In today’s Washington Post is this article which asks an important question — is the memory of September 11th already starting to fade ?
Soon after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, President Bush signed legislation designating each Sept. 11 as Patriot Day and calling for flags to be flown at half-staff each year. Last month, Karen Hughes, a former Bush adviser who is now the State Department’s undersecretary for public diplomacy, sent messages to U.S. embassies asking them to come up with a visible way to commemorate the date and remind the world that terrorism is a global menace.
Today, the Pentagon is holding the Freedom Walk, an event planners hope will be replicated across the nation, from small towns to state capitals, in years to come.
Despite these initiatives, some historians predict that popular culture eventually will file Sept. 11 in the same category as Memorial Day, Labor Day and Presidents’ Day, holidays laden with a significance and gravitas that were slowly blanched by time.
September 11th, of course, is in a different category from all those days. It is the anniversary of the day our nation suffered its worst attack since Pearl Harbor, and the first significant attack on the American homeland by a foreign power since the War of 1812. It marked a sea change in the way Americans must view the world. For that reason alone, it deserves to stand apart from other national holidays. It is not a day of rest and relaxation, it is not a day for sales at the mall. It is a day to stop and remember, and to resolve that such things will never happen again.
And yet, here we are, only four years out from the day itself and what has happened ? Vast numbers of Americans are spending their day watching the opening day of NFL football, others are shopping at the malls, and some are getting ready to fire up the grill for burgers and steaks.
Am I saying that we should all stop our lives every September 11th ? No, but I would prefer to see America’s remembrance of 9/11 bear more resemblance to the way Israel memorializes the Holocaust then the way we normally celebrate national holidays in this country.
My personal fear is that time will pass, people will forget, and September 11th will become what December 7th is fast becoming, just another day.
Others said they find a more striking parallel between Sept. 11 and Dec. 7, 1941, the date of the Pearl Harbor attack.
Clarence Davis, 81, was a Navy recruit at Pearl Harbor that day and will never forget. He lives in St. Mary’s County, where he keeps after postmasters to observe a congressional order to fly their flags at half-staff on Dec. 7. Every time he comes across a calendar — in a gift shop, a friend’s home, a doctor’s office — Davis flips to December. If the 7th is blank, he finds the printer and urges that Pearl Harbor be noted.
Decades ago, Davis couldn’t imagine an era in which Dec. 7 wasn’t seared on the collective consciousness. But year after year, the dwindling numbers attending the freezing-cold memorial services on that day tell him a different story.
“It’s really disappointing that this happened, that people aren’t remembering,” Davis said. “Hopefully, we’ll never forget what happened on 9/11. But it will probably fade, eventually.”
I’m afraid Mr. Davis may be right.
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