Twenty-five years later, we still remember
This Friday marks 25 years since the morning of September 11, 2001. For those of us old enough to remember it, the details have not faded. Most Michiganders can still tell you exactly where they were standing when they learned what was happening, and how the rest of that day felt.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed. They went to work that morning, or boarded a flight, and never came home. More than 400 police officers, firefighters, and paramedics died running into buildings that everyone else was running out of. The passengers aboard Flight 93 took a vote and fought back with nothing but their bare hands, and in doing so they saved the lives of people they would never meet. There is no better picture of the American character than that.
What came after is worth remembering too. Flags went up on porches across Southwest Michigan. Churches filled. Young men and women walked into recruiting offices across our nation and signed up to serve. Many of them carried that fight for the next two decades. For a time we quit arguing about the things that divide us and remembered that we are Americans first.
This year’s high school seniors were born seven years after the towers fell. For them, September 11 is a chapter in a textbook. That places a responsibility on the rest of us. Our schools and our families have to teach this history honestly, not only as a tragedy that happened to us, but as a day that showed the world what Americans do when everything is on the line.