Remembering

Once again remembering the enormous sadness that filled that September day and lingered like a dirty film on the days that followed.

 

Flight 93 National Memorial

 

 

Wondering.

 

What decides what we remember? I don't mean personal memories. Rather those events that are remembered by a larger community. Experiences are based on your own perspective. But many memories are shared with a larger group. Is it the size of the group who experienced the event or its affect?

 

Just guessing.

 

I suspect memories of tragedies like 9/11 probably last generations longer since they are focused on short term events pinned to a day or two. The Pearl Harbor attack, and the JFK assassination are also pinned to a date. The aftermath of the event of course can last a long time.

While I had known of the Flu pandemic of 1918 before Covid-19 hit our world, I know it was not as widely remembered as other events. I wonder if our current Covid-19 pandemic will be forgotten quicker than say 9/11.

 

Here's a link to a 9/11 remembrance I posted here - sept. 11 remembrance

 

The future will have tragedies. I wish we could make the man-made ones go away.

 

 

You may say I'm a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
and the world will live as one

I have before and will do so again

I have posted on serious subjects before and most likely will again. I try to stick to my "theme" of lighten-up on this blog but since life often fails to go by lightly, happily, gently I occasionally post serious thoughts.

Cultures have celebrations in remembrance of good events. Sometimes these good events came out of bad events. Our Christmas season celebrates joy, peace, goodwill. Certainly if everyone was following along there would be no violence during this season of peace. But we know it doesn't work that way.

We are born innocent. Fortunately most children in first world countries remain innocent for the first few years of their lives. Even in some third world countries many young children don't see violence. I don't know at what age one should learn the world is not always a lovely peaceful place. I think by age 20 one should know. I don't believe a violent threatening world should be experienced by a child. The trauma could lead to a later cycle of violence by the afflicted child. We know violence can spread. Love and kindness also spreads. Love and kindness can be seen in the aid offered to victims after tragedies.

Old news - December 14, 2012- A horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary left 20 children, 6- and 7-year-olds, and six educators gunned down by a troubled 20-year-old.

There are no complete perfect fixes for our violent world. Instead of searching and waiting for some perfect solution we should strive today, now, to improve our situation by reducing the violence.

Today by way of a song I came across a group dedicated to improving the school situation. The group is called Sandy Hook Promise. They offer free training to schools and youth programs to educate students about recognizing early signs of violence.

The song that lead me to this group was "The Dreaming Kind" by Sheryl Crow. She wrote the song after the recent Las Vegas shooting. She decided to give the song to the Sandy Hook Promise as a vehicle to raise money. I made small donation for the song download. The Sandy Hook Promise has the links and information for making donations. The song starts with these lines:

I turned off the news again tonite
It’s getting hard to watch everyone fight
Every time I turn my face
I see the world from outer space
How small we are but look how much we have to waste

I don't see this so-called "war" on Christmas. I see a "war" on joy, peace and goodwill. Another Sheryl Crow song (about 10 years ago) suggests that we need to get out of our heads and into our hearts.

sept. 11 remembrance

taken in Chicago, 2011

Recently I read a moving post over at the “You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out” blog about the church across the street from the NYC World Trade Center. The post includes many pictures from the area around and inside St. Paul's Chapel.

Her post prompted me to check my older posts about Sept. 11, 2001. I posted my own small story about it back in 2011. I’m repeating that post below with a few updates.

A 9/11 remembrance. 

Nothing to lighten-up about given the enormous sadness that filled that September week and lingered like a dirty film on the days that followed. 

The heroes were a bright spot. The coming together of strangers seeking to help others provided hope to keep many going. 

The tragedy reminded us of that awful dark side existing in enough people that we need to be aware for our own security. 

Painful. 

Forgetting about it doesn’t mean it didn’t happened. 

from an Airfone ad

I don’t have some hero story of my own, but I found myself working with someone who was pulled into the tragedy. Her name is Lisa Jefferson. It forever changed her life.

The week previous to that Tuesday, I had interviewed for a job at GTE Airfone (name was changed to Verizon Airfone months later) and I was still waiting get an offer.  I had worked at GTE Airfone for 4 plus years back in the early 90's.

We live near the flight paths for both O'Hare and Midway airports. It’s very common to see and hear airliners flying in and out. Those September days following 9/11 had a noticeable empty sky above us.

The small act of kindness we were able to provide that day was helping Johnny, our daughter’s friend who was stuck at O’Hare airport. We picked him up and gave him a place to stay for a few days.

I flew a flag. I talked with family. I watched the news. I cried. We all cried.

I took a job offer from Airfone. It was a great job. Airfone (yes it’s spelled with a ‘f’) was the company offering a public phone in the seatback of a few airlines. United Airlines was one of our biggest customers/partners. United Flight UA 93 was the hijacked plane that did not hit the terrorist’s target.

The passengers and crew learned after contacting Lisa (supervisor of Airfone operators) that other planes were hijacked that morning. Airfone had a procedure established for a hijacked plane.  A direct line to the FBI from the Airfone office was immediately established.  Hard to say there is such a thing as a normal hijacking but it quickly became apparent there was nothing normal about this flight.  A group of passengers decided not to allow the terrorists to use their flight. The flight ended in a fiery crash in a Pennsylvania.

While at Airfone, I worked with Lisa Jefferson and her husband who also worked there. She was a calm and peaceful lady. I don’t pretend to know her well, but all my interactions with her tell me she is a wonderful kind person.  She passed along Todd Beamer's last words, "Let's roll".

You might know or even visited the national memorial created at the crash site of UA 93. (I have not visited yet and would be very interesting knowing what visitors think of the memorial.) Our National Park Service has a very good website giving online background information on the Flight 93 National Memorial. There are personal stories presented in videos on the site’s multimedia page. I found the following chart (used in a terrorist trial) showing the number and locations of the phone calls made from flight 93 that day.

Someday 9/11 will be another history lesson like Dec. 7, 1941. If we are lucky many will learn from it.

Peace.

senseless violence bothers me

I started today with other ideas for a post. This certainly is not a complaint about anything to do with this blog or my day. I had a fine day.

Not so for too many people in Boston today. As of tonight's reports three innocent (one child) people were killed by bomb blasts. Many people lost parts or whole limbs. Everyone lost a bit more of our feeling of security and peace.

I'm not closely connected to Boston. I have visited the city, mostly on business. I shared a great weekend there with one daughter that happened to coincide with a tall ship festival.

The news of this senseless violence has bothered me since I read it on the internet.  I wonder why.  I didn't know anyone there.  Maybe I'm just human.  A father who can't imagine the pain of losing a child.

Writing this post is helping me not focus more on the news reports. I will watch more but hopefully it will not be like September 11, 2001 when I turned into a news junkie. (Here's my 10 year anniversary post about that much bigger senseless killing.)

I wish the victims and their families were able to finish the fine day they were probably enjoying. Fine days do get ripped away for you by tragedy.  It is worst when the tragedy is a senseless attack by another human.  I pray the wounded recover quickly, the families find strength to continue their support of each other.