It’s Monday, Nine-eleven.
Every year, I go back to my seventh-grade geography class when I first learned of the horror of that morning. It was son’s first day of school of school and his excitement was dashed when he saw his mother, my wife, standing television set crying as she watched the news unfold that Tuesday morning twenty-two years ago. She comforted him when he asked,
“Why are you crying momma” he asked.
She collected herself and replied,
“It’s just bad news.” She replied.
It was bad news and we have come together and moved forward since that awful day.
I am reminded of the names on this day, some two thousand nine hundred seventy-five men, women, and children who perished that morning.
This summer I stumbled across the 9/11 Memorial of Maryland in downtown Baltimore. Earlier in the day I had visited Fort McHenry and seen a replica of the flag which had flown the night the British bombarded the fort. It had fifteen stripes and fifteen stars. The memorial moved me to create a movie of me reading each the victim’s names.
Todd Beamer, LeRoy Homer, Wanda Anita Greene, and Honor Elizabeth Wayne
I am inspired by the events of that morning and fellow bloggers Beth at I Didn’t have My Glasses and Mary at Wilderness of Words who encouraged me to say their names.
It is Monday, the first day of a new week. It’s raining for the first time in weeks, and it is going to be an amazing day. I know it and I. can feel it, so I’d better jump up, jump in, and seize the day. Making the Days Count, one day at a time, saying their names, so we never forget.
Is there a name you remember from that day?
Clay. This moves me greatly. I’m with Margaret, you do important work with your students. They mustn’t forget or learn about it…
Kiki, your comment was what I first saw when I climbed out of bed this morning and looked down at my phone. Thank you for your kind words. I have to remind myself I teach kids not a subject. It’s day 12 of the school year today and we are learning science safety and geography of the ancient world in the classes I teach, but I am going to teach much more today! Stay well, Peace.
What a moving, thoughtful tribute, Clay. Such a good idea to bring some immediacy back to an event which is but history to the children you teach.
Oh Margaret, thank you so much. Yesterday when history class came to close the day… I shared what I was doing and I challenged them to ask their parents if they remembered that awful day… mind you my students were born ten years after 9/11 and likely their parents were in college or just starting their adult lives. I could feel the focus and engagement in the air. I have to remember I teach kids, not a subject. Peace.
I didn’t know anyone personally who died that day. But there were two women working in my region who had family members there…both survived. But that day we didn’t know. Years later my husband and I went to the 9/11 museum and I took a picture of one of the names with a white rose tucked into it. The white rose meant it was his birthday that day. Years after THAT I read an article about a young firefighter who had died running into the trade center…turns out it was the same man who’s name I had photographed on his birthday. It’s such a small world.
Dawn it is indeed a small world. I don’t know anyone directly who was there. I suppose I could track it sown and discover I was connected three, four, five, or six degrees of separation. I visited New York last year and I did visit the site but was unable to visit the 9/11 museum. I follow them on Instagram and their posts are moving. I hope we can all learn from our memory of that horrible morning and find some way to find middle ground and come together. Peace.