911 NEVER Again....
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I took this photo of a destroyed firetruck near Ground Zero a few days after 9-11-01
and this window, late in the afternoon on 9-11-01....
911 ---- NEVER AGAIN!
September 11, 2001 is the Day that will live forever in the hearts of courageous Americans because we were called to defend the most precious gift of all....
Eight years ago today, I awoke in a small apartment on Madison Avenue in Manhattan -- about a three mile walk down Broadway from Ground Zero.
Soon, we saw hundreds of traumatized office workers, covered in white dust, walking in the middle of that street. A friend (husband of a classmate) would be walking across the Brookline Bridge from One Liberty Plaza, unable to reach his wife by phone.
Thousands of others, Mayor Giuliani among them, made that grim Broadway walk.
When I first opened my eyes on 9-11-01, it was just a few minutes after the first airliner had struck the first target. On a computer screen, I saw the tiny color image of an aircraft, blooming with flame at the moment of impact.
Other terrible images, smells, sensations and impressions - real and immediate - would quickly follow. For the rest of that day and for ten days more, my wife and I were immersed in a sea of grief, raw patriotism and a holy sense of shared compassion and resolve.
I last talked to a group about my experiences four years ago. LINK: http://www.jaygaskill.com/91105d.htm .
The park at Union Square became a shrine.
The nearby Armory became a wailing wall.
I’ve written and talked about this transformative experience more than once. And I will never forget. My identity as an American took on a new armor on that day. And I understood with new, terrible clarity what my Jewish friends meant by “Never again.”
I was most deeply impressed by the insight that we were in the presence of a great existential Evil, but that, somehow, that recognition prompted an immense outpouring of Good. The photos I took on 9-11 and 9-12, are images that are even brighter in my memory.
A girl endorses a scroll that ran the full length of the park.
Everyone who was there was changed forever....
God bless America.
JBG
