On September 11, 2001, my family was getting ready to start our day. 13-year-old Johnny came into our bedroom to tell us that the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane. We thought it was a news report on the anniversary of the 1993 bombing, but he insisted we come out and watch the news.
That was the morning that our world changed. Not as much as the families who lost loved ones. Not as much as the rescuers and their families. We were lucky. We didn’t have any direct connection. But it still affected us.
My husband is from New York. His sister worked in Manhattan then. She also traveled a lot. Had she been flying that day? She was fine. All of John’s family was safe.
Two summers before, John’s parents had treated us to a stay in the Marriott World Trade Center when the kids were 7- and 10-years old. They remembered grabbing some pizza in the underground shopping mall along with Wall Street executives who ate slices of cheese pizza with their silk ties thrown over their shoulders. We stood on the Top of the World Observation Deck, 1310 feet above the Big Apple. Back down on the ground, near “The Sphere” sculpture, John’s mom had scolded a city worker for cursing in front of her grandchildren.
On the other side of America, on 9/11/01, my parents checked in from Hawaii. One of the last places my father had worked before retiring from the Army was in the Pentagon. The plane that crashed into the Pentagon, hit fairly close to where his office had been.
My parents agreed with our decision to keep the kids home from school. Nobody knew what was going on, who the attackers were, or whether they were done. My mom and dad had been through something similar before. They were both 8-years-old on December 7, 1941. My father lived in Pearl City and watched the Japanese bomb our navy while he played hooky from Sunday school. His father was a civilian worker at Pearl Harbor. A stray bomb hit the back of my mother’s house, near Waikiki. Her father was a fire fighter who spent the next week rescuing sailors and fighting the fires on the bombed out ships in Pearl Harbor.
As September 11 passed, we spent the day watching the news. The kids’ friends stopped by our house after school to watch with us, and talk about the horrible scenes that were unfolding. Latch-key kids, they didn’t want to go home to an empty house. There weren’t any words to adequately describe what had happened, but being together was better than being alone.
Each generation has a defining moment in history. For my parents it was December 7, 1941, “a date which will live in infamy.” For my generation, it was November 22, 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated. For my children, it was September 11, 2001.
Johnny was the first in our family to hear about the tragedy on 9/11. Sarah was the one who called us last night May 1, 2011, to ask if it was true that Osama Bin Laden was dead. She’d seen it on Facebook. We turned off the movie we’d been watching, and turned on the news. It was true! The mastermind who thought he could bring America to its knees had finally been found, and killed.
On our TV screen, newscasters informed us about how intelligence found Bin Laden, and how the Navy Seals launched the attack with professional precision. Outside the White House, and in streets across America, people of all races, males and females, celebrated, chanting “USA,” singing “The Star Spangled Banner,” and waving our flag.
The pundits warn us against letting our guard down. They caution that this is not the end of terrorism. Do they really think anyone has any illusions of Islamic radicals suddenly embracing America, or security being dismantled at airports?
Osama bin Laden was the leader of the enemy group that killed 2,977 innocent people one fall morning in American. Al-Queda is still actively trying to kill anyone who doesn’t believe what they believe. Bin Laden has paid the price for his actions. That’s a victory for our side.
There has been an ocean of tears shed in sorrow for mass killings set in motion by bin Laden. There will probably be more sadness and pain at the hands of terrorists in the future. When we’ve done something to stop that or slow it down, when there’s something to be proud of, I refuse to deny or squash those feelings. The world felt a little lighter today.
Laura Keolanui Stark can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.
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