And so I was with him on September 11, 2001. I remember standing with him, staring at the TV, watching the images from New York as the two planes flew into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. We stood side-by-side in my living room, not speaking, just watching – amazed, shocked, horrified, afraid of what we were seeing.
It occurred to me as we stood there if what I was feeling was something like he felt on December 7, 1941 – the attack on Pearl Harbor that took the United States into an active participant of World War II. They didn’t have CNN back then, so there was no 24-hour visual coverage of what was going on. But as the news reports spread, the country was shocked, saddened, angered – many of the same feelings the rest of us had on 9/11.
My father and mother were both veterans of World War II. He spent the war on a sub chaser, and it wasn’t until much later when I read about the history of submarine warfare by the Germans along the East Coast and especially in the Caribbean that I realized just how dangerous his job really was.
I doubt any Americans who were alive on what we now call 9/11 that have no memory of the events. At the time, we didn’t know if indeed it was the beginning of another World War. We didn’t know if it was just the first of multiple attacks – and it turned out it was. The crash of Flight 97 into the West side of the Pentagon resulted in the fourth-highest number of ground fatalities in plane crash history, while the brave travelers on United Flight 93 found out what was going on and rebelled against their captors and crashed the plane into a Pennsylvania field.
There are so many stories of bravery, many of which were not as well known at the time but continue to be told.
The story of Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney and Lt. Col. Marc Sasseville, of the D.C. Air National Guard’s 121st Fighter Squadron at Joint Base Andrews, is amazing in that they were ordered to intercept and destroy Flight 93 before it could reach Washington D.C. There was no time to arm those two fighters with weapons, so both pilots were committed to crashing into the plane – Sasseville said he would hit the cockpit, Penney the tail – knowing it was a suicide mission. The actions of the passengers on board that flight means Sasseville and Penny did not have to take action, but that they were prepared to do so should never be forgotten.
There are so many more.
For me, there was another story from that day, far more personal beyond the fact that it was my father’s birthday.
As I watched what was happening in New York City from my TV screen, I will be honest: I thought to myself, “I’m glad I live in Birmingham, Alabama. That would never happen here.”
And no sooner had that thought crossed my mind that a thought – I can’t say voice, but I have no doubt that it was from God, the Holy Spirit, however you want to say it – said, “Ah! So you base your security on where you live and not on me?”
Americans used to think we had a natural protection of two huge oceans on either side of the continent that acted as a barrier to any invasion of forces that meant us harm. We found out on 9/11 that was no longer the case.
I seemed to think that my distance from places like New York and Washington D.C., cities that seemed like prime targets for those evil forces, somehow would protect me.
But then, I was covering the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996 and had just walked out the far side of Olympic Park when a bomb went off, killing one immediately and injuring 111 others. As a child, I was taught what to do in case of a nuclear attack and was shown these concentric circles of potential target areas and discovered where I lived was indeed within one of those circles.
I have been in venues that were closed due to bomb threats and taught how to handle mail that could contain anthrax or other material sent to do harm.
All that is to say, we’ve all been exposed to more potential harm than we probably think about.
It may sound silly, but that message I heard within my head (or heart?) was a profound realization for me. God has never spoken to me from a burning voice or from a cloud or in any audible way that I recognized (other than perhaps the advice of a friend), God tends to teach me things in simple ways, and this was one of those.
That moment, that message is one I have never forgotten.
And when I think of that moment, I think of Psalms 46, that begins,
“God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging….”
On that day, 25 years ago, it hit me that if I believe God is indeed my refuge, the source of my security, then it doesn’t matter where I am or where I go. We are all vulnerable. For the vast majority of us, we just don’t know from what.
But God does. So – as the Bible says in Psalms 27 – whom shall I fear?
“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”
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