United we stood

We all remember where we were. In my case, it was Washington, D.C., where, just back from a morning jog to the Arlington Memorial Bridge, I watched on my hotel room television as those first unbelievable images of the World Trade Center started pouring in. Shortly after, Washington itself turned into a cacophony of screaming sirens and confusion, the White House ringed with concentric circles of machine-gun-toting Army and Secret Service officers, the National Mall a veritable military encampment.

In the days to come, business as usual ground to a halt, of course. My scheduled meetings were cancelled (except for one with the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, from whose office we both gazed out at a still-smoking Pentagon.)

It was four days later that I was finally able to catch a plane back to Los Angeles, where one of the most moving sights I encountered as I drove toward home was a banner and flag store on Vine Street in Hollywood, where a line of people stretched around the block to buy American flags.

For me, back from our nation’s capital in its moment of crisis, that line of my flag-buying fellow Angelenos brought it all home viscerally—that we were all standing as one, regardless of where we happened to live.

There are no silver linings in the aftermath of attacks as dastardly as those that claimed nearly 3,000 lives in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001.

But there are indelible memories of an extraordinary test of our national character in which we showed the world—and each other—exactly what we were made of.

I don’t think there’s ever been a time in my memory when people came together in common cause and unity as they did then. Party didn’t matter, ethnicity didn’t matter, religion didn’t matter—we were all united as I’ve never seen us before. We were all Americans.

It’s something I’ve never forgotten.

This 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks is a watershed mark in our history. I find myself talking these days to young people—those too young to remember what happened well, or at all—and I feel a responsibility to convey to them, as the Pearl Harbor generation conveyed to me, what it meant to live through those momentous days.

As Elie Wiesel has so often said, memory is a very powerful thing. We remember 9/11 so that these lives will not be lost in vain, and to recommit ourselves to never experiencing anything like this ever again.

This is not a once-a-year or a once-a-decade commitment. These events are always with us. And I suspect that like me, you feel a surge of gratitude and remembrance every time a fire truck passes by, flying the American flag or proudly emblazoned in memory of fallen FDNY colleagues. What we feel is a day-in, day-out recognition of these first responders’ bravery and service under pressure—an outward manifestation of the best we as a society have to offer.

This 10th anniversary gives us a chance to acknowledge that debt of gratitude, remember those whose lives were lost and recapture the spirit of unity that permeated our nation for all too short a time.

Posted 9/8/11