By DANA DITTMAR, CEO, SCC Area Chamber of Commerce
Dana Dittmar
Can it really be that it’s been 14 years since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? Somehow the pain of losing all those lives in New York, Washington, D.C. and the pasture in Pennsylvania has not dulled. The wound is still raw to many.
We all approach grief and deal with it differently. And while it is appropriate to remember those who died that day, for some it’s still too difficult when this day rolls around every year. Some of us choose to keep the TVs off on Friday, to go about our business and treat it as if it were any other day in September. No CNN or Fox TV talking heads and reruns of the news footage.
We have all heard stories of people who were supposed to be on one of the planes that day who, for whatever divine or coincidental reason, missed their flight. Or of Twin Towers’ workers who were caught in traffic or didn’t make the subway and miraculously were not in the buildings when they were hit. I’m sure they don’t really want to be reminded of how close they came.
September 11th changed America, and not in a positive way. Last year I had to show not only my marriage certificate (from nine years ago) but my divorce papers from my first husband just to get the address changed on my driver’s license. I can’t carry a can of hairspray on a plane. There are metal detectors at every public event these days.
The memory of that day is painful enough. But the spate of shootings all over the country, and the media’s penchant for analyzing them ad nauseum and comparing them to 9/11, leaves me feeling battered and bruised all over again.
My fervent hope is that someday, somehow, maybe we can reverse some of the changes and get America back. We’re bringing troops home from Iraq. We’re bringing them home from Afghanistan, too. My hope is that the emotional pall that has covered our country for 14 years will eventually lift. Let’s all work to make that happen so the thousands who died that day won’t have died in vain.
In the meantime, if you hear someone say, “I just wish this anniversary stuff would just go away,” please understand where it’s coming from. We are certainly not unpatriotic, nor do we in any way minimize the importance of the day. We are just remembering in another way. It is an anniversary we do not want to commemorate, and one we wish didn’t exist at all.
If you hear those words, offer a hand of support, a smile of understanding or a hug of empathy. That’s what makes America strong and keeps the terrorists from succeeding. And at the end of the day, that is how we want to observe this day.
