Dates which live in infamy

This month marked the 22nd anniversary of the horrific events of 9/11/01. Where does the time go? Ask any teenager what they thought of 9/11 and you will be ill prepared to hear them say they were not even born. Because, for most of us who were old enough to be alive, it feels like yesterday when it happened.

Which got me thinking. I was a teenager in the mid 1980s. In 1985, I would have been entering my sophomore year in high school. Asking a sophomore in high school today about 9/11 would be the equivalent of an adult asking me about the JFK assassination back then. I always thought Kennedy’s assassination was so long before my time, but in reality it was only eight years before I was born. And, when I was a sophomore in high school, it would have been exactly 22 years earlier. So the same way we are shocked that today’s teenagers weren’t even born on 9/11/01, so it was with the adults back in 1985 asking me about my thoughts on the Kennedy assassination.

Now I am the elder telling young adults where I was when 9/11 happened. I am the one relaying stories about how, at first, everyone just thought a small single engine plane mistakenly somehow crashed into one of the World Trade Center buildings. Then I would tell how about fifteen minutes later we all tuned in in horror when we saw a small black spot circling around the smoke emerging from the first tower. “What the heck is that?” Then the horrible realization that it was another plane and that it was headed right for the second tower. It was at this moment that we realized we were under attack. There was no mechanical malfunction. This had nothing to do with foggy conditions as it was a clear, beautiful day. This was intentional. We were under attack and we had been hit on our mainland. And it wasn't just New York. This wasn't over.

Reports and rumors quickly began circulating of other hijackings - one, two, four, twenty? Bombs were supposedly around every corner. There was an incident at the JFK Library in Boston. Was it a bomb? There were reports of a plane having crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Every plane in the country was ordered to land. No planes were allowed to come into the country. Was the White House going to be next? Where was the President? Who was responsible for this? It quickly became evident that Osama Bin Laden was responsible and the decade-long manhunt commenced.

The images of 9/11 are indelibly burnt into our memories. I will never forget the haunting, muffled, distorted sounds of the sirens of police cars, ambulances, and firefighters in the hours that followed the collapse of the towers. Ash- a combination of concrete, papers, human flesh and bones - was everywhere. People walked around like zombies, covered in gray matter. Where do we go from here?

Rewind a generation earlier.

Any adult, when I was in high school in the mid 1980s, knows exactly where they were when they heard President John F. Kennedy had been shot, and the feeling they felt at that exact moment. First reports were that there had been shots fired in Dallas during a routine presidential motorcade. Initial reports were that the President was hit, possibly in the head. The country held its breath. There was no internet back then. People flocked to the nearest television. Walter Cronkite came on the screen - at the time when there were only three networks - to tell the country, tearfully, as he briefly took off his glasses to glance at the clock on the wall, that the President was dead and that Lyndon Johnson would be taking the oath of office.

Was this a Communist conspiracy? LBJ was snuck onto Air Force One and swooped out of Dallas and back to Washington, D.C. Was Fidel Castro behind this? Was he mad about the Bay of Pigs and attempts on his life? Were there other targets?

Then a couple days later, there was the funeral with little John John saluting his father as the President’s casket passed before him in a horse drawn carriage. There were all the leaders of the free world walking solemnly behind the casket. Again, it was the sound of the horse's hooves clacking on the concrete that would ingrain in viewer's minds.

Many people tuned in, that same day, to watch the transferal of Kennedy’s accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, in the parking garage of the Dallas police department. Viewers watched live on TV as a man leapt out of the crowd of reporters and shot Oswald in the gut. Did that really just happen? Was this a Mafia hit? Sure looked like it. The shooter was dressed like a mafia guy. He was wearing a fedora. He sure looked the part. Was his job to silence Oswald? How did he get past all that security? This was proof that there was a conspiracy, right? It had to be.

It was a crazy time.

We can go back another generation before that, again exactly 22 years before Kennedy’s assassination, to 1941 - December 7th to be more exact. That generation would know exactly where they were when they heard, either on the radio or in newspapers, that Japan had launched a surprise attack on a little known place called Pearl Harbor out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The United States had been drawn into World War II and an eventual showdown with Adolf Hitler. President Franklin Roosevelt immediately addressed Congress, correctly, noting that the date would go down in infamy. Roosevelt didn’t know it at the time, but the dates 11/22 and 9/11 would soon join December 7th on that list.