| Remembering
9-11 and 2001 |
| It is hard to believe that only two years ago we were so
worried about the Y2K bug taking over our computers, making
airplanes crash, causing utility plants to shut down and in
general making a mess of our lives as we knew them. |
| Billions of dollars were spent trying to fix it. Companies
the world over hired experts to write new software to make
sure that the proper date would pop up on our computer screens
on Jan. 1, 2000, and some people even planned to hole up in
caves or underground until the threat was over. |
| What a difference two years make. |
| The Y2K problem, which never really came to pass, pales
in the light of 9-11-2001, the continuing war in Afghanistan
and the worldwide battle against terrorism. If anything, 2001
has made us realize just how insignificant some problems really
are. |
| Are we, as Americans, better or worse because of 9-11? That
question has been asked thousands of times in the past 3-1/2
months. The answers are as varied as the people who try to
figure them out. |
| Maybe the better question should be, "Should we ever forget?" |
| Over the Christmas holiday my wife, Betsy, and I were watching
a retrospective about Dick Schaap, the sports broadcaster
and writer who died during the holidays. One of the views
in a movie illustrating his life showed the twin towers in
New York"s World Trade Center. |
| We had already forgotten how dominate the towers were on
the landscape, how imposing they were, how vulnerable they
seemed to be and how important they were to the personality
of America. |
| It is, I believe, unfortunate that television, movie makers,
and others are trying to erase the towers from earlier movies
and television shows. So many are trying to make us believe
that the towers never existed, to rewrite history as it were. |
| Not so the Pentagon, also a tragic consequence of 9-11,
but which countrywide did not evoke the same same emotion
that the twin towers did. No one has been writing out the
Pentagon from our movies, books or history as it seems some
are trying to do with the twin towers. In fact, plans are
to have the Pentagon in its pre 9-11 form by 9-11-2002. |
| Chicago columnist Bob Greene has used 9-11 as the topic
for each of his columns since 9-11. Although I can"t imagine
doing that, when the towers and the Pentagon were hit by the
terrorists, I had this immediate feeling that I wanted to
use a photograph of the burning and collapsing buildings with
this column every week as some sort of an icon to remind us
of that awful day. |
| While I still see the benefit in doing that, it is time
to write and think about other things. |
| Every tragic event in AmericaäPearl Harbor and Oklahoma
City, for exampleähave memorials to remember the events. I
think the best memorial of all for the events of 9-11 would
be to rebuild the towers like we are rebuilding the Pentagon. |
| Rebuilding two 100-story office buildings in New York probably
will not come to passäit is just too emotional and too enormous
a task. But we must never rewrite history or our memories
to exclude them. |
| What we all must do is to remember and reflect on the events
of 2001 in our own ways. As tragic as 9-11 was, it would be
even more more tragic to forget it. |
| And that"s Our Town this week. |
