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Will 9/11 finally become like other infamous days?

Wednesday, September 11, 2002

By Brian David, Post-Gazette North Editor

We all know what happened on Sept. 11, 2001. Boy, do we know! We also all know what's happening on Sept. 11, 2002. Today will be, in this area as in the rest of the country, a sort of national wake.

	David

Flags will fly over public buildings and private homes, at half-staff in mourning for the dead -- or at least all but 19 of the dead.

Speeches will be made in public. Prayers will be said in private.

Teachers who don't really understand -- teachers who, like everyone else, really can't understand -- will try to explain it to children who can understand even less.

The children will go home, and parents who don't really understand -- parents who, like everyone else, really can't understand -- will try to explain again.

In the cool of evening, churches throughout the area will open their doors. In some, ministers who don't really understand -- who, like everyone else, really can't understand -- will try to explain again. In others, the ministers won't even try, letting prayer, music, readings and the hope of a benign presence offer some comfort.

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How many times today will someone, somewhere utter the words of the 23rd Psalm?

It has to be this way today. The events of Sept. 11 were too much for one day; they had to spill over to today, a year later, so we could all live them again and try to do better. Maybe a year later we can handle it. At least a little.

But here's a question: What will happen on Sept. 11, 2003? 2004? 2005? Will there still be speeches and prayers? Will the teachers and parents and ministers be able to make sense of it by then? What about 2050, when those who remember will all qualify for membership in AARP?

In short, will Sept. 11 become a permanent part of the American consciousness, a holy day (the word "holiday" lacking the appropriate solemnity) marked by generations to come?

And should it?

Consider: Dec. 7 was a day that would, in the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt, "live in infamy." And indeed, most Americans with even a rudimentary level of education know that date. But how many stop each Dec. 7 to remember, to ponder the loss, fear and horror of that day, to review the lessons it taught us? How many speeches are there? How many church services?

John F. Kennedy was shot Nov. 22, 1963. The assassination was a shock to the American psyche akin to Sept. 11. But do we mark Nov. 22 as any sort of national holiday? Maybe sometimes we eat turkey and talk about Pilgrims, if it happens to fall on a Thursday. But JFK, his assassination, the death of American innocence?

In my generation, the supposed touchstone moment is the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. We pathetic few in the cusp generation, the lost zone between the Baby Boomers and Gen-X, are supposed to know where we were, what we were doing that moment, the way boomers remember JFK.

And yes, Challenger was a blow to our confidence, our belief that American spirit and ingenuity were infallible, unconquerable. But how many could, right now, recite the date? How many stop on that date -- it was Jan. 28, 1986 -- each year to remember?

The tendency is to let the worst of times fade into vagueness. We don't really want to keep on remembering them so keenly, so precisely. We want to learn the lessons, but we don't want to wallow.

If we're going to celebrate something, going to make something a holiday, we want it to be the good times. Witness Memorial Day, set aside to remember those fallen in war. Some indeed do just that -- but many more take it as a chance to celebrate the beginning of summer. It's hard to imagine Sept. 11 ever becoming the time for end-of-summer cookouts, and what dishonor if it did!

It's different in other parts of the world. When the Balkans exploded in violence in the 1990s, many on both sides traced grievances back hundreds of years, grievances remembered year after year and passed from generation to generation, grievances too tangled to ever be finally solved.

So far, we in America have not been like that. We don't seem to feel the need to wallow in past horror, or to continually renew the hatred that can come from horror.

Will that change? Will Sept. 11 be forever observed by Americans in memory of what happened a year ago? And if it is, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

The answers probably depend on what lessons we eventually take from the event, how we are changed. And that is not likely certain yet.