Survey of New Yorkers and Muslims, points to importance of feeling accepted and having solidarity with other Americans.
Each year on this date, I post this link. When I first heard it, 21 years ago, I wept in a way I’d never wept before. The audio is 3 1/2 minutes out of your day. It’s worth it, and as it has each year for 21 years, it again moved me to tears.
About a month after 9/11 Rabbi Irwin Kula (an 8th generation Rabbi, with a very modern look at life) took some of the transcripts of phone calls and voicemail made that fateful morning, and during his service, chanted them as if they were the most sacred prayer ever heard.
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I live in So Cal - I was heading to a meeting at work, our company was in the process of being invested into by “angels” - I was national revenue manager so I needed to be there to discuss numbers. I was woken by my mom who called “turn on the TV” - I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing as I was getting ready for work. I made my daughter stay home from school. I was really afraid that our entire country was going to be attacked. A few minutes before I left home the first tower fell. As I walked out the door I said “everybody in the US is going to know someone, or be within a degree or two of separation of knowing someone who perished in that building” When I got to work I learned that the 2 (young family men) “angels” coming from Boston on United Airlines Flight 175 were hijacked and crashed into the second tower. I never thought my own words would ever ring so true. May their memories be for a blessing - I’ve gone to the 9/11 Memorial and fountains 5 times - I took this photo the first time, 2 weeks after it opened. Hug your loved ones.
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“everybody in the US is going to know someone, or be within a degree or two of separation of knowing someone who perished”
My daughter was born on 7/11/2001, two months before 9/11. Fifteen years later, she got a new basketball coach at her high school in VA. We found out later that the coach’s FIL was killed at the Pentagon in the attack. Her coach had a tattoo in remembrance of him.
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I heard about the survey I posted on C-SPAN. The survey sheds some insight into why Gen Z might not understand what we mean by Never Forget.
I have so much more appreciation for all first responders.
I feel frustration about last year’s pull out from Afghanistan. The War on Terror - so many volunteered to serve and now the Taliban is back?!?!
C-SPAN has all the remembrance events, World Trade Center, Pentagon, Shanksville, PA.
Definitely on my bucket list to take the kids to all the sites.
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I went to the museum a few years ago and thought it was so well done and cathartic, I ended up getting separated from my family and felt that made it a more personal experience. I had the news on that whole day, my husbands company occupied a city block by the UN and we were trying to figure out a way to get him home (his car was parked on the other side of the Lincoln tunnel so that was out, we knew once he left his building he’d have no phone service). Experiencing the museum brought it all back clear as day, like many others I was in tears.
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Thank you, that recording is profound and beautiful. 
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I don’t think that’s true for most Americans. Perhaps if you live in the northeast, but for most of us, it was horrifying yet not close to home in that sense. Those were the days where we saw each other as “Americans” rather than left or right. I don’t wish for another 9/11, but I do wish we felt more united as we did that day and the months following.
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That was originally from me, and here’s the story to back up my claim…
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