9-11's Other Memorial

NBC's Ann Curry before the attacks

So traumatic were the events of 9-11 that 17 years passed before I could bring myself to search Youtube and rewatch the footage of the attacks unfolding live on morning television shows.  What struck me about these videos was how calm and normal that terrible day began.

It was a perfectly sunny late summer morning and some newscasters commented on this fact.  CBS's Mark McEwen noted the “miles and miles” of sunshine on the weather map and said it was as nice as it could be across the northeast.  However, in a bit of eerie foreshadowing, he closed the segment by remarking, “It's kind of quiet around the country.  We like quiet.  Unless it's quiet.  It's too quiet.”  Standing with the adoring crowd of people outside Rockefeller Center, NBC's Katie Couric said, “It is such a pretty morning isn't it?”  Al Roker replied, “It is a perfect fall morning...although it's not fall yet so it's still a perfect summer morning.”

The news reported a U.S. drone shot down by Iraq.  The Miss America Pageant was now going to quiz contestants on history and current events with some participants not knowing what happened on Dec. 7, 1941 during a trial run of the questions.  Ads for Nightline had Ted Kopel pitching a week-long report on the ongoing conflict in the Congo commenting that it was a story we should have brought you long ago.  

Just before the attacks, The Early Show host Bryant Gumbel was doing a cooking segment with the executive food editor of Gourmet Magazine in celebration of the publication's 60th anniversary.  Fox News was interviewing singer Babyface and asked about his new hair style.  Katie Couric had just wrapped up an interview with Harry Belafonte and Matt Lauer began speaking with Richard Hack about his new book on Howard Hughes.  The author was enjoying a brief moment in the sun when the segment had to be cut short because of a “breaking story” at the World Trade Center.  Live footage of the buildings wouldn't load so Matt Lauer broke for a commercial as did many other stations at that time.

When the major networks came back, they aired special reports with the now too familiar footage of black smoke billowing out of the North Tower.  Hindsight allows us to dismiss any naive speculation that it might have been an accident.  When Flight 175 hit the South Tower on live TV, Bryant Gumbel couldn't see the footage but a witness he was talking to over the phone was shocked and described the crash as deliberate.  The Early Show host seemed to be in denial and asked this caller and another caller why they thought so.  By contrast, Good Morning America's Charlie Gibson quickly concluded that a concerted effort to attack the World Trade Center was underway.

Confusion was caused by where the camera had been placed with some broadcasts showing the North Tower at an angle that completely obscured the South Tower and the approaching Flight 175.  The same was true for the collapse of the South Tower.  One station initially reported the loss of the structure as just falling debris.  A few news anchors were completely caught off guard because they were in the middle of interviews or trying to report the attack on the Pentagon and a possible car bomb outside the State Department.

After 22 years, seeing the 9-11 terrorist attacks unfold minute by excruciating minute still hits me like a punch to the gut.  As ABC's Diane Sawyer put it so eloquently back then, “To watch powerless, is a horror.”  There's some footage from that terrible day I still haven't seen and I'm not sure if or when I ever will but I am glad all of it exists on Youtube and other websites because it captures so well the confusion, shock, heartbreak and fear we experienced in 2001.

During a 2021 interview with 60 Minutes, New York firefighter Regina Wilson said, “So many of us sacrificed so much that this story can't get lost.  Because the world is changing fast.  And I don't want this to be something that's in a history book that a page is turned, and we're forgotten.”  She's right to have this concern because so often, still photographs, commemorative markers and stone monuments fail to capture the essence of a tragedy.  In 2016, my hometown unveiled its own 9-11 memorial complete with a large steel beam from the World Trade Center.  The archival footage of the attacks as they happened is 9-11's other memorial however, one that shows us a way of life and a sense of innocence that was lost forever on a sunny Tuesday morning so long ago.

Iraq...Twenty Years Ago

This month marked 20 years since the start of the Iraq War and while the major newspapers all had articles on the subject, I noticed the nightly television news skipped coverage of this grim anniversary.

At the start of 2003, the American people were still living in the shadow of September 11th terrorist attacks.  Our sadness was unimaginable, our anger was raw and our fear of another attack was palatable.  We turned to our country's leaders for comfort and we were in no mood to hear duplicitous talk from the Middle East.  This climate of emotional vulnerability often gets overlooked when discussing Iraq, but in my humble opinion, it made the path to war much easier.

Iraqi dissident Ahmed Chalabi made the rounds in the media to say the United States would be welcomed as liberators but he along with the information he provided on a supposed link Saddam Hussein had to Al-Qaeda would later be discredited.

Then were were the faulty reports that United Nations sanctions were killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children.  This erroneous information was used by Osama Bin Laden to justify terrorism against America.  Liberals used it to criticize government policy and conservatives used it to stoke the fires of war.

To be clear, George W. Bush never blamed Iraq for the 9-11 attacks BUT he was no longer going to wait for potential threats to become real.  From the way the government described Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction program in the months leading up to the invasion, the threat from Iraq was becoming all too real.  In February of 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell, who many saw as a voice of reason, justified a possible invasion in front of the United Nations Security Council by giving testimony on Iraq's WMD program.  (The year before, he had actually cautioned the President on an invasion saying, "If you break it, you own it.")

Many of us were fooled because we wanted to believe our leaders were honest and competent.  Even the late night comedians jumped on the WMD bandwagon with jokes about Iraq.  I won't soon forget a skit from Conan O'Brien that featured Saddam Hussein disguising three missiles as his children.

When French and German leaders announced their opposition to the war, The New York Post ran an infamous “Axis of Weasels” headline.  After France threatened to veto any resolution that mandated an invasion, a backlash against the French emerged with some restaurants renaming French Fries “Freedom Fries.”  The only place in my travels that I actually saw do this was The Clam Box of Ipswich, MA.

Despite the drumbeat of war, many people weren't fooled and protests erupted throughout the country and the world.  From around this time, I vaguely remember hearing a liberal guest host filling in on the usually conservative WRKO talk radio and for one broadcast, she brought with her actress Janeane Garofalo.  They laid out good reasons why an invasion of Iraq would be disastrous and much of what they said turned out to be true but at the time, the audience wasn't having any of it.  A divisiveness erupted in society and the good will President Bush enjoyed after 9-11 seemed to quickly disappear.

Operation Iraqi Freedom began with “shock and awe” style decapitation airstrikes that sometimes claimed the lives of innocent people.  I am haunted by an image that appeared in the local newspaper just before the war began of a father enjoying pizza with his family at a restaurant in Baghdad called Pizza Hot.  Did they survive such bombings?
 
When the ground war started, it just felt wrong to me on a visceral level and despite all the rhetoric and bluster, I couldn't believe it was actually happening.  I recall how embedded reporter David Bloom gave some of the first reports from the battlefield but spending many hours in cramped armored vehicles with the hot sun caused a blood clot that claimed his life at the age of 39.

We soon heard heroic stories of Private First Class Jessica Lynch who had been captured when her convoy was ambushed but as with many aspects of the Iraq War, the tales of how she single-handedly fought off the enemy turned out to be grossly exaggerated.

In May of 2003, President Bush announced an end to major combat operations in Iraq while a banner hung in the background that said: Mission Accomplished.  This would come back to haunt him because an insurgency caused many more causalities and dragged the war on for another 8 years.  Things hit home for us when Swampscott native Jennifer Harris was killed when her helicopter crashed with all those on board lost.  The military tried blaming it on a mechanical failure until a video surfaced of her aircraft being shot down.  The American public saw a lot of gore in the news during those bloody years and some of the war's biggest supporters were starting to wonder if it was worth such a staggering toll.

Conservative talk show host Glenn Beck would admit in 2014 that the liberals got it right when they opposed the war in Iraq...but apologies don't bring back the dead.  I lost all respect for President Bush years before that when he joked about not finding WMDs at a fancy press corps banquet.  Early support for the war likely cost Hillary Clinton the presidency because a weary public turned to the candidate who had opposed the invasion from the get go, Barack Obama.

The invasion of Iraq not only distracted from the war effort in Afghanistan, it made terrorists smarter and more effective as the lessons learned in one battlefield were brought over to another.  We eventually saw the emergence of ISIS and with it, more death and destruction on a scale we had never seen before.  In 2003, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had warned the invasion of Iraq would create 100 Bin Ladens.

To this day I still hear some people say the war was all about getting revenge on Saddam Hussein for the 1993 attempted assassination of George H. W. Bush.  Whatever the major goals for the Iraq War were, it's safe to say that few of them were met outside of "regime change." The United States also lost some of its credibility as a result of this conflict especially when trying to take the moral high ground regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

It's unfortunate the nightly news networks punted on covering the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War because there are hard lessons to be learned from it....lessons that can't be properly explored in our current culture of soundbites.

The National Tragedy...That's Largely Forgotten

It was supposed to be just another ordinary Wednesday in 1995.  At the time, I was attending Emerson College and don't remember much about the first half of my day.  I probably took an early-morning commuter rail train into Boston because a look at my photography log book reveals that I went to Reservoir Station on the MBTA's Green Line to photograph two of the transit authority's old snow plow trolleys.  Then I helped a cute French girl at Copley Station find her way to the Museum of Fine Arts.  After class, I took an afternoon commuter rail train back home but since there were no smart phones in 1995, riders were blissfully unaware of the national tragedy that had occurred several hours earlier.  My dad, who was waiting to pick me up at the train station said, “They blew up a building.”
 
I found his statement puzzling.  They?  Who were they?  And what building?  In that moment, I couldn't fathom the level of destruction that would soon flash before my eyes during the television news coverage of the Oklahoma City Bombing.  In those days, the term BREAKING NEWS was not used so lightly.

Few people outside of Oklahoma City had ever heard of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building but now the ruins of this 9-story structure was burned into our minds.  At least 168 people were dead including three pregnant women and 19 children.  15 of those young victims had died in the building's day care center.  Almost 700 others were injured.  The April 19th tragedy would shake this nation to its core.

Many suspected Muslim terrorists were behind such a despicable act.  Just 12 years before, suicide bombers had killed 305 people at two military barracks in Beirut, Lebanon and the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York occurred only 2 year ago.  A voice for calm in the Boston area was Canadian talk show host Charles Adler who had a local television program called Adler On Line.  He urged people to wait for the facts and not jump to any conclusions.  On April 21st, we were shocked to see composite sketches of two white men labeled John Doe #1 and #2 on the front page of the newspaper.  As it turned out, the attack's mastermind wasn't some religious fanatic but an anti-government army veteran seeking revenge for the sieges at Waco, Texas and Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

People today often lament how divided society has become in recent years but I can tell you the 1990s had its fair share of divisiveness.  An infamous and poorly-timed fundraising letter from the National Rife Association sent out just days before the bombing referred to federal agents as “jack-booted thugs” prompting George H. W. Bush to resign his lifetime membership in May of 1995.  Some blamed talk radio for inspiring the attack and in a speech a week after the bombing, President Bill Clinton stated, “We hear so many loud and angry voices in America today whose sole goal seems to be to try to keep some people as paranoid as possible and the rest of us all torn up and upset with each other. They spread hate; they leave the impression that, by their very words, that violence is acceptable.”  One editorial cartoon at the time featured a take on the iconic photo of an Oklahoma firefighter carrying a dead infant...only a thought bubble was added that read, “Damn right-wing radio...”  The firefighter in question later said that was not what was going through his mind in that moment adding they regularly listened to Rush Limbaugh in the firehouse.  Even a tragedy of this magnitude could not stop elements of the left and the right from taking swipes at each other.

Like Pearl Harbor and the JFK assassination, the Oklahoma City Bombing was another “loss of innocence” moment for the United States.  I watched one television network's special on the terrorist attack and toward the end they paid tribute to the victims by flashing each one of their names on the screen with an accompanying photo.  The segment seemed to go on forever and it really underscored the true toll of the tragedy.  The website for the Oklahoma City National Memorial Museum has all of the victims listed here: https://memorialmuseum.com/experience/their-stories/those-who-were-killed/
 
In the years after the attack, there was talk of putting taggants in the type of fertilizer used to make the bomb but the idea was dismissed as being too costly and ineffective.  1998 saw the debut of The X-Files Movie: Fight The Future and a scene featuring the destruction of a federal building looked very similar to what we saw in Oklahoma City.  At the time, I thought it was tasteless and exploitative and I still do.  However, I wonder if younger audiences would even get the reference.  Last year, I posted a tribute to the bombing on a Catholic prayer website and one forum user who was in his 20s said he had never heard of it before.  How sad.  What are they teaching kids these days?

Unfortunately, the enormity of the 9-11 terrorist attacks just 6 years later overshadowed the Oklahoma City Bombing but I find many similarities in both tragedies:

* On April 19th, almost all of the victims were just going about their normal routines before their lives were cut short.

* Stories of heartbreak and near misses emerged: One man who was supposed to be at the Murrah Building that morning overslept and was running late which saved his life.  A woman who was in a meeting with her fellow co-workers survived the blast while everyone else was killed.  A man lost his life because he decided to drop by the Federal Building at the last minute to have some paperwork processed.  Three people died in other buildings, one was killed in a parking lot across the street and a rescue worker lost her life in the aftermath of the attack from injuries sustained by falling debris.

* A city's skyline changed forever and for a time the site of the Murrah Building was referred to as ground zero.  A fitting memorial preserving the lost structure's footprint took years to complete and features thoughtful symbolism as well as a survivor tree.

* Tighter security measures were instituted and in Boston I saw jersey barriers go up at various government buildings.

* There were calls for prayer.  One Boston Herald editorial written by Joe Fitzgerald urged us to hold onto our religious convictions and not call on God only when we needed something from Him in a time of crisis.  The uncredited AP photo of two Oklahoma teens at a prayer service appeared in his poignant article and is the first image in this blog entry.

I tend to remember the anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing only because April 19th coincides with a personal anniversary of mine but this year, it almost slipped by me.  There wasn't any coverage in the news and no one in my life could tell me what had taken place on that day 27 years ago.  9-11 is certainly much easier to remember because the date of the attack is actually in its name.  What happened at New York's World Trade Center also unfolded on live television and was captured from many different angles making those memories all the more gut wrenching. 

In some respects, the world is a much different place than it was in 1995.  Just when you think we're starting to learn from the past, humanity keeps raising the bar when it comes to violence and gore.  School shootings...mass shootings...and now the wholesale slaughter of civilians in Ukraine.  Perhaps we've become a little numb to other people's misery or maybe we feel helpless to change things for the better.

Last year, I found more than a few articles on the internet discussing how the Oklahoma City Bombing has faded into the distant background of our collective consciousness.  I hope what's written here helps us all remember a little more easily.  We owe it to the victims and to ourselves.

Thoughts on 9-11

It's hard to believe so much time has passed since the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks.  In some ways that terrible day feels like it happened yesterday but for anyone who did not see those tragic events unfold before their eyes, context, subtle flavors and influences can be lost or forgotten.  The following blog entry highlights many of those details that I remember.


Before 2001...

* During the 1990s, a Boston newspaper published an article on the possibility of an air traffic control mishap at Logan Airport.  The photo of a passenger jet was superimposed against a background of skyscrapers from Boston's financial district.  This image made a lasting impression on me and in retrospect, seemed very similar to real photos of the Sept. 11th attacks.

* Anyone reading this remember the date February 26, 1993?  That's when terrorists exploded a truck bomb inside the World Trade Center with the intention of collapsing one tower into the other.  That fact seemed to be lost on most people and from then on, I had always looked at the twin towers as being on borrowed time. Almost no one else did.

* Air France Flight 8969 was hijacked on December 24, 1994 by Islamic terrorists from Algeria in an attempt to crash the jet into the Eiffel Tower.  It was a very sobering thought to me but the notion of a passenger jet being used as a weapon didn't seem to make much of an impression on the average American.  The small amount of media coverage this deadly hijacking did receive in the United States seemed to be centered on footage of French commandos storming the plane with air stairs.

* On Jan. 6, 1995, authorities in the Philippines discovered and later disrupted the Bojinka Project, a large-scale terrorist attack that called for the assassination of the Pope, the bombing of 11 commercial airliners and the hijacking and crashing of an airliner into CIA headquarters.

* In March of 1995, a Japanese cult launched a deadly sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway instilling fears that such an attack could occur elsewhere.

* The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995 claimed the lives of 168 people and shocked the nation.  Many initially suspected Muslims were behind the attack instead of two anti-government domestic terrorists. 

* The 1997 film Air Force One had Harrison Ford playing a president who took a hard line against international terrorism.  At the time, I thought this seemed out of character since Bill Clinton's presidency focused more on domestic issues.

* Another movie about terrorism from around this time was The Siege.  Released in November of 1998, the film's imagery would be eerily similar to a post 9-11 New York City.  While it spurred some discussion on fanaticism, profiling, and civil liberties, it also drew intense criticism from Muslim and Arab groups.  The film performed poorly at the box office but gained renewed attention after the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks with its director being sought for interviews.

* In 1999, Nightline aired the week-long series BioWar in which Ted Koppel and a panel of experts discussed the hypothetical results of a terrorist anthrax attack on a major American city.  The show was presented as if the event was actually taking place and there were even periodic checks on the latest death toll, which eventually surpassed 50,000.  Ted Koppel himself stated that a biological attack in a major city in the United States was not a question of if but when.  No one on this program mentioned anything about the possibility of hijacked planes crashing into buildings.

* Stories on air rage seemed to be big around this time along with complaints of long lines at airports.  Many people expected to arrive at their terminal and board the plane within ten or twenty minutes except maybe during the holidays.  (The movie Air Rage starring Ice-T would be released on July 24, 2001.) 

* Some say that few of us had ever heard the name Osama bin Laden before Sept. 11, 2001.  One person who did a great job trying to put that name into our collective consciousness was John Walsh of America's Most Wanted.  That television show profiled Osama bin Laden several times before 2001 and categorized him as a dangerous terrorist mastermind involved in the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

* Another person who brought attention to what was going on in Afghanistan with the Taliban was Mavis Leno, feminist and wife of late-night talk show host, Jay Leno.  She even appeared as a guest on The Tonight Show in 1999 to discuss just what was happening in that country.

* In October of 1999, a private jet carrying professional golfer Payne Stewart and five others lost cabin pressure and continued cruising on autopilot for about four hours before crashing into an empty field.  Air Force jets had been scrambled to follow the doomed flight but nothing could be done to help.  
  
* Terrorists planned a series of coordinated attacks for December of 1999 and January of 2000 but most were foiled in what would be called the 2000 millennium attack plots. 

* Just before the year 2000, the big story was the Y2K problem.  Dire predictions were made, some commemorative merchandise was sold but humanity survived the new year.

* On May 30, 2000, the Family Guy episode Road to Rhode Island featured a quick scene in which Osama bin Laden sings show tunes while trying to smuggle weapons through an airport metal detector.  At the time, I got the joke but wondered if the reference was a little too obscure for the average American.  (Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane was supposed to be on American Airlines Flight 11 on Sept. 11th but due to a mix up with his travel agent, he missed boarding the plane at Logan Airport by about 10 minutes.)

*  Sometime in 2000, I helped a friend paint his model ex-Soviet Hind helicopter gunship by researching Afghanistan's Northern Alliance paint schemes and insignia at a local book store.

* Al-Qaeda's suicide bombing of the USS Cole on Oct. 12, 2000 killed 17 American sailors.


Months before Sept. 11, 2001...

* While I did have worries in the back of my mind about a significant terrorist attack during Boston's 2000 / 2001 First Night celebrations, I also had some hope that this new century might bring with it an era of peace and cooperation among the nations and cultures of the world.

* After a very close and controversial election complete with “hanging chads” on ballot cards and a supreme court ruling, George W. Bush was sworn in as President of the United States on January 20, 2001.  Known for a climate of bipartisanship during his tenure as governor of Texas, he had campaigned on unity and pledged to focus on domestic issues rather than foreign affairs and nation building. 

* One of the first shocking news events of 2001 was the February death of legendary NASCAR racer Dale Earnhardt in what appeared to be a minor crash.

* In May, American missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham were taken hostage in the Philippines by the Al-Qaeda supported Islamic separatist group Abu Sayyaf.  The story received little continuing media coverage in the United States.

* A story that was grabbing the headlines in May was the disappearance of intern Chandra Levy.  The media focused attention on Congressman Gary Condit as a possible murder suspect.

* In the spring, a Fox 25 undercover investigation highlighted security problems at Logan Airport.  (This report would later be mentioned by the 9-11 Commission.)

* On TV and in movie theaters, we were seeing a trailer for the new Spider-Man movie starring Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst in which the superhero snares a group of bank robbers fleeing in a helicopter by spinning a huge web in between the two towers of the World Trade Center.  (After the attacks, it was pulled.)

* The History Channel's Modern Marvels series aired an episode on the World Trade Center on June 25, 2001.  In this documentary, the claim that the towers were built to withstand a crash from a Boeing 707 passenger jet was stated.  (The series was aired again after the attacks with added commentary from host Harry Smith and author Angus Gillespie who had been featured in that particular episode.)

* In July, a New York band named I Am the World Trade Center released their latest album Out of the Loop which featured a song called September.

* Also in July, the Fox network debuted a new reality show called Murder in Small Town X, in which contestants had to solve fictitious murder mysteries while avoiding being picked off themselves.  The final episode of the series aired on Sept. 4th and New York firefighter Ángel Juarbe Jr. won.  (He was killed a week later in the collapse of the World Trade Center.)

* During the summer, the media focused a large amount of attention on shark attacks despite the rarity of such an event.  Later dubbed the Summer of Sharks, it highlighted the media's obsession with tabloid sensationalism.

* In August, American missionaries Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry were arrested in Afghanistan by the Taliban for preaching Christianity.  Six other aid workers were imprisoned as well. Again, media coverage on this story was sporadic at best.

* On August 4th, Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested by the FBI.  Sometimes called the "20th hijacker" his capture would later bring criticism of the government's failure to connect the dots in the weeks prior to the attack.

* Retired FBI counter-terrorism expert John O'Neill started his job as head of security at the World Trade Center on August 23rd.  Suspecting Al-Qaeda would “finish the job” they started in 1993, he ultimately perished in the South Tower on 9-11 while trying to coordinate evacuation efforts.

* Call Me Crazy, the memoir of actress Anne Heche, was released on Sept. 4th and entertainment media had a field day questioning her sanity.  (After the attacks, Jay Leno lamented the time society spent focusing on such a trivial thing.)

* On September 10, 2001, the town of Amherst, MA voted 4-1 to ban the "excessive" display of American flags except for on approved days.  University of Massachusetts physics professor Jennie Traschen spoke before the board and said the American flag was "...a symbol of terrorism and death and fear and destruction and repression."


September 11, 2001...

* It was a very sunny and cool Tuesday morning with no clouds in the sky.

* Upon learning that a plane hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center, many people thought it was an accident.  An infamous announcement made over the PA system of the South Tower said the building was secure and people could return to their offices.  How many lives were lost because of this?

* I was awoken by the sound of my mother shouting, "They're crashing planes into the World Trade Center!"  She had watched the attack live.  The first thing I thought was small propeller planes or private jets.  When I saw footage of the attack, I got sick to my stomach.  For the rest of the day, I stayed glued to the television and really didn't do anything else.

* No one expected the towers to collapse based on the fact that they had been constructed to withstand a plane crash.  One news anchor on ABC even said that it looked like the fire inside the World Trade Center was putting itself out.  This statement was made just minutes before the South Tower collapsed.

* The airspace over the United States and later Canada was quickly shut down leaving many people stranded in other countries.  The night skies were uncannily quiet but we did hear what was most likely two Air National Guard jet fighters fly over the house.  I ran outside and spotted two slowly flashing red marker lights streaking across a dark sky.  Civilian air traffic resumed on Sept. 13th.

* Horrifying images from that day were burned into America's psyche.  We saw things that no one had ever expected to see.  Many witnesses initially described 9-11 as surreal or like something out of a movie.


Just after Sept. 11, 2001...

* The French newspaper Le Monde declared in a headline "We are all Americans."  There was much sympathy from around the world but one infamous news report showed a group of Palestinians celebrating the collapse of the twin towers.

* All late-night talk shows were suspended for a considerable length of time and news coverage of the attacks dominated the airwaves.  For months, the overnight news on CBS showed live footage of the cleanup at Ground Zero as they broke for commercials.

* Ground Zero Illness would become a major concern for rescue works and survivors of the attack.  Donations of surgical and filter masks were encouraged.

* Some people placed a single electric candle in their windows in the hope that survivors would be found the in the wreckage of the World Trade Center.

* Blood donations surged to record levels.  Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat held a press conference in which he appeared to donate blood for the victims of 9-11.  

* Logan Airport was closed for four days and when it reopened, State Police ran the security checkpoints while the National Guard patrolled the facility.

* The security of smaller local airports was called into question and concerns were raised about crop dusters being used as weapons.

* People were on the lookout for suspicious Middle Eastern men driving a white van who had been seen in New Jersey joking and photographing the burning World Trade Center.  They turned out to be Israelis working for a moving company and this incident inspired one of the many conspiracy theories and urban legends that would surround the terrorist attack.

* Urban legends of fore knowledge soon surfaced including the story of a Muslim student at New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn who had pointed to the twin towers and told his class the buildings would not be there next week.  An Islamic calendar printed in May of 2001 showed a passenger jet on fire and about to crash into New York Harbor for the month of September.

* During his visit to Ground Zero on Sept. 14th, President Bush spoke to the crowd using a bullhorn and promised, "The people who knocked these buildings down will hear from all of us soon."  The mother of fallen Port Authority Police Officer George Howard gave the president her son's badge which served as a memorial to 9-11 victims during a speech to Congress.

* On Sept. 15th, Sikh-American gas station owner Balbir Singh Sodhi was mistaken for a Muslim and shot to death in what was the first of several post 9-11 hate crimes.

* There were calls for more world news coverage in the media so Americans would not be so myopic.

* Stories of tragedy and survival soon emerged: The executive chef of Windows on the World avoided being killed in the attack because he stopped to get his glasses fixed before going to the restaurant.  Longtime window washer Roko Camaj, who had been interviewed in 1999 about his job, perished in the attack but another window washer, Jan Demczur, who was trapped in an elevator, escaped by using a squeegee handle to cut through drywall.  Four people above the impact zone of the South Tower survived by descending the only intact stairwell.  Sixteen people managed to survive the collapse of the North Tower.  Just before passengers of Flight 93 attempted to regain control of the aircraft, Todd Beemer said, "Let's Roll.”  The catchphrase gained popularity for a time after 9-11.  
  
* Another catchphrase that emerged was: “If you see something, say something” as government officials urged us all to be on the lookout for suspicious activities. 

* Enya's song "Only Time" became very popular around this time in addition to Lee Greenwood's "Proud to Be an American".  I had wondered why Don Henley's 1990 tune "New York Minute" wasn't played too.  Contrary to what the internet says now about that tune being associated with Sept. 11, 2001, it was not.  (Perhaps it was too depressing?)

* American flags were very popular again and one prominent television ad around this time was for the American Freedom Collection.  It consisted of two flags that clipped onto a car's side windows.  One was an American flag and the other was a blue flag with the phrase God Bless America on it.

* Flag stickers were added to many MBTA transit vehicles and some buses and trolleys featured large "United We Stand" signs in their side ad card holders.

* American flags appeared on many products...some in good taste and in bad.  I remember going out to eat and receiving a wet nap with a flag on one side.  The other side had a pledge from the company that a portion of sales would go to charity to help the victims of the attack on America.  Later on I saw a local dollar store selling Chinese-made filter masks with a photo of the twin towers on the package.  Bad taste indeed!

* Bob Kaufman from Bob's Discount Furniture put out a cheesy ad in which he said he really didn't know how to respond to the new threat America faced.  Blaine Beauty Schools also had a slightly tasteless ad in which they asked if people were reexamining their lives and wanted a more meaningful career.  Ads for the Jewelry Exchange claimed "now more than ever" it was time to show that special someone how much you loved them. 

* Patriotic billboards and television public service announcements appeared.  One PSA urged parents to talk to their kids about their feelings and featured a sad boy with a drawing of the attack being comforted by his mother.

* President Bush warned the war on terror would not take years but perhaps decades and due to the sensitive nature of intelligence gathering, many victories would never be publicized. 

* Some in the media predicted casualties for the invasion of Afghanistan would reach the tens of thousands within the first year due to heavy house to house combat.

* The lesser known part of the war on terror brought the United States to parts of Africa and the Philippines.

* Novelty "Federal Terrorist Hunting Permit" stickers appeared on car windows.  I had made a sign for my car's back window that read "Infidel on board."

* A panel chair on the show Politically Incorrect was left empty for a week to honor frequent guest Barbara Olson, a lawyer and conservative television commentator who was killed on American Airlines Flight 77 en route to a taping of the television show. Host Bill Maher was soon caught up in controversy when he criticized past U.S. military policy and refuted President George Bush's claim that the 9-11 terrorists were cowardly.

* Letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to the offices of two politicians and several media outlets killing five people.  During one news broadcast, Tom Brokaw famously held up a bottle of antibiotics and said, "In Cipro we trust."  A government scientist named Bruce Edwards Ivins was suspected but he overdosed on Tylenol in an apparent suicide before formal charges could be filed.

* Tom Ridge, the head of the newly created Office of Homeland Security was advising us to buy duct tape along with other supplies as a precaution against a possible biological attack.

* Some in government called for a loosening of policies that tied the hands of law enforcement.  (The controversial USA Patriot Act was later signed into law in October.)

* After the attack on Pearl Harbor, America demanded much from its citizens...everything from enlisting in the military to the rationing of a whole host of items on the home front. After the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks, the only thing that seemed to be demanded of me is that I go shopping to stimulate the economy.

* From my own personal experiences, people seemed to be nicer to each other on the roads but that only lasted for about 3 months.

Months and years after Sept 11, 2001...

* Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed bin Talal offered Mayor Rudy Giuliani a $10 million check for the Twin Towers Fund but later publicly criticized America's policies in the Middle East prompting the Mayor to return the check.

* 9-11 widow Kalahasthi Prasanna, who lost her husband on Flight 11, died of an apparent suicide on Oct. 19th.  Patricia Flounders, whose husband was killed in the World Trade Center took her own life on Dec. 9th.  (In 2009, outspoken 9-11 widow Beverly Eckert would perish in the crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407.)

* Hillary Clinton was booed during the Concert for New York City but oddly enough Bill Clinton was not.  The booing was edited out and replaced with cheering in subsequent broadcasts and the DVD version of the event.

* Fears of another terrorist attack arose again on November 12, 2001 when American Airlines Flight 587 crashed into a neighborhood in Queens, New York shortly after takeoff.  The National Transportation Safety Board would later rule out terrorism as a cause for the disaster.

* Missionaries Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry were rescued by the U.S. military on November 15, 2001. 

* Also in November of 2001, the Leonids produced one of the most spectacular meteor showers in years.  I found it odd that something so beautiful could occur just weeks after something as ugly as the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks.

* Some made the claim there had been a spike in the number of marriages (and later a post 9-11 baby boom) but this was false.

* In December, The Amazing Spider-Man Volume 2 #36 debuted with an all black cover and a storyline that showed various Marvel Comic super heroes and villains helping first responders at Ground Zero.  The terrorist attacks influenced many other comic books and weekly comic strips.

* On December 22nd, Richard Reid attempted to detonate a shoe bomb while traveling on American Airlines Flight 63 but was stopped by passengers and crew.  In response to this failed terrorist attack, U.S. airports required passengers remove their shoes during pre-boarding security screenings. 

* Actor James Woods revealed to the public that while on a commercial flight from Boston to Los Angeles in August of 2001, he noticed men of Middle Eastern descent (who were later believed to be some of the 9/11 hijackers) acting suspiciously and informed a flight attendant of their behavior.

* After minor controversy, an American flag recovered from the World Trade Center was allowed to be carried by athletes during the opening ceremony of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.  Honor guards made up of members of the NYPD and FDNY were also present and NYPD officer Daniel Rodriguez sang God Bless America.

* A color-coded terror threat level scale was unveiled in April of 2002 but many people did not understand its meaning. 

* On June 7, 2002, the Philippine Army conducted a raid to rescue hostages held by terrorist group Abu Sayyaf. Gracia Burnham survived but her husband, Martin and a nurse were killed.

* For those of us living on the east coast, the one year anniversary of 9-11 took place on a very dark and windy day.

* In 2003, ABC debuted Profiles from the Front Line...a series where camera crews followed actual members of the Special Forces in Afghanistan.  It lasted only six episodes.

* New York City saw a strangely familiar mass evacuation during the Northeast blackout of 2003 which occurred during the afternoon of Aug. 14th.  Some credited 9-11 for an improved emergency response and a relatively calm reaction from the general public.


After the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks, we were told life in this country would never be the same and for those who lost loved-ones, this is true.  However, I can't help thinking that our culture has become more self-absorbed than ever over the years since.  Please take some time this month to remember the victims of 9-11 and try to do something selfless in their honor.