story20514.xml
Title
story20514.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2006-09-11
911DA Story: Story
My 9/11 narrative is already on this site. I'm a native New Yorker who has lived in the DC area for some time now. In September 2001 I spent time in New York as well as spending several harrowing hours on the bus with others like me, trying to get home while the Pentagon (which is not far from me) was burning and lives were being lost.
I also spent time in NYCity 2 weeks after 9/11 -- and that terrible sad time is also burned into my soul.
What is it like 5 years later? I still pass the Pentagon every day. I look at the totally restored building and think of those lives that are never to be restored, or those burned hands and faces and limbs that will never be restored, and that trust in life that is never to be restored, and I realize that MANY children who were born on or near that fateful day are now old enough to understand in a limited way, what we are commemorating today. IDO NOT want them or their Children's children to ever forget this -- just as I DO NOT want them or their childrens children to ever forget Women's Fight for Equality, or the Holocaust, or the Afro American struggle for Equality, or the Struggle for LGBT Rights, or September 11, 2001.
What will we be struggling for in the future? Will we be working VERY hard for Peace, realizing that it begins in each one of our hearts and souls??? Will it be realizing that if we deliberately shortchange someone, or steal from them, or slander them, or bump them in the street or push them on the subway, or make fun of the way they look or talk or dress -- that we are dividing ourselves from one another -- setting the stage for anger, hatred, and revenge??? How much easier it would be to move over to one side, smile, ACCEPT each others' differences, get away from irritating people instead of confronting them (never fight a bear in its own cave!) and, as my mother used to say "Smile at that stranger -- be nice to that stranger (unless of course they are about to do something Very Bad to you! Then RUN!) for you NEVER know what that other person may be suffering!"
So every day I pass the Pentagon, and in my minds eye I still remember the utter devastation where there is now a restored facade. I think of those people who were standing at their fax machines or sipping their morning cuppa at their desk -- who were suddenly confronted by melted hands (burned by the jet fuel) broken bones, and/or a mad dash down a dark hallway reeking with jet fuel fumes, and possibly a dash to a certain death. I think of those people in the planes who may or may not have known that their plane was about to disintegrate, that they were about to die in a nanosecond.
Those innocents in the World Trade Center, suddenly being confronted with the worst possible hell on earth coming through their windows, visiting death and destruction in the twinkling of an eye. The Towers may be gone, but those memories will resonate there, forever.
I think of the wives, husbands, loved ones, kids, kitties, pups, all waiting for their loved one to come home from another work-day at the World Trade Center -- and the terrible shock of discovering that their loved one is gone.......
That peaceful field in Pennsylvania, becoming the deadly resting place for yet another plane filled with innocent victims, killed by terrible evil......
September 11 - that terrible day of destruction -- will never again be just an Ordinary Day. This day is a shrine -- and should be a vow for us to promise starting NOW -- to work together perpetually, for peace and healing as we all did in those terrible dark days and weeks after that day that pure evil was visited upon us.
I live not far from the Pentagon. On the night of September 10, 2006, I saw the Pentagons illumination ceremony from my windows -- 184 beams of light to commemorate each life lost in the attack on the Pentagon. The beautiful beams of light spread upwards in a huge fan shape and in the middle of all these beams of light the full rising moon itself lent a tribute it was blood-orange red, and was so precisely poised in the middle of those beams of light that for one second, I thought it was part of the illumination itself. No it was Mother Nature herself lending her own tribute to this rite of sorrow and commemoration.
Ten years from now, where will we be?
I also spent time in NYCity 2 weeks after 9/11 -- and that terrible sad time is also burned into my soul.
What is it like 5 years later? I still pass the Pentagon every day. I look at the totally restored building and think of those lives that are never to be restored, or those burned hands and faces and limbs that will never be restored, and that trust in life that is never to be restored, and I realize that MANY children who were born on or near that fateful day are now old enough to understand in a limited way, what we are commemorating today. IDO NOT want them or their Children's children to ever forget this -- just as I DO NOT want them or their childrens children to ever forget Women's Fight for Equality, or the Holocaust, or the Afro American struggle for Equality, or the Struggle for LGBT Rights, or September 11, 2001.
What will we be struggling for in the future? Will we be working VERY hard for Peace, realizing that it begins in each one of our hearts and souls??? Will it be realizing that if we deliberately shortchange someone, or steal from them, or slander them, or bump them in the street or push them on the subway, or make fun of the way they look or talk or dress -- that we are dividing ourselves from one another -- setting the stage for anger, hatred, and revenge??? How much easier it would be to move over to one side, smile, ACCEPT each others' differences, get away from irritating people instead of confronting them (never fight a bear in its own cave!) and, as my mother used to say "Smile at that stranger -- be nice to that stranger (unless of course they are about to do something Very Bad to you! Then RUN!) for you NEVER know what that other person may be suffering!"
So every day I pass the Pentagon, and in my minds eye I still remember the utter devastation where there is now a restored facade. I think of those people who were standing at their fax machines or sipping their morning cuppa at their desk -- who were suddenly confronted by melted hands (burned by the jet fuel) broken bones, and/or a mad dash down a dark hallway reeking with jet fuel fumes, and possibly a dash to a certain death. I think of those people in the planes who may or may not have known that their plane was about to disintegrate, that they were about to die in a nanosecond.
Those innocents in the World Trade Center, suddenly being confronted with the worst possible hell on earth coming through their windows, visiting death and destruction in the twinkling of an eye. The Towers may be gone, but those memories will resonate there, forever.
I think of the wives, husbands, loved ones, kids, kitties, pups, all waiting for their loved one to come home from another work-day at the World Trade Center -- and the terrible shock of discovering that their loved one is gone.......
That peaceful field in Pennsylvania, becoming the deadly resting place for yet another plane filled with innocent victims, killed by terrible evil......
September 11 - that terrible day of destruction -- will never again be just an Ordinary Day. This day is a shrine -- and should be a vow for us to promise starting NOW -- to work together perpetually, for peace and healing as we all did in those terrible dark days and weeks after that day that pure evil was visited upon us.
I live not far from the Pentagon. On the night of September 10, 2006, I saw the Pentagons illumination ceremony from my windows -- 184 beams of light to commemorate each life lost in the attack on the Pentagon. The beautiful beams of light spread upwards in a huge fan shape and in the middle of all these beams of light the full rising moon itself lent a tribute it was blood-orange red, and was so precisely poised in the middle of those beams of light that for one second, I thought it was part of the illumination itself. No it was Mother Nature herself lending her own tribute to this rite of sorrow and commemoration.
Ten years from now, where will we be?
Collection
Citation
“story20514.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed December 26, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/13359.