These words, from my father on the morning of what we know refer to as 9/11, are forever etched in my memory.
On Sept. 11, 2001, I was a college student. That morning, like so many of my fellow college students, I was awakened in my dorm room by a phone call from a concerned parent about not one, but two, planes crashing into the World Trade Centers.
I remember my dad telling me the planes hit the towers, and a blurry-eyed sleepy 18-year-old me (I took mostly night classes that semester), replied something like “How could those pilots be so stupid that they hit two towers?”
That’s when my exasperated dad said, “We’re under attack, buddy.”
Like the rest of America, my world changed that day. A naïve me realized what I charmed life I had led up to that point, that I would first think of pilot error rather than acts of terrorism.
For days, all but one of my fellow dorm complex residents huddled around the TV in the socializing areas that existed in my tiny dorm building at Madonna University in Livonia. The one missing was a student from New York. I still remember the fear and devastation we all felt for her.
She never came back, though I think of her to this day as I count myself so very lucky to have not lost any loved ones on that horrible day in American history.
Thinking back to that day, I also remember my dormmate, a young woman from Dearborn, home to the largest concentration of Muslims in America. While so many of my friends and family remember how America came together in the aftermath of Sept. 11, united by grief, I remember being appalled by stories of anger directed toward Michigan residents of Middle Eastern descent. I later went to college with a young woman whose father got in trouble for accosting a Middle Eastern driver on the Ambassador Bridge. Islamophobia was, and still is, very real.
I remember media companies circulating lists of songs not to play on the radio, so as to not upset a traumatized nation. Not a fan of censorship, I distinctly remember scratching my head about why American radio stations wouldn’t play harmless songs like Elton John’s Rocket Man and Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water.
And then there was the rush to the gas pumps. I think everyone has the same recollection across the country: Fears soared over gas price hikes and Americans rushed to gas stations.
All this is not to say I don’t remember the incredible stories of resilience, patriotism and love following 9/11. They were aplenty. In fact, I can’t tell you how many friends in recent years have commented on social media that they wished America could be as united as we were following Sept. 11, 2001.
Personally, I would never wish for our nation to have to collectively grieve like we did after the World Trade Center attacks. I’d rather be united through love, not loss. But that’s just not realistic in our post-9/11 world. That’s what we’d see through the rose-colored glasses of a naïve college student whose first thought was pilot error.
Kate Hessling is the editor of the Midland Daily News. She can be reached at khessling@hearstnp.com
"Love" - Google News
September 11, 2021 at 04:04PM
https://ift.tt/3916iJz
If only we were united through love, not loss - Midland Daily News
"Love" - Google News
https://ift.tt/35xnZOr
https://ift.tt/2z10xgv
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "If only we were united through love, not loss - Midland Daily News"
Post a Comment