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The 40 heroes who were onboard Flight 93 on September 11, 2001 will be given the honors of a memorial to their final resting place in field in Shanksville, PA.
Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, with Mrs. Bush, and Mrs. Biden, join Vice President Joe Biden to dedicate the Flight 93 Memorial.
The passenger and crew of Flight 93 learned what was going on in New York and at the Pentagon, and quickly realized that their hijacked plane was a part of the terrorist mission on that fateful morning. The stories of the 40 brave souls have played out in various accounts, and will be memorialized forever. The first responders to the site, and the many on the ground who talked with the passengers or their families as the events unfolded in that short period of time, are all a part of the memory and the understanding of the human spirit that those 40 brave heroes exhibited that day.
As the poet said at the dedication, we would not choose to have gone through this event to be able to remember, but we must choose never to forget. Pres. Bush invoked the words of another great President, at another dedication of sacred land in Pennsylvania, as Lincoln said “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”
God bless the heroes of Flight 93 and their Families who carry on their legacy!!
Tomorrow, we will wake up to another September 11th, the day after Sept. 10th, and the day before Sept. 12th. But just as November 22nd, 1963 or December 7th, 1941 are etched in the hearts and minds of a generation, so too, will September 11th be the Day of Remembrance for this generation. It is a day to remember that we watched the horror of the radical Islamic attacks upon our own soil. A day to remember not only the bravery of the first responders, in the ranks of the NYPD, NYFD, and the Port Authority, but the many brave souls who did countless and untold acts of bravery within the confines of what would become their tomb. It will be a day to remember the known heroes of Flight 93 as they fought to make sure their plane did not hit its intended target, as well as the unknown heroes on the planes that hit the World Trade Center Towers and the Pentagon.
It will be a day to remember that we were not Republicans or Democrats, but we were Americans. To remember that as proud Amricans have always done, we rose to the occasion to aid those in need. To remember, as Alan Jackson’s lyrics said, that we held hands and prayed for each other— Yes, we prayed for all of us publically and privately, and no ine dared to question it.
We need to remember not just those who died that September day, but those who are still fighting the scars of that day. We need to remember that many of the first responders and the survivors were affected by the toxins released as the buildings collapsed and fires burnt below the great city. We need to remember the loved ones, the families and the friends, the neighbors and the communities, whose lives were forever changed.
September 11th, a Day or Remembrance, as a Nation. Others have declared that we need to make the day a National Day of Service, which I disagree with. However, in remembering the events of September 11th, serve by giving blood so the supply is always ready should we ever, God forbid, need to address another emergency on that grand scale. Or serve with your donations to Tuesday’s Children, the children whose mother or father never came home on that fateful day.
Whatever you do tomorrow, as we all will have our moment of remembrance, just remember that we are what makes this Nation great, we the average hard working Americans, and the best service we can do for this country is to remember our Founding Fathers and their principles, remember the sacrifice of those before us, and build on that foundation for a greater tomorrow. That will be the lasting memorial of September 11th, 2001.
For information on Tuesday’s Children: http://www.tuesdayschildren.org/index.php
Here, that Tuesday wasn’t a bright sunny day, perhaps an overcasting shadow of how the day would soon unfold!
To my parents generation, they can tell you to the precise moment what they were doing when Walter Cronkite broke into the afternoon soap operas to tearfully let the nation know that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas, TX. Their parents can tell you how the voices sounded as the newswires announced that Japan had attacked our fleet in Hawaii on that December 7th, a day of infamy.
For us, and for our children, the vision of those airplanes flying into the World Trade Center towers will be forever etched in our minds. The sight of the Pentagon burning after it was hit will be indullable. And the visualization of the heroics that ensued on Flight 93 as its proud victims helped to avert its disasterous attack, forcing it down into a field in Pennsylvania instead of allowing it to take out its target in Washington DC.
The victims and the survivors of 9-11 will always be remembered as our heroes. The firstresponders who valiantly charged into the Towers….. those who lost their lives that day, or the next, or are now suffering from the illnesses that filled their lungs and their bodies as the rescued loved ones and colleagues.
The military and civilians who were killed or injured at the Pentagon are forever memorialized in our minds.
And the recorded messages and phone calls that emanated from the passengers and crew on Flight 93 will forever play again and again, and the words “Let’s Roll” will always evoke a heroic symbolism.
Thus, this September 11th, 2008, seven years after our history changed forever, we will again pause and reflect. We will remember those lost that day, and their families who have attempted to pick up the pieces of their lives. We will think of the small children who lost family that day, who are now in school. We will think of those spouses and parents who deeply miss their loved one. All who lost their lives at the hand of those terrorists that day, those who survived that tragedy, and those who valiantly worked in the rescue attempts, we will remember the sacrifice that their service meant on that day.
New York City today is a different place. Having had the opportunity to dine at the Windows on the World restaurant high atop the Tower, it is eery to see the void in the skyline, but so very easy to recall the beauty of the view. One cannot walk in the area now referred to as Ground Zero without feeling the quietness that falls on those few blocks, feeling and knowing that this place is the beginning of a new chapter in our history. A place where the true heroic nature of the heart and soul that has always embodied the American ideal, will forever be interred and forever be memorialized as a reminder to the next generation that we must never forget, we must always be diligent, and we must never take our lives and our freedoms as Americans for granted ever.
