Remembering 9/11
New Yorker cover, September 24, 2001.
As we look towards September 11, 2021, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I am reminded as a historian of the power of collective memory. If you were alive on September 11, 2001, and old enough to remember that day, chances are that you remember it viscerally, which is to say almost physically. I know that’s true for me. And it is a distillation of where I was in my life – history made personal.
I was scheduled that morning to start writing my Master’s thesis. My husband and I had traveled to West Texas and New Mexico the week before so that I could do research and so that we could celebrate our first wedding anniversary. I remember that Kevin, who wasn’t from Texas, was on a mission to eat a GREAT steak on that trip, figuring that Texas=beef. He was constantly thwarted by poor quality meat, because while the cows may pasture in rural areas, rarely does the best beef make it back there. Who knew?
We returned to Austin on Sunday, and I spent Monday organizing my papers and my thoughts. We got up Tuesday morning, ate breakfast, Kevin got on the road to work and I pulled myself together to sit down at the computer. But just before I did, Kevin called and told me that I should turn on the TV - something was happening in New York. About 2 minutes after I turned on the (old school tube) TV, still on the phone with Kevin, I watched without really understanding what was happening as the second plane hit the tower.
All of those memories are crystal clear, but the rest of the day comes in and out of focus for me. The city shut down. Since President Bush (the second) had been Governor of Texas, there was concern that the Capitol might be a target. No one seemed to be on the streets. I ended up with friends at Jason’s Deli for lunch, mostly because we had nowhere to be and there was nothing we could do. I felt helpless. And even more so because I had lived in New York before coming to Austin. My friends were still there, some of them down in the Wall Street area. And even beyond that, New York had always been to me the embodiment of the United States, the ultimate melting pot, the center of finance and, in so many ways, of culture. More than anything else, I remember feeling that day like I was in the wrong place, that I should have been in New York to bear witness and to provide whatever support I could.
As I mark the anniversary of these horrific events, I will pause to reflect on how I experienced that day and the days that followed, and allow myself to sit with those feelings. When we look back on history, particularly on history that we did not experience ourselves, we can get bogged down in names, dates, facts…in all, that is, that is impersonal. But history happened to real people; by sharing their humanity, we bring history to life in a way makes it personal and expands our understanding of the past.