more and more people who were at the Pentagon or the Twin Towers.  My own Dad had been at the Towers only a few years before on business.  He always wanted to take me back, because he saw stores full of dolls and other things he knew I would like.

 

9/11 has touched all of us; we own the tragedy as much as if we were there.  In my other life I chair departments in criminal justice and fire science, and many of my students are police officers and fire fighters.  In their honor, I decorate my office with pictures and small police cards and fire trucks.  One of my colleagues was a police officer, and every time the anniversary comes around, I think of him sitting with me in our office reviewing the memorials of officers killed on duty, and then we come to the 9/11 numbers and pause.

 

In this election year of division and calumny of all kinds, few seem to feel unified as Americans.  On this day, I hope we can mourn and remember together, and put our differences aside.  I hope we can say a prayer for everyone killed by acts of terrorism and violent crime, especially this year.  I hope we can remember that “The Star Spangled Banner” is a piece of prison literature, and the act of writing it gave its captive author hope.  And finally, I hope we remember that the United States, for all her metamorphoses and faults, is, and will always be, the Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave.  And that, no matter the election’s outcome,  that the government by the people, for the people, will not perish from the earth.