It is hard for me to believe that we are upon the 25th anniversary of 9/11. How could time have passed so quickly? How could the most significant and traumatic day in my life, and that of my wife Joan, have receded so much in the consciousness of our nation?
But that is what has happened. If you are under the age of 35, you probably have little or no remembrance of the event. Essentially, you must be middle-aged in order to really remember that day. Sept. 11 is now primarily a television event, limited to specials airing on each anniversary of the date itself.
Nevertheless, 9/11 has had a serious, significant and continuing impact on this country. As a result of 9/11 we have become a surveillance state, with the willing acquiescence of the people. If national security is involved, we have become highly tolerant of any type of surveillance deemed necessary to meet the alleged threat. The present controversy with respect to the Flock surveillance cameras installed in Boulder and other cities is actually a rare example of pushback against the increased surveillance to which we have become accustomed.
And, of course, 9/11 unleashed a wave of Islamophobia that continues to this day. The notion that Muslims cannot be trusted or are somehow not “true Americans” runs counter to the values of this country, but has been legitimized, particularly by the current administration, which never seeks to heal, but only to divide and sow division. And in this effort, they have been highly successful.
Perhaps the worst legacy of 9/11 has been the almost never-ending wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Iran. None of them has been successful; two of the three have ended ignominiously (and does anyone really expect a better outcome in Iran?), and all have consumed vast amounts of our resources in the pursuit of undefined goals and objectives. To top it off, we have found that our overwhelming aerial military prowess is not sufficient to bring to its knees a country that is prepared to absorb the pain we can inflict upon them. And in pursuing these conflicts, we have starved our country of the ability to improve the lives of our citizens.
However, Joan and I have a more personal perspective on 9/11. Joan’s office was on the 47th floor of the North Tower. When the planes hit, she grabbed her partner and immediately began to evacuate down the stairs. She knew that something was dreadfully wrong and that she needed to get out (she was experienced, as a veteran of the first bombing in 1993), and she did. She walked through falling debris and even falling bodies to our home and safety in Brooklyn over the Manhattan Bridge. It was a miracle she was unscathed.
I saw the South Tower explode in front of my eyes from Brooklyn, and immediately ran to Manhattan to find my parents, who lived 150 yards from the South Tower (turns out they were evacuated by water to New Jersey and were ultimately fine), and to find Joan. I decided to head down to Ground Zero to search for them after the collapse of the second tower. I was stopped a couple of times by the police and told to turn around. After explaining that I was searching for both my parents and my wife, I was waved through with a sort of “vaya con dios” resignation. I was trudging through the devastation and dust of Ground Zero (it was like grey snow, inches thick) about 45 minutes after the second tower fell. Oddly, my strongest memory of those moments was about the shoes. There were so many shoes, shoes hanging from trees, shoes on the ground. At the time (and I was a bit dazed) I wondered why so many people had abandoned their shoes. It was not until later that I understood. The shoes had survived their owners. The remaining first responders gathered in small groups, consoling one another for their incalculable losses.
Ultimately, I, too, was evacuated by boat to New Jersey. It was not until about 3:00 that I found out that Joan had lived and made it home. At 6:00 that night, after much travail and a series of travels in New Jersey and New York worthy of Odysseus, I was reunited with Joan and found out that my parents were in upstate New York with a cousin who had picked them up and taken them to his home. In the end, we were all OK.
There is so much more to the story, but this is an article, not a book. And while it is just one couple’s experience, it is ours.
While for most people the memory of 9/11 is fading, for me it never does. In my head, I can recreate that day, and my experiences, on an almost minute-by-minute basis. No aspect of that day has been forgotten, and it never will. It is as if it has been imprinted on my DNA. Is it a form of PTSD? Perhaps, but whatever it is, it does not diminish with time.
To an extent, Joan and I are now like the old survivors of the sinking of the Arizona at Pearl Harbor. Each year there are fewer of them remaining, and each year the ceremonies memorializing that event diminish in frequency and importance. Increasingly, the event itself becomes a historical footnote remembered more in history books (assuming they still teach history in our schools) than from direct experience, and the remaining participants become historical artifacts, occasionally asked to recount a few stories about what happened and what it was like.
Perhaps this is as it should be. The playwright Tony Kushner once wrote that “The world only spins forward.” I think that is right. We are a forward-looking people, and we focus on the problems of today and tomorrow (and they are legion), rather than the events of 25 years ago. How can it be otherwise, when so few of us remember the past?
This year, Joan and I intend to acknowledge the event in some fashion, although we have not yet decided how. Perhaps we will simply take a walk together and swap memories of what happened that day, and what happened to us. We will not be around for the 50th anniversary of 9/11, and so this is the most significant anniversary of the event remaining to us to recognize.
I think that will be enough. I hope that will be enough. The memory of 9/11 may diminish for others over time, but not for us. For us, it is the memory that never fades, the nightmare from which you never fully awaken.
Mark Wallach is a Camera columnist and a former member of the Boulder City Council. Email: mfwallach@gmail.com.
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