Huckaby: Spirit born from Sept. 11 tragedy left United States all too quickly -- Online Athens
It’s Sept. 11, but the year is now 2016.
So very much has changed in the past 15 years in this country. I think it was my other brother Darryl – the one with the last name Worley – who asked that lyrical question, “Have you forgotten?”
Well, have you? Have you forgotten how it felt that day?
It was a beautiful day in Conyers. I was sitting on top of the world. I was teaching 11th-graders about U.S. history and was on my planning period. I had just completed my fifth book, “Southern is as Southern Does,” and was on my way to the post office to mail the final edited work to my publisher.
Yes, I will admit it. I was listening to Neal Boortz on the radio. WSB. Welcome South Brother. Turning an unfortunate character disorder into a great living. Yada, yada, yada.
I was stopped at a traffic light where the Stockbridge Highway in Conyers makes a left turn into Georgia Highway 138. It is the longest red light in the history of the world. Neal and dearly departed Royal Marshall suddenly began discussing the fact that an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City.
I had the same thought most people had. Small private plane. Cloudy, foggy day. Horrible accident, but an accident nonetheless. Then Neal, who is a pilot, explained how unlikely that would be. Then we learned that it was a bright, clear, sunshiny morning in the Big Apple.
Then we learned that it was a commercial airliner, and the rest of my day was about like everybody else’s.
Shock. Disbelief. Anger. Dismay. Bewilderment.
There are certain people that I will always associate with that day. My colleague Jim Hauck, for instance, with whom I exchanged messages, speculation and whatever information was available all day long. Neither of us was a Democrat or Republican that day. We were both Americans.
Col. Will Coleman’s son, Lee, was in my class and saw one of the planes fly into the Pentagon on the television in my room and told me immediately that the plane had hit his dad’s office. He recognized the memorial trees outside the building. We were immediately were able to contact his dad, who was not in the building. Lee was right, however. It was his office, and his office-mate was killed.
I didn’t sleep for 36 hours. I couldn’t. I couldn’t tear my eyes from the television, and just like the aftermath of the JFK assassination, I had so many images burned indelibly into my brain. Those towers falling. The emergency rescuers running into the buildings as panicked people were running out. George W. Bush donning a hard hat and rallying the workers at Ground Zero. Zell Miller screaming, “I’m mad as hell and want to bomb somebody right now.” I paraphrase. The exact words of that ex-Marine were more, shall we say, earthy.
I remember. I haven’t forgotten.
But the country kind of has forgotten. A patriotic fervor swept the nation for a short time. Lee Greenwood sold lots and lots of records for a while and then Worley and Alan Jackson and Toby Keith came out with songs that captured the nation’s temperament – at least the part of the nation that thought like me – and we were united long enough to applaud Whitney Houston singing the “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl.
But it didn’t take long for the entire cause to be politicized, and by the time brave heroes who didn’t have the luxury of owning political opinions began coming home in body bags, we were pretty much back to where we started. And now, 15 years later, we are still at war with the forces of evil who perpetrated those dastardly attacks and we have become so callous and so self-serving, as a people, that the men and women of the Greatest Generation can’t even recognize the country they fought to preserve.
We aren’t allowed to mention Muslim terrorists in polite circles and we are fighting over free borders and political correctness and giving aid and comfort and billions of dollars to a nation that would harbor terrorists and destroy Israel, and us, if given the chance.
In the words of Worley’s song: “Have you forgotten how it felt that day?/ To see your homeland under fire/ And her people blown away/ Have you forgotten when those towers fell?/ We had neighbors still inside going through a living hell.”
For one day, please try and remember the thousands of people who perished that day, and those who have died in an effort to keep it from happening again.
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Darrell Huckaby is an author in Rockdale County. Send email to dhuck008@gmail.com.
Sent from my iPhone
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