My dad and my mom, and all my relatives would always talk about where they were and what they were doing when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Most of them were at work as we lived on the east coast in New York City, and they related to each other their experiences on that day. My cousins and I would sit and listen to them for it was not only a family getting together around the Christmas holidays. It was more than that; it was a passing on of history to a younger generation.
Oh perhaps our elders didn’t exactly see it that way, and it is possible I see it more clearly in hindsight than I did at that time, but never-the-less, it was indeed a number of stories that somehow we could relate to as WWII had only ended about some 15 years earlier.
It is now seven years ago today that this country suffered its worst attack since that day in 1941. I know that each of us has a memory of where they were and what they were doing on September 11, 2001.
For me personally I was at work, back in New York at the Archer Ave Station Post Office. I was working at the manual letter-sized case and had my pocket radio on when over the headphones came the report of an airplane crashing into the WTC. At first, it was believed to be a small private plan, but that was soon dispelled as reports came in about a jetliner hitting.
Many of my co-workers and many of the public thought that it had to have been an accident until, just as quickly news flashes came in that it looked to be deliberate. Afterwards more reports started flowing in about the pentagon and the second hit on the other tower.
Some of us went outside to the LIRR station and from the crossover walkways that were in place at that time, we could see the smoke rising. All morning the TV in the lobby was tuned to the news and people there could not believe their eyes.
For one bright shinning moment, we were united as Americans. There were not any hyphenated Americans. We knew, without a doubt that this country was under attack. We did not know by whom, but we all understood, that the USA would most certainly not take this lying down.
Alan Jackson had written a