By Vanesa Brashier, editor and publisher of Bluebonnet News
Twenty-five years ago today, I was a relatively new reporter at a small newspaper, still learning the business and probably believing I knew considerably more about it than I actually did.
Sept. 11, 2001, was a press day.
That detail has always stuck with me because while something unimaginable was happening hundreds of miles away, our little newsroom still had a newspaper to put out. In addition to being a reporter, I was the paginator, which meant I was responsible for laying out the pages and getting them ready for the press. There were deadlines to meet, stories to place, headlines to write and pages that had to be finished.
This was before smartphones and social media, and long before most of us expected breaking news to find us within seconds. We did not have televisions mounted throughout the newsroom or live video playing on our computer screens. We learned what was happening the way millions of other Americans did that morning — through television.
Our publisher had a small television in his office, and as we worked, he would periodically give us another update. Occasionally, we would stop what we were doing and walk into his office to see the coverage ourselves.
First, a passenger plane had hit the World Trade Center. Then another plane hit. There was an attack on the Pentagon. Eventually came the news that the towers had fallen. Each update seemed more impossible than the one before it, yet we would return to our desks, choking back tears and fears, because, somehow, there was still a newspaper to finish.
I remember the surreal feeling of trying to concentrate on a newspaper page while history was unfolding on a small television in the next room. Looking back, I think that is what stands out most about that morning — the collision between the completely ordinary and the unimaginable.
Some images and videos from that day are still difficult to think about 25 years later and I still get teary when I see them today. We watched people trapped high above the ground make the horrifying choice to leap from the towers rather than die in the fires behind them. I remember trying to comprehend the desperation it would take for another human being to make that choice, knowing there was no possibility of survival either way. Then the towers began to fall, and the horror changed again. We watched enormous clouds of dust and debris swallow entire streets as firefighters, police officers, office workers and ordinary people ran for their lives.
We were a long way from New York and Washington, sitting in a small newspaper office in Texas, but it did not feel far away that day. We grieved for people we had never met and wondered what might happen next. They had not just attacked New York or Washington. They had attacked America, and that meant they had attacked all of us.
People had gone to work. Parents had dropped children off at school. Airline passengers had settled into their seats. Somewhere, somebody was probably irritated about being stuck in traffic or running late for an appointment. Across America, millions of people had begun an ordinary Tuesday morning with absolutely no reason to believe they would remember that date for the rest of their lives.
By the end of the day, we knew something had changed, even if we could not yet understand how much.
For those of us old enough to remember Sept. 11, there is a very distinct before and after. We remember what airports were like before 9/11. We remember when terrorism seemed like something that happened somewhere else, something we saw on the evening news from a country far away. We remember watching those towers fall and realizing that America was not untouchable.
A generation has now grown to adulthood without that “before.” My youngest daughter and my grandchildren have never known it. To them and millions of others their age, Sept. 11 is history. They learn about it in school in much the same way my generation learned about Pearl Harbor. They can watch the videos and hear the stories, but they cannot possibly remember how America felt on Sept. 10, 2001, because they never lived in that America.
There is nothing wrong with that. Time moves forward, generations change and eventually every event passes from personal memory into history. What troubles me is not that young people cannot remember Sept. 11. What troubles me is the possibility that those of us who do remember have not done a very good job of explaining what we were supposed to learn from it.
Every year, we say, “Never forget.” Twenty-five years later, I find myself wondering whether we have.
I do not mean whether we remember where we were that morning or whether we still feel something when we see photographs of the towers. I mean whether we remember how quickly something we assumed was secure could suddenly seem terribly fragile.
Maybe part of getting older is realizing that very little worth having can be taken for granted. A country is no different. Freedom does not maintain itself simply because previous generations fought for it, and security is not guaranteed because we have been fortunate enough to enjoy it.
As much as we might not want to think about it, something like Sept. 11 could happen again. We would be foolish to believe otherwise.
I also wonder whether our understanding of tolerance has changed over these 25 years. Tolerance is a good thing when it means allowing our neighbors to live differently than we do, worship differently than we do, disagree with us and still be treated with dignity. That kind of tolerance is woven into the idea of America itself.
But tolerance does not mean that I have to agree with everything another person believes, and it certainly does not mean that every idea deserves to be treated as a good one. Somewhere along the way, we seem to have forgotten that distinction. Some ideas are wrong. Some are dangerous. History has proven that more than once.
Communism is one example. I am old enough to remember the Cold War and what we knew about life behind the Iron Curtain. We have the benefit of history now. We know what happened when communist governments took control in countries around the world, and we know how often ordinary people paid the price with their freedom. Yet some of those same ideas are being dusted off and presented to another generation as something new and appealing.
We should not be so arrogant as to believe that ideas that brought oppression, suffering and the loss of freedom to millions of people will somehow produce a different result simply because a new generation gives them a new name or a more appealing sales pitch. History is not merely something to study. It is a warning, and we ignore its lessons at our own peril.
The men who attacked our country on Sept. 11 were al-Qaeda terrorists driven by a radical Islamist ideology. They murdered nearly 3,000 people. There is no reason to soften that truth 25 years later simply because speaking plainly can sometimes make people uncomfortable.
There is something else I am not particularly interested in softening: I believe the United States of America is still the best country on the planet.
Is it perfect? Of course not. We have made mistakes, sometimes terrible ones, and we will make more. We argue about politics, policies and the direction our country should take, sometimes so loudly that we forget how remarkable it is that we have the freedom to argue about those things in the first place. That is part of being a nation of more than 300 million people who are free to have their own opinions.
But if you genuinely believe America is a terrible place to live, try living abroad for a few years. Experience another system of government. See what rights you have, what opportunities are available to you and how freely you can criticize the people in power. Heck, for the sake of harmony in this country, some of us might even chip in for your plane ticket. We will see you when you get back.
I wish patriotism had not become something people sometimes feel compelled to qualify or defend. There should be no embarrassment in saying that you love America and are proud to be an American. I also have no problem with people taking pride in the country from which they came. Heritage matters, and there is nothing wrong with honoring the culture, traditions and history that helped shape you. However, if you have chosen to make the United States your home, then the American flag should be the flag you proudly fly. You can honor where you came from while embracing the country you chose.
That flag means something to me. Both of my grandfathers served this country, as did generations of my ancestors before them. They were willing to fight for a nation they believed was worth defending, and I cannot separate my love of country from the sacrifices made by the people who came before me. I inherited freedoms that somebody else was willing to risk his life to preserve. The least I can do is refuse to be embarrassed by my gratitude for them.
Patriotism should be encouraged more in this country. While covering the news, I have attended local school events where some students would not stand for the national anthem or the Pledge of Allegiance, and some of our school districts allow them to make that choice. I have watched students sit there laughing and cutting up as though none of it meant anything. They certainly have the freedom not to participate, but I cannot help wondering whether their parents, or we as a society, have done a poor job of teaching them why those things matter in the first place.
Children should know there is nothing wrong with loving their country. They should know that generations of Americans sacrificed for the freedoms they enjoy and that those freedoms should never be taken for granted.
In the years since those attacks on Sept. 11, we have allowed ourselves to become increasingly divided by the extremes of politics. Somewhere along the way, disagreement became something more personal. Too often, people on the other side of a political issue stopped being neighbors who saw things differently and became enemies to be defeated.
I do not believe most Americans actually live at those extremes. Most of us are somewhere in the enormous middle, trying to raise our families, pay our bills, take care of the people we love and leave something worthwhile behind for our children and grandchildren. We may disagree strongly about how to accomplish those things, but disagreement does not have to make us hate one another.
That is one of the things I remember most about the days following Sept. 11. For a little while, the things that divided us seemed much smaller than the thing that united us. American flags were everywhere. People put them on their houses, their cars and their businesses. There was a sense, however brief and imperfect, that whatever else we were, we were Americans first.
I do not want another tragedy to remind us of that. Surely, just 25 years later, we can remember it on our own.
There was tremendous evil on display on Sept. 11, but there was also extraordinary courage. Firefighters climbed the stairs of the World Trade Center while everyone else was desperately trying to get down. Police officers and paramedics ran toward danger as they always do. Strangers helped strangers. The passengers and crew aboard Flight 93 learned enough about the attacks already underway to understand what their own hijacked airplane might be used to do, and they made the decision to fight back. Among the last words heard from passenger Todd Beamer before they did were two simple words that would become part of the story of Sept. 11: “Let’s roll.” They knew the odds were against them, but they acted anyway, and in doing so likely prevented another attack on our nation’s capital.
That is part of what younger generations need to know about Sept. 11. They need more than dates, death tolls and photographs in a history lesson. They need to understand why people who lived through that day still become emotional talking about it.
They need to know what happened afterward, too. They need to know why American flags suddenly appeared on front porches and highway overpasses, why strangers stood in lines to donate blood and why churches filled with people looking for comfort and answers. They need to understand that for one brief period, Americans who had disagreed about plenty on Sept. 10 woke up on Sept. 12 understanding that they shared something much larger.
We certainly did not agree about everything then, and we do not now. We never will, nor should we. The freedom to disagree is one of those things we have enjoyed for so long that it is easy to forget what a remarkable privilege it is.
Twenty-five years later, there are adults raising children who were not alive when the towers stood. As the years pass, there will be fewer of us who can say that we remember exactly where we were when we heard the news. That is inevitable. Forgetting the lessons is not.
At the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City, a wall bears the words, “No day shall erase you from the memory of time.” They are beautiful words, intended to ensure that the people who died that day are never reduced to a number in a history book.
Twenty-five years later, though, I find myself wondering what time does to our memories. The names, photographs and facts of Sept. 11 will always be part of our history, but the feeling of that day is harder to preserve — the horror of watching people jump from burning buildings, the disbelief as the towers collapsed, the fear of wondering what might happen next and the sudden realization that the country we believed was safe was vulnerable.
Those of us who watched it happen can tell the stories, but we cannot give another generation the experience of having lived through that day, and we want them to never experience such a day. We cannot make them remember an America they never knew. What we can do is make certain they understand why it mattered.
If “No day shall erase you from the memory of time” is to be more than a beautiful inscription on a wall, then remembering requires something from us. We have to tell the stories of the people who went to work that morning and never came home. We have to tell the stories of the firefighters who climbed the stairs, the strangers who helped one another and the passengers aboard Flight 93 who decided to fight back. We have to teach our children and grandchildren why freedom is worth protecting and why this country, for all its imperfections, is worth loving.
I remember the America before Sept. 11. My grandchildren never will, and that thought hits me differently on this 25th anniversary. Maybe that is why those of us who do remember have a responsibility greater than simply saying, “Never forget.”
We have to tell them what that means.