Whole Tooth: Remembering 9/11
By Dr. Robert Kelly, For The Mountain Times
I sat down to write this month’s article today and it happened to be the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001. It has been in the news lately, of course, as preparations for memorial ceremonies are underway.
Last week I walked into my living room to find my older kids in front of the tv watching a documentary on the attacks. They had just started, so I sat down with them to watch it together. It was interesting to see their reactions and emotions, as none of them were yet born on that day. For them, it was an event that they had heard about – what had happened and how terrible a day it was. But to see the footage and process the events and the stories of the people involved was entirely new for them. In some form, this was their first “experience” with the events of that day, not only what had happened, the tragedy, but also how profoundly things in the country, and in the world, changed in its aftermath.
I don’t have a dental topic this month that’s connected at all to this. But I do vividly remember where I was on September 11, 2001. I was in dental school sitting in an Anatomy and Physiology class lecture. As news slowly filtered in that morning, the shock and disbelief gave way to grief, anger, and anxiety for what had happened. And everyone wondered “what happens next?”
Walking home felt different that day, like the normal routine bus, train, and sidewalk stroll was now some odd different dystopian journey home instead. The two planes that hit the World Trade Center buildings in New York both flew out of Boston, where I was living at the time. There were police everywhere that morning, and it felt like everybody was walking home in a daze.
A good friend and classmate recounted days later that his fiancé was supposed to be on the exact same flight that hit the World Trade Center, but had changed that flight to another: she missed the doomed flight by a single day. Shortly after, I also heard another harrowing story that one of my cousins, who worked at the World Trade Center, was in the building when it was hit but managed to get out in time before it collapsed. The bravery of the firefighters and police officers in NYC that morning was immeasurable – nothing short of heroic.
It's hard to imagine 25 years have gone by. A lot of the younger generation was not present for those events and, like anything in history, memories slowly fade as time goes by and generations move on. This is perhaps inevitable to some extent. But it would be nice to remember the sentiment, at least initially, that most of the country had: a strong desire to come together and honor those people that day. The most enduring words in the aftermath, one I hope still resonates, is the simple phrase: “Never Forget.”