Well, meeting adjourned, I thought. I’d flown that corridor up along the Potomac when I had been a helo pilot, so I knew that the approach into Reagan National came right over the Pentagon. I figured somebody fucked up and came up short on the approach. After all, a plane had once crashed into the bridge leading into DC – just north of the Pentagon – due to icing on the wings.
I talked to another member of the FAP council while we walked out to our cars. “Nah,” I said. “Just an accident.” I decided to stop by my house in base housing before returning to the office to see my kids and say hi to my wife. By the time I got home, the base had been locked down. I walked in to the see the replay of the planes going into the Twin Towers. My wife told me they were letting the kids out of the base schools. I picked up my youngest daughter in silence. By the time my older daughter got home from high school, I remember telling her that she should commit how the world felt prior to this to memory, because it would never be the same again.
A lot has happened since that day. I don’t have any tragic stories to tell, like family members on flights, or friends in WTC-1 or 2. Maybe I did know some people, but no one who impacted my life on a daily basis. Yet, as one of this nation’s warriors, 9-11 would have profound impacts upon my life, some of which reverberate to this day. I would leave active duty, wind up back in Afghanistan for some 18 months from 2004-2006, and try to do my part to make the homeland safer against Al-Qa’ida.
Ten years later, it’s right to take a moment to remember those who passed, to honor those who fought back on that very day – brave Americans, not soldiers, who learned about what was happening while still on United Flight 93 and fought and died to preserve the lives of others. That they fought for unseen, unknown people – for an idea, really – for politicians they probably loathed, is a tribute to what makes this nation great. Those who always tell us how “bad” we are, how “wrong” our foreign policy is, or how immoral we are – even deserving of the tragedy that befell innocent people – , can never be convinced otherwise, nor understand the importance and honor of the acts of those Americans on Flight 93. Those citizens deserve a memorial as large and solemn as any this nation has ever constructed.
They also deserve a nation worthy of their sacrifice; that is the most fitting memorial of all.
I am reminded of the penultimate scene of the movie “Gladiator,” just after Russell Crowe’s character, Maximus, who has already been mortally wounded before he fights, kills Commodus. He turns to Lucilla, the Emperor’s sister and the assembled soldiers and says:
“Quintus! Release my men. Senator Gracchus is to be reinstated. There was a dream that was Rome. It shall be realized. These are the wishes of Marcus Aurelius.”
We need to realize the greatness of this nation’s promise, for the honor of those who’ve come before. “Any nation that does not honor its heroes will not long endure.” — Abraham Lincoln.
It’s high-time to honor those heroes who’ve come before.