Tim Timmons
A quarter of a century almost? Has it really been that long since that awful Tuesday morning?
Most of us can remember exactly where we were on Sept. 11 24 years ago as the news began to trickle in. The idea that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center caught our attention. But a lot of us thought it was probably a small plane. Just about the time we were getting our heads wrapped around the idea it was a commercial jetliner . . . a second one hit – this time on live TV.
You remember. Whether watching live or delayed, the horror was unmistakable. In the blink of an eye, hundreds of lives were snuffed out.
First one plane. Then another. Then another. Then another.
From the moment Flight 11 plowed into the north tower, we were at war and just didn’t know it. A war that was killing hundreds of us by the second. A war that escalated when Flight 175 hit the south tower 17 minutes later. A war that exploded across our TVs and phones when Flight 77 smashed into the Pentagon 34 minutes later. A war that saw people choosing to leap to their deaths from the World Trade Center rather than be consumed in the inferno.
It took 56 minutes from the first blow for the FAA to ground all civilian air traffic and just more than 15 minutes after that the south tower crumbled. Some 800 first responders and civilians lost their lives.
Four minutes – 240 seconds – after that, the heroes on Flight 93 struck back. Todd Beamer said “Let’s Roll” and brave men and women stormed the cockpit. Instead of hitting the U.S. Capitol or White House, they forced the plane nose first into a Pennsylvania field, They all died, but they died fighting back.
Not many of us are alive who recall FDR’s famous words that came into American living rooms decades ago. “Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”
But we remember 24 years ago. We remember the shock, the outrage. We remember the patriotism that accompanied the sadness as we united against a common enemy. Whether we would pull together as a nation today might be debatable. But 24 years ago we did.
Some 2,977 people lost their lives – including 415 fire and police. Thousands more were injured. It took almost 10 years before a team of Navy Seals caught and killed the founder of al-Qaeda and orchestrator of 9-11 . . . Osama bin Laden.
It’s easy to look at the calendar today and overlook the significance. It’s easy to file the memories away; forget the flood of emotions that overwhelmed us all. It’s not even that hard to take in stride that a couple thousand of our fellow countrymen were brutally and mercilessly murdered.
Time does that. Wounds heal. Hurts subside. But for a little bit today, it might be worth remembering just how awful that Tuesday was.
