09-09-2011, 06:19 AM
|
#1
|
|
Experienced Starter w/First Big Contract
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Suburban Philly via Boston
Posts: 5,994
My Mood:
|
OT Remembering 9/11
I'm heading out to Shanksville,PA for the memorial ceremony to commemorate 9/11 where Flight 93 crashed. The last time I was there was right after 9/11 as part of the Federal disaster response team helping to identify those on board the flight.
I put pen to paper a few weeks later.....
Reflections of Freedom
As I stood on that mound of dirt and looked out at the Pennsylvania field that September day, I was reminded of a quote by Martin Luther King, "the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenge." That recovered strip mine in Somerset County is hallowed ground, as hallowed as the beaches of Normandy, Iwo Jima, Lexington Green or the fields of Gettysburg. It was there that 40 people rose up, joined together to fight back and gave their lives. They were a cross section of America in its truest form. Young and old, married and single, Christian and Jew, straight and gay, black and white, from coast to coast and between they joined together to fight an unspeakable evil.
We'll never know how many people sleep comfortably in their beds tonight thanks to those heroic passengers. It might be your spouse or parents or your children or your nieces or nephews who might have been the intended targets of the hijackers that day. Instead, they made the ultimate sacrifice in that time of challenge.
There were other heroes that day in the Pentagon and at the World Trade Center. From all the military personnel who waded through deadly fire and smoke to rescue unknown comrades because it was the right thing to do to the police officer who died after repeatedly pulling injured survivors out of the burning tower to lead them to safety and going back in to rescue more. Then there's the fire captain who led by example reaching the 78th floor with his men in the hope of rescuing survivors only to lose his life there. I thought of the lawyer who worked in the building next to the World Trade Center who was a part time paramedic grabbing his emergency bag, donning a pair of gloves and while others were fleeing to safety went into harm's way to rescue others and died there.
I thought of these people as we served and felt the awesome responsibility to help identify them and bring them home to their families. It was in that time of challenge and crisis that they acted the way we all hope we would have acted. I thought of them as I drove past nearly three hundred miles of flags of every size and shape on the way back home to my family.
Suddenly, the colors took on a new meaning in a much more personal way. I understand now why the red is a symbol for the blood spilled in the defense of liberty and purity of the white and the valor of the blue. The flag stands for all that is right with America and is as representative of its freedoms today as it was when first sewn over two centuries ago. When my children ask of heroes, I'll tell them of those who fell on 9/11.
MKK September 2001
__________________
Um, Mr. Brady, can we line up?
Last edited by Patsfanin Philly; 09-09-2011 at 06:20 AM..
|
|
|
4Likes
Linear Mode
