Yes, it was quite a Sunday wasn’t it? Beautiful tributes across the country to visit personally, or to observe via the Internet or television broadcast. A celebration of new life after deep loss. I myself attended the offering presented in Tempe, AZ. which exhibited flags posted, one for every person who did that day in the fall of the WTC collapse, the attack on the Pentagon, or in the crash that was bravely diverted from hitting our nation’s capitol building. Attached to each flag was the name of one of those individuals and a little something about them, including the site at which they died. Taps was played periodically in classic fashion. But additionally remarkable to this writer, was the fact that this offering lay smack in the middle of the flight pattern leaving Sky Harbor Air Port! The plans flew directly overhead all day long, adding a third dimension of thought to this very moving and beautiful tribute to tragedy and new life in our precious country.
We most certainly remembered! And we will continue to remember as these permanent sites bring the loss and renewal and commitment to mind in the hearts of the American people.
Or will we? I waited to write the rest of this until today because, we each of us needed our thoughts and time to value the personal meaning of pain and void. And those “9/11 families” (whose lives will never be the same) needed to be first and foremost on Sunday. And we did, all of us, value it, respect it, pray for this country and for the continued expansion and unity of the American Spirit.
I hope these monuments do not end up being set aside. They are not just monuments to the dead, the lost growth of this country. They are a reminder that we can no longer afford to be the sleeping giant. We must be vigilant.
I can’t help but think of the attack on Pearl Harbor where we said we would remember this day… “A day that will live in infamy,” our then president said. And yet Pearl Harbor Day is not remembered that way. We make movies to depict the pain and watch them munching popcorn. We make it a vacation destination with our families and then move on to whatever’s next on the list. We have not remembered it as “a day that will live in infamy” at all… We memorialized it and moved on to whatever came next.
My grandparents and my parents remembered but as those generations have died and gone to God, we have not taken the lesson to heart. So I ask you, when we’ve said, “We Will Remember,” how long will these words last before our children and their children do the same thing with 9/11 that everyone did to Pearl Harbor Day?
We have a chance to make it right. We have an opportunity to change history by actually doing what we say we will do for the sake of our country and for those who get it now, but will also go to God taking the reality of 9/11 with them. We must continually help our children and their children, and then their children to understand what truly happened. We got caught with our pants down and paid a terrible price. Let’s hope we don’t ever do that again. We must repeatedly teach our children that life is precious and not something to take for granted. Lessons must be learned.
May we all of us protect our people through prayer, memory, active respect, and teaching the same to our children continually… The key word: Continually. Let us truly strive eternally to remember.
Best… Carolyn Thomas Temple
