I was watching the news that morning when one of my buddies called. His voice was already gone. His brother worked at the Pentagon. For a stretch of minutes that felt like years, we did not know if he was in the wing that took the hit. The brother was safe. Many were not.
On September 11, 2001, 2,977 people were murdered — not counting the 19 hijackers. At the World Trade Center, 2,753 died, including 343 firefighters. At the Pentagon, 184. In a Pennsylvania field, 40 passengers and crew on Flight 93 fought the cockpit and kept that plane from its target. Those are not statistics. They are empty chairs.
The Pentagon number is the one that still sits in that phone call. One hundred twenty-five people were at their desks in Arlington when American Airlines Flight 77 came in. Six crew. Fifty-three passengers. A building built for war took a civilian airliner and became a grave. My friend’s brother walked out. Other families did not get that call.
Twenty-five years later the smoke is gone and the arguments are not. That is fine. Memory is not a policy memo. It is a man on the other end of the line asking if his brother is alive. It is a firefighter climbing toward the fire. It is strangers on Flight 93 saying, “Let’s roll.”
We honor them by telling the truth about what was done to us, and by refusing to make their names a slogan we put away after the anniversary special. Some came home. Most did not. The ones who did not are why we still say the date out loud. -WAA
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