A changed world, and the good that remains
Divisiveness would make us believe we don’t need one another quite as much, that perhaps we could persist in separateness. But in reality the opposite is true — we do need each other, in order to be truly successful as a nation and overcome our challenges.
The American and Vermont flags outside the town offices in Bridgewater, Vt. (Gareth Henderson Photo)
Weary-eyed but wide awake with excitement, my flight landed in Lima, Peru, around 3 a.m. I was about to join my travel group from Principia College for an abroad program for my Spanish major — my first journey to a non-English speaking country. But as we embarked on that experience, we didn’t know how the world was about to change.
As several friends and I went down to breakfast in our hotel the next morning on Sept. 11, 2001, we saw the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center on TV, with massive columns of smoke rising from them. I wondered if I was watching a movie clip, but I soon learned the tragic reality.
From the newsroom in the Christian Science Monitor in Boston minutes before, my dad, a longtime journalist, saw the second plane strike on the TV screen. He and multiple friends called my mom that morning to make sure I’d made it out, which we all had. My trip leaders made sure we emailed our parents to convey that news.
A world away from Ground Zero, I was able to find comfort and solace as we went about our first day in Lima. Back home in the U.S., nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks, including at the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and on United Flight 93. Many more confronted the rawness of the aftermath. A fellow Vermonter, Stuart Crawford Hult, from Williston, was a vice president for a Credit Suisse First Boston at 5 World Trade Center, and was on site that morning. After the first plane hit the building, he sprinted through the office, screaming for everyone to get out. Once his colleagues were on their way to safety, Hult made his escape down the stairwell before the second plane hit the next tower. Later, he discovered that everyone who’d been on duty at the firehouse near his office, Fire Department Rescue Company 1, had died that day. He now sends a wreath of remembrance to the station every year.
I heard Hult's story for the first time this past week, when I stopped to listen to part of Vermont Public Radio’s tremendous project, "20 Years Later: Vermonters Remember Sept. 11". It was such a profound listening experience, and a visceral reminder of how that morning altered the lives of so many. How important it is, to remember these individual experiences and honor their meaning.
Collectively, these stories still touch our hearts, and uniquely so. Indeed, 9/11 brought the country together, even if briefly. Today, the ability to embrace one another as a country seems quite distant, and just as susceptible to political turmoil and disagreement. However, I trust that somewhere within the fabric of our nation, there is a more expansive desire for genuine unity and genuine progress. They can co-exist, because in our recent struggles, we’ve shown we can still lift each other up in times of need.
This feels like a different nation than the one that saw the 9/11 attacks. Today, political and societal tensions are more ubiquitous, more shared through social media and iPhones, and the partisanship is more rife on the surface. Divisiveness would make us believe we don’t need one another quite as much, that perhaps we could persist in separateness. But in reality the opposite is true — we do need each other, in order to be truly successful as a nation and overcome our challenges. Every day provides another opportunity to show the love and care that remains in our national community, by looking out for one another despite our differences. Twenty years after 9/11, we can prove the good that touched us in the aftermath of 9/11 is not fleeting, and still remains foundational in the soul of our nation.
— Gareth Henderson