Thread by @pwcdanica

(Thread)
Seventeen years ago, on the second floor of Paul VI Catholic High School during second period English my senior year, I rushed to the window and looked east down Lee Highway to see if there was smoke along the horizon from the Pentagon as my teacher turned on the TV.

The principal had broke the mundanity of that Tuesday morning with a short announcement over the PA just before @DanRather informed my class that our country was under attack.

The first tower: a horrible accident.
The second tower: it’s war.
The Pentagon: our defense.
Somerset, PA: our fellow Americans fought back.
One of my senior classmates burst into tears in the hallway on the first floor as she had family from the Philippines visiting the WTC.

In my physics class, our teacher told us that sometimes there are more important things to discuss than whatever that week’s lesson was.
He opened his email and read a message from a friend in NYC.
There were limbs on the ground without the bodies belonging to them.

My classmates and I in the senior lunchroom kept our eyes on @DanRather.
I brought to my journalism class a little yellow sticky note pad with notes I collected throughout the day, including a rumor about a bomb going off at the Capitol. It was the only carnage that wasn’t true.

After school, as I drove back to Manassas, I heard on @WTOP that Governor Gilmore declared a state of emergency. I called my boss at the land surveying company where I worked to not come in that day.
At home, I saw my grandpa see NYC - his birth city/home of 60+ years - on fire.

My grandfather was born in Harlem in 1915 and his family later moved to The Bronx. His father and mother came to NYC off the boat from Italy in 1906.
NYC was home to his brothers. It’s where my grandma had all four of their children.
It’s where his mother died when he was 12.

Next to his television hung a black & white photo of Roger Maris crossing home plate at Yankee Stadium after his 61st home run of 1961. Another photo featured The Mick and Yogi.
To his left, the blueline plat of his home off Glebe Avenue in Westchester Square.
He loved New York.

That morning in Arlington, my aunt pushed a stroller with her two-year-old son.
A plane roared over them far too low and fast to be headed to National Airport.
Seconds later, it crashed into the Pentagon.
My little cousin would later tell me the plane became his first memory.

Back home, I waited for my mom to return home from work and my sister to come back from GMU.
We had family time with my grandpa and I took off to comfort a friend elsewhere in the wooded part of Manassas.
That’s when the numbers started coming in.

I remember George W. Bush’s national address.
I remember the other towers collapsing.
I remember @DanBarryNYT years later telling my St. Bonaventure J-School class there was always another story in the pile.
And I remember the jumps.
How people - human beings - fell like rain.

2,977.
Each and every person, born and raised.
Each and every person, a human being who breathed, who loved, who died.
Each and every person, a relative or a friend.
Including 0001: St. Bonaventure’s own.
Father Mychael Judge.
Each and every person, a living story.

How many thousands upon thousands of people who still hurt like it was yesterday.
How many thousands upon thousands of people who have died in war zones around the world since that day.
How many more people were never the same and found a day of their own to end their pain.

In May and June 2019, most graduating high school senior will have been born either just before or just after Sept. 11, 2001.
And soon enough, as it was after Pearl Harbor, every student at every school will have been born after that day, with no lived memory of it.

They won’t remember hugging someone in an airport terminal at the departure gate before one returns home and the other boards a plane.
They’ll ask you where you were that day as you may have asked your elders where they were during Pearl Harbor.
Our job is to tell the stories.

As we tell those stories, we can talk about statistics and circumstances, about timelines and fires.
About the heroism of those who ran into burning buildings as others ran out.
And about the private struggle of fear, grief, anger... and the honor of service, courage and valor.

To every person who donated blood, took the time to help, counseled those in crisis, answered the call to duty, helped someone physically or financially or emotionally or... just found a way to be present.
From the pile to Tora Bora.
From the Pentagon to home room.
We are people.

What makes our species unique is our ability to tell stories to each other, to pass down our history and learn from it as we prepare for the future.
No one can compel you to share your stories. That is a decision for you and you alone to make.
But when you do, a legacy is born.

Thank you to all who have shared your stories, whether in the immediate present of the moment on Sept. 11, 2001 itself or those who have waited 17 years since then to speak about someone they knew, love or remember.

And to those whose silence allows them to make it through the day, for telling those stories brings the hurt, the pain, the agony, the rage and the tears all over again...
We’re all in this together.
You are not forgotten.
And you are loved too.
#NeverForget