9/11 was this generation’s December 7th
If we are to learn from pivotal days in our history, we must first remember them. Some are suggesting that a 9/11 museum on Ground Zero is too expensive, could be built there later, could be built in the lobby of a business tower, or should not be built at all. 9/11 was this generation’s day of infamy; the day Islamic terrorists murdered 3,000 people in less than two hours, in the bloodiest attack on America on our soil in our history. The World Trade Center is where that day’s death and destruction began and ended.
Murder and mayhem is not 9/11’s whole story—not by a long shot—yet that is where the telling of it all must begin. Ground Zero is where 2,755 were slaughtered, with 1,157 of them vaporized (in the two attacks upon the World Trade Center). Before America could get back up, it got knocked down. Most people clearly understood this back then:
“…no matter what form the reconstruction of the site takes, New York should make a commitment now to preserving the searing fragment of ruin already so frequently photographed and televised that it has become nearly as familiar to us as the buildings that once stood there. This is the huge, skeletal and jagged steel fragment of the World Trade Center and its facade that still stubbornly stands in the midst of the utter destruction of ground zero.
Though tilted slightly, it somehow survived, emerging from the fire and smoke of Sept. 11 — inexplicably durable, still pointing to the heavens and now a fitting, realistic and moving monument to those who died there. Already an icon, it should stand forever as a sculptural memorial, incorporated into whatever other structures or landscapes are chosen as fitting for this site. – Philippe de Montebello, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, writing in the New York Times, September 25, 2001
Most people still understand:
In regard to Debra Burlingame’s June 6 editorial-page essay “Ground Zeroâ€: “When will the politicians and the “mainstream†media understand that we citizens want to remember that day, despite how horrible it was. We don’t need fluffy reflecting pools and waterfalls. We want to remember the victims and the heroes of that day, and, yes, even the evil fanatics who caused it.†— Paul Quarry, Cincinnati, in the June 8, 2006, comments section of the Wall Street Journal
9/11’s story will not fit into the lobby of the Freedom Tower, just down a bit from the kiosk’s coffee and magazines. Nor would that be fitting remembrance.
9/11’s story is bigger than that. There was the 3,000, the known and unknown heroes, and people scrambling to get home with a whole city trying to help them get there. There was a Pile swarmed, help pouring it from everywhere, hope, despair, tears, and honor. There was America, knocked down to one knee, struggling to get up, embracing those who had lost a loved one, and rising to our feet as a nation and a people.
We remember. And we must pass it all down to future generations. It is also their ‘day of infamy’ and now is the time to ensure they will come to know 9/11’s story.
9/11 and Ground Zero will never be just two pools in a park. While a few might not know that, the rest of us do.
