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Thursday, September 11, 2008

Remembering the forgotten

I try not to get on my soap box while on tour, I really do try. But this sunny morning in Bethesda, Maryland, as we prepared to leave at 7 a.m. for a day of tours in Williamsburg and Jamestown, Virginia, I found it hard not to remember the events of 9/11/01. How could anyone forget the news from Pennsylvania, New York City, and Washington, DC? A nation, gripped in fear, watched the TV non-stop as the reports grew increasingly dire. First shock. Then horror. Then disbelief. And then, for most, anger.

“We’ll never forget!”

Well guess what America?

You forgot.

This morning’s Washington Post offers a haunting photograph of the new Pentagon Memorial, to the victims of 9/11/01. For once, Washington (and more appropriately, Arlington, VA) got something right. The “country’s first major 9/11 memorial” it is being called. And the article goes on to explain how, in 2001, the thought for the funds to build such a Memorial would be the least of the eventual designer’s worries. But trouble it was. And it took a concerted effort by family members to make it happen, not the government. Lisa Dolan, whose husband was killed at the Pentagon, said “I don’t think the public thinks much about 9/11 now.” I agree.

All the people that couldn’t purchase an American flag to fly outside their homes quickly enough in September 2001, many for the first time in their lives, have somehow found many more important things to commemorate. A government full of blowhard politicians that paraded the cause of protecting ourselves through campaign ads and TV commercials featuring the destruction front and center—they sit idle today, more interested in their own re-election than properly funding other 9/11 Memorials. Where I use to ride through North Jersey neighborhoods awash in red, white, and blue in late 2001, now those communities seem much less colorful.

I have only led group tours since 2004, so I can’t say what it was like back in 2001 as far as motor-coach conversations with adults and students regarding the events of that day. But, whenever I mention anything about 9/11 on the coach many passengers ask where I was. I was less than a couple miles away, watching both Twin Towers falls across the Hudson River in Lower Manhattan. I can never forget that moment. My mind might want to let me, but I make a point of remembering that day, that moment, and all the wonderful (and maybe, sometimes not so wonderful) people that were lost in Manhattan, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. They didn’t ask for their fate, save for a few of the “pilots”. All gone. All too soon.

I make it a part of my commentary to lead a discussion in some sort of way whenever we’re preparing to visit any of the local sites where the murders occurred. The story of the lost needs to be contemplated, needs to be discussed, needs to be remembered.

In Arlington, Virginia, starting at 7 p.m., and continuing non-stop, 24 hours a day, visitors will reflect on that dreadful day through the design of Keith Kaserman and Julie Beckman. Their $22 million Memorial will give the families and those who do remember a proper place to honor those hopes, dreams, and lives lost.

In Shanksville, Pennsylvania and New York City today, visitors will stand and stare at an open field, an open pit, and wonder how a nation forgot.