9/11: Why We Remember

In a small room of his wood shop hangs a framed certificate that my father received while serving in the Air Force in the early 1960s. I recently asked Dad about how he came by this citation, and he said that it had followed a sticky mission from the base in Peshawar, Pakistan, where he was stationed. “Everyone on the plane got one,” he said, matter-of-factly.

Yet I can’t imagine much was matter-of-fact about Dad’s military occupation. For his airman’s paycheck, he was one member of a small crew that flew from an unpaved runway at the edge of civilization with the goal of crossing over the southern border of the U.S.S.R. for the explicit purpose of intercepting Russian radio transmissions, which my father would translate.

The day he earned the certificate on his shop wall, Dad’s plane was escorted out of Soviet airspace by a pair of MiG-17 fighters that evidently had been scrambled to intercept the intruding enemy aircraft.

Fast forward a half century and from 8 a.m.-8 p.m. tomorrow Brockport firefighters once again will stand in remembrance of the events of September 11, 2001. Their vigil will pay respect to the 2,819 lives that were cut short—among them, 403 firefighters, paramedics and police officers—when hijackers crashed two planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, a third into the Pentagon, and a fourth in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.

The honor guard, posted at the Firefighters’ Memorial Monument at the corner of Main Street and Park Avenue, is a solemn reminder of a horrific occasion that I believe is felt more deeply by those that serve, as my father did years ago in our country’s fight against communism, and as every uniformed officer and emergency responder does now in an age of global uncertainty.

There is, of course, much to separate my father’s time in the Air Force from the experiences of those who responded to arguably the most catastrophic attack ever on U.S. soil. However, for me, one always prompts thought of the other.

Dad, who was just an enlisted kid at the time, got on the plane. He did his job, probably not knowing what danger might lie above. At least once (he’s not telling), he was lucky to come home, if you can call a dusty, 110ºF military outpost “home.” I’m sure it never crossed his mind that Peshawar and the surrounding area, which he’d explored on horseback, was the cradle of the Taliban and the ideology behind 9/11.

Likewise, the brave men and women of the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) who were called to the Twin Towers even as it burned also did their jobs, likely never considering the danger above, never for a moment pondering the enemy that had prompted their response.

So many members of the FDNY, as will be recalled tomorrow, didn’t come home. And so we remember them in acknowledgment that ours is a way of life protected by people who at times are called upon to do jobs that most of us lack the courage to do. We remember them in appreciation of their sacrifice to a nation that traded the civil defense drills of my father’s generation to the terrorist threat level warnings of this generation. We remember them in recognition of their rightful place in America’s history. We remember them because they are heros.