Day of Infamy

 

                                                   

​

​

​

​

  Part II – Aftermath

​

Almost overnight, following the attack on September 11th, the United States flag becomes omnipresent. 
    A transformation takes place, and wherever I look, there are the Stars and Stripes. It is as though, with one accord, Americans everywhere are reaching for a security blanket—of red, white, and blue. 
    From homes and on mailboxes, on buildings and barns, from highway overpasses, the nation's colors are being flown, painted, hung. 
    A groundswell is underway. Drivers and vehicles take part. Innumerable flags flap savagely up and down the highway, red and white stripes snapping fiercely at sixty-five miles per hour, from window mounts on cars and trucks. 
    Flag stickers appear in dollar stores. They can be affixed to notes, envelopes, folders. Along with other patrons, I purchase multiple packs. 
    The transformation is everywhere in evidence. 

I buy a bag of M&M candies, discovering only three colors inside—red, white, and blue.

 

    It's days after the attack. 
    Commuting to work, another driver cuts sharply in front of me. Under normal circumstances, the experience might provoke a disparaging thought or comment on my part. Now, however, there is within me no animosity toward this fellow American. “He's not the enemy, Richard,” I hear myself say.
    The enemy struck on September 11th. Each of us was affected. Now we are all in this together.

    Such is the sense of unity in the air. It is palpable—a feeling of oneness, a patriotic kinship unlike anything I've known.
    I comment about this to my friend, Vic Ramsey. Vic is thirty years my senior and was twenty-one years old on another momentous day in U.S. history—June 6, 1944, D-Day. He has experienced this before.
    “That's the way it was all during World War Two,” he informs me.

  

    It is four months later.
    I'm in Jersey City, New Jersey, with fellow employees, for work-related training. Our accommodations are directly across the Hudson River from lower Manhattan and the former site of the World Trade Center.
    “Let's visit Ground Zero,” someone suggests.
    A Wednesday evening expedition is organized.

 

    Let us take a moment and examine a marvelous irony. 

    A youth grows up in the rural Midwest, in tranquil southeastern Wisconsin. His childhood is pleasant, and happy—but during these formative years, an irrational fear develops. It grows, and becomes a phobia.
    What is the fear? What causes it, and why does it grow?
    The impressionable youth experiences a nascent fear of big cities. It is induced by the daily news, and intensified over time by the shocking reports and recurring grim details therein of the cruel mayhem that big cities contain.

​

    March 13, 1964. Queens, New York. Early morning.
    A young woman, twenty-eight-year-old Catherine Susan Genovese—“Kitty” to her family and friends—is returning home to her apartment from her work as a sports bar manager.
    She is attacked by Winston Moseley, a knife-wielding twenty-nine-year-old machine operator. He stabs her multiple times, and sexually assaults her. Kitty Genovese dies an hour later from her wounds.

     The New York Times reports that thirty-eight witnesses living in the surrounding apartments hear Kitty Genovese scream for help, observe the attack, yet do nothing to save her. “I didn't want to get involved,” says one of the witnesses, according to the Times article.
    The Midwestern youth in Wisconsin is ten years old at the time of the sensational national news story.

​

    July 13, 1966. Chicago, Illinois. 11:00 p.m.
    Richard Franklin Speck, age twenty-four, breaks into a townhouse at 2319 East 100th Street.
    The townhouse serves as a dormitory for eight student nurses who work at the South Chicago Community Hospital. At knifepoint, the eight are held captive by Speck in one of the bedrooms. During the next several hours, each is led out and, one by one, is assaulted, then strangled or stabbed to death. 
    There is one survivor—a ninth student nurse, Corazon Amurao, who is spending the night. Amurao squeezes under a bed and hides while Speck is out of the room with one of his victims.
    When the gruesome story breaks, it stuns the nation.

 

     One may ask: How many times during one's formative years does the daily news include stories of murder, rape, robbery, assault, battery—violence of every kind?
    How often is this reported as occurring in one of the various large cities of our nation?
    And is this torrent tempered by equivalent illustrations of virtue—stories of kindness, gentleness, love?

     If not, one might speculate: Can one grow up and, exposed to this ongoing barrage of negative news, not be affected, to some degree, as was the youth above?

 

    Now then. You have surmised that I am the one portrayed, who grew up in the rural Midwest, in tranquil southeastern Wisconsin—with a phobia of big cities?
    Very well.  Let us continue.

​

    September 11, 2001. New York City. Mid-morning.
    Responding to the deadly terrorist attack and unprecedented emergency situation, and with black smoke billowing into the sky from above, hundreds of New York City rescue and emergency personnel, including firemen, police officers, paramedics, emergency medical technicians—some of whom are off duty, yet respond anyway—enter the burning twin towers of the crippled World Trade Center.
    Forgoing their own safety, they search for office workers, provide assistance, and fight fires.
    The situation deteriorates. Evacuation orders are issued.
    Not all are able to evacuate in time. When the towers collapse, a total of 411 responders are still inside.

    When I learn afterward of the 411, who, along with many others, perish when the towers collapse, a remarkable thing happens—my lifelong phobia dissipates completely.
    It simply vanishes, so struck am I by the selfless dedication and sacrifice of the New York City rescue and emergency professionals.

     And therein is the marvelous irony.
    Consider: The nineteen terrorists of September 11 plot, prepare for, and carry out a coordinated, multi-target, lethal suicide attack. Among their objectives: the instilling of widespread fear.
    Yet, regarding my fear—that which I have experienced for decades, that which I’ve known for so long—there occurs a completely opposite result.

 

    So on January 9, 2002, class and workday over, and with dusk settling, I join my fellow employees for what becomes a somber pilgrimage into the wounded city.

​

          Part III.

​