A few months ago, Dean Mary Cusack asked me if I would like to present some historical remarks at the unveiling of MCC’s September 11 memorial. I said yes, and—within days—found myself completely at a loss as to how I would discuss the “history” of something that happened so very recently.
Ten years is not a very long time to develop any sort of analytical historical perspective. We cannot know where the chain of events beginning with the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon will ultimately lead. What we do know is that 8:46 AM, Eastern Time on September 11, 2001 was the opening moment in a signal event in the lives of Americans. Like Pearl Harbor, the assassinations of Kennedy and King, and the destruction of the Challenger it will—for generations—be a “where were you when…?” moment.
Deadly terror-causing attacks were not new to Americans. The twentieth century saw events such as the deadly Wall Street bombing of 1920, the 1993 World Trade Center plot, and the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. But the attacks of September 11th were different. In terms of scale, casualties, and complexity, they dwarfed any previous terrorist act on American soil. Despite the fact that for two generations, Americans had considered sudden, shocking devastation as something that may happen, that it would come at the hands of fanatical hijackers using airliners—not from a rival nation-state using intercontinental missiles—added a dimension of horror which shocked and terrified us. That something as mundane as an airliner could cause so much death and destruction shattered our complacency and cast a pall of horror over the ordinary and every day.
And now, a decade out, I find the September 11th attacks difficult to assess with the dispassionate, analytical eye of history. I remember the unease with which I stared up at skyscrapers in the weeks afterward and the overwhelming power of the emotions—positive and negative—elicited by the attacks. I can remember it, relate it, but I’m not sure I can study it. What, then, is the historian to do?
We shift gears—we embrace memory and we hope for the future.
In dedicating a memorial to the thousands lost on that terrible day we move from history to heritage; from an understanding of events to an expression of collective memory. How we commemorate the past—the tragedies as well as the triumphs—makes a statement about us. It symbolizes how we, as Americans, see ourselves responding to the torrents and tides of fate.
In creating “a symbol of the enduring spirit and strength of our nation” we look to the resilience of Americans past. We endeavor to place ourselves with those who forged a new nation yet struggled to live up to that nation’s ideals; we look to those who fought to preserve the nation in the midst of civil war and create a freer nation in the aftermath. We hope to stand with those who risked life, limb, and property to fulfill the promise of that freedom, battling the entrenched attitudes that the war could not erase. We recall the sacrifices of the men and women who fought under our flag throughout the years and the patriots of all varieties on the home front who—on occasion—debated the rightness or wrongness of our actions as a nation. And on this day, we look to the heroes of 2001 who risked their lives to rescue those trapped in the rubble or those on United Flight 93 who resisted the fate the hijackers tried to impose on them, choosing their own destiny instead.
Our commemorations, as Americans, tend to not only express appreciation and memory of the past but also aspirations for the future. Today, looking back ten years at the loss and sacrifice of that day, we hope that the spirit and strength of the United States will continue to endure, in peace or war, as we confront death or embrace life.
