The Myth of Remembrance

As we mark the 10^th Anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a rather sad and counter-cultural thought hit me: We will forget.

My colleague, Carl Gaines, a few days ago covered a press conference held by World Trade Center officials. Mayor Michael Bloomberg called the anniversary a time to “reflect, to remember and to rededicate ourselves to the values and freedoms that made New York a target for evil.”

Time, however is not on the Mayor’s side. Those of us who lived through it (and to one degree or another, we all did), remember what a time of national unity it was. We can all recall then-President Bush embracing the firefighter Bob Beckwith; the renewed and impassioned sense of patriotism we all felt; the sincere determination to rebuild.

But President Bush at the end of his term was not the same president who stood on the pile that day (amazing how easy it seems to squander a legacy), and can anyone sense unity or a commitment to national good anywhere within the Beltway today?

I recall the American flags that festooned our homes, our lapels, our cars. And a year or so after the attacks, I recall seeing a flag—presumably blown off a car window—lying on the side of the road, an ugly image and a stark reminder that nothing lasts forever.

A New York Post article recently declared the transformation the site has made from “Ground Zero” to “World Trade Center,” and it is true. The years of debate over what the center would look like while New Yorkers daily faced that raw scar have at last given way to progress and the promise of wholeness, activity and commerce.

But forgetting is human nature. And what isn’t erased by fading memory will be erased by generational shifts. Baby boomers can’t own the same shock their parents felt on Dec. 7, 1941. Neither can we expect our children, or theirs, to look into the memorial pools with the same depth of feeling we owned on Sept. 11. The very construction we celebrate pulls a glass-and-steel curtain before our hardest recollections, the values and freedom the Mayor extolled insist that we replace the rubble with something shiny and good and new.

Progress and time address pain. It is a good thing. We will always know what took place a decade ago, here in New York, in Washington, DC and in Shanksville, PA. We won’t always remember.