Comments on: A Decade Later http://cunysps.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/a-decade-later/ Thu, 16 May 2013 13:34:11 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: MVCasey http://cunysps.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/a-decade-later/#comment-274 Mon, 12 Sep 2011 17:36:48 +0000 http://cunysps.wordpress.com/?p=636#comment-274 I remember where I was when JFK was killed and listening in school to the announcement over the PA. I had just gone to bed before Bobby was shot because I was a political junkie even though I was only 13. My mother called me back out to the living room and I stayed up most of the night watching and waiting. With JFK, MLK and Bobby, we got to see the horror close up and over and over again on TV. However, even though their deaths affected millions of people and changed the world, it was the work of one madman taking the life of one person.

9/11 was so different. I was middle school PTA president at the time and was in the principal’s office for our regular meeting when his secretary ran into the office. At first, we thought it was a terrible accident. I went home and turned the TV on, but the reality still didn’t hit me as I left for work. I headed down the Palisades Parkway and got stuck in a traffic jam as we all had to pull into one lane, directed by NJ state police in SWAT gear and brandishing automatic weapons. In the left lane, scores of police cars, ambulances, fire trucks and other emergency vehicles raced toward the city. Smoke was visible in the distance. I finally was able to get off the parkway and I headed back home.

The middle school was in a modified lock down and some parents came to pick up their kids. Every time an announcement was made for a student to go to the office, an eerie silence fell. The whole school erupted in joy when the father of one student arrived to tell her that her mother, who worked in the WTC, had gotten out safely and was on her way home.
The nurse in my son’s high school did not have the same good news concerning her son.

I still don’t know which is worse – seeing someone’s head split open by a bullet or watching live as a burning building pancake, knowing that thousands of people are dying as it happens.

Yes. we all felt connected and patriotic in the days and weeks after 9/11. The world as we knew it changed dramatically and will never be the same. The terrible events of 9/11 were used to get involved in two costly and useless wars and to take away many of our rights and freedoms. Unfortunately, many of the decisions were not well-intentioned. I think we are more apart now than ever before.

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