I won't forget. Ever. Since that day, a certain stanza of "America, the Beautiful" brings tears to my eyes...
O beautiful for heroes prov'd
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life.
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness,
And ev'ry gain divine.
"The only thing I'll add is that it's sad that somehow during the last seven years "Never Forget" turned into "Remember What?""
I guess I don't see why. That's the nature of things. "9/11 changed everything" and "never forgot" were always pretty much nice notions that were more about trying to show appropriate solemnity and the emotion of that time than actual beliefs.
But I wasn't a big 'oh my god 9-11' type ever, so different strokes and all. Which I guess I'll explain by saying that I didn't know anyone personally that was killed or even know anybody that knew anybody. I'm certainly sympathetic to those who did in the abstract, but that's just the abstract.
I'll never forget that day either, just like older people and the JFK assasination, (I'm 30) but I also don't recall it really altering my world view, or being as shocking to me as it seemed it was to a lot of people.
I will forget 9-11 when every last perpetrator has had justice meted out to him, either in this world or the next.
Never. Ever. Forget. Ever.
Years back, I think it was sportswriter Frank DeFord who said, "On December 7th, we don't really remember Pearl Harbor. We just remember that we remember Pearl Harbor."
I knew what he was getting at, and it seems to have taken far less time for 9/11 to enter that same territory.
On the campus i work at, they had a memorial set out on the mall. They invited people to write down what they were doing when they heard the news on 9/11.
i got a jolt by the number of comments along the lines of "i was in 6th grade social studies class." Seven years ago i was at work, listening to the radio and scouring the internet for news of what was happening. These kids were in grade school. Tempus fugit.....and i'm getting old.
Commenting by HaloScan
