9/11 Eight Years Later

As I sit here and look back on 9/11, eight years later, I am amazed to see a nation that united on this day but in days prior and after it seems as if we lose our way. However now is the time for us as a nation to mourn and to renew our spirit of service to this great nation of ours? As cold rain mixed with tears as mourners collected under umbrellas and a dreary sky Friday to mark the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks with old rituals and a new purpose — honoring the spirit of those who rushed forward to help. Skies were gray in New York City, at the Pentagon and at the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 in a Shanksville, Pa., field, where now-familiar ceremonies honored the nearly 3,000 people who were lost. Friday was also the first time the anniversary was observed as a national day of service, following an order signed this year by President Barack Obama.

"From this day forward, we will safeguard the memories of those who died by rekindling the spirit of service that lit our city with hope and helped keep us strong," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a ceremony in lower Manhattan. Obama and first lady Michelle Obama observed a moment of silence in honor of 9/11 victims outside the White House as a single bugler played taps. A Washington rain came to a stop as the observance began at 8:46 a.m., the moment the first jetliner struck the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Later, in the rain, he placed a wreath at the Pentagon.

The nation, Obama said, came together as one after the terrorist attacks, "united not only in our grief but in our resolve to stand up for the country we love." At a plaza adjacent to ground zero in New York City, families gathered, with umbrellas whipping inside out, while the names of the Trade Center victims were read, pausing for moments of silence at the minutes the jetliners crashed into the towers and the buildings fell. People involved in volunteer work across the nation joined relatives of victims to read the names of those lost in the twin towers.

One reader represented a group called New York Says Thank You, which sends volunteers from New York City each year on the attacks anniversary to help rebuild communities around the country affected by disasters as a way to send thanks for the help that came to New York City after Sept. 11. Other readers were from local soup kitchens, advocacy groups and well-known service organizations including the American Red Cross and the United Way. As has become tradition, relatives who read names called out greetings and messages of love to the lost.

"We miss you; life will never be the same without you. This is not the rain," said Vladimir Boyarsky, whose son, Gennady Boyarsky, was killed. "This is the tears." Philip Hayes Jr. noted how his father made the ultimate sacrifice when he responded to the site that morning, even though he had long been retired from the Fire Department. "We love you, Dad and we miss you," Hayes said.

In New York City, Vice President Joe Biden spoke during a pause in the reading of the names, telling the several hundred victims' relatives gathered that "there's a special fraternity for those of us who've lost spouses and children." Biden's daughter and first wife died in a 1972 automobile accident. Before he spoke, Biden joined families who were laying flowers in a reflecting pool on the site where the towers once stood. Relatives and friends of victims were allowed Friday to visit the plaza for the Sept. 11 memorial that is under construction. It is expected to be partially complete and open for the 10th anniversary.

Former President George W. Bush had no public appearances planned Friday, and a spokesman said he would be working in his office during the morning. In a brief statement, he said he and his wife, Laura, were thinking of the victims and their families.

"We honor those who volunteer to keep us safe and extend the reach of freedom — including members of the armed forces, law enforcement officers, and intelligence and homeland security professionals," the statement said. "Their courage, service, and sacrifice is a fitting tribute to all those who gave their lives on Sept. 11, 2001. On this day, let us renew our determination to prevent evil from returning to our shores."

Therefore 9/11 is a day to honor the dead by serving the living as President Obama proclaimed. The taxi is blowing down FDR Drive, heading south, Ground Zero a mile or so ahead. Jay Winuk is letting a humid breeze blow in through an open window as he considers his dead brother's legacy and the meaning of 9/11.

For eight years, he and fellow public-relations executive David Paine have worked to make the anniversary of the terrorist attacks a national moment of something other than sorrow, something other than the day, amid thousands of other tragedies, Winuk's brother Glenn died while trying to rescue people in the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Now on the cusp of a huge success, with congressional and presidential approval officially recognizing Sept. 11 as a day for people to do a good deed -- any good deed -- Winuk is adamant about what he doesn't want this day to become. "We do not want this to become a federal holiday," he says in his soft voice. "Holidays tend to become three-day weekends, barbecues, going to the beach and white sales. We never use the word 'holiday' for this. It's not about taking a day off and doing something fun. It's a day for reflection and for action."

And: "It's an extraordinary moment we're at now." In April, President Obama signed into law the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, which gave federal authorization to establish Sept. 11 as the National Day of Service and Remembrance. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is scheduled to deliver the keynote speech at Friday night's official ceremony in New York. More than 200 organizations, working through Paine and Winuk's group, My Good Deed, and through ServiceNation, another volunteer-based group, are overseeing thousands of individual and corporate projects across the country, all designed to honor the memory of those who died on Sept. 11.

Winuk and Paine say they hope to re-create the spirit of the days and weeks that followed 9/11, when it was said all irony was lost, strangers reached out to help one another and, as President Abraham Lincoln once put it, "the better angels of our nature" appeared. "There was something different about the country in the days after the attacks," Paine says, standing with Winuk on Liberty Street, between the gaping hole of Ground Zero and the front entrance of FDNY's Ladder Company 10 and Engine Company 10, which lost so many firefighters that day. "It provided a glimpse of what the country could be, all those people coming down to help at Ground Zero, expecting nothing in return." He pauses. "It was a better place to live."

Now Glenn Winuk was a lawyer at Holland & Knight, working just across from the Trade Center. He was also a volunteer firefighter and emergency medical technician in his home town of Jericho, out on Long Island. He had close-cropped brown hair, a friendly smile. A family photo shows Winuk in his dress uniform, beaming at the camera. When the planes crashed into the towers, he helped evacuate his building, then grabbed a medical kit and ran into the towers.

He was 40 years old, had no wife or children. He had lived for moments like this. "As a child, I can remember my uncle, also a firefighter, holding Glenn or myself and sliding down the fire pole in the station where he worked," Winuk says. "We asked my dad to put a pole from our bedroom down to the garage." Then the towers came down. For weeks, Winuk and his parents harbored hope. "Air pockets in the rubble, maybe he hit his head and was in a hospital somewhere." When Mayor Rudolph Giuliani finally announced that rescue effort had turned into a recovery operation, the family planned a funeral.

The Winuks, who are Jewish, took a cue from survivors of the Holocaust, who, when they had no body to bury, had put favored belongings of their dead in an otherwise empty coffin. In went Glenn's law books, a Jewish prayer book, a toy firetruck he'd had as a child. Then, the following March, Glenn's partial remains, along with those of several other firefighters, were discovered in what had been the lobby of the South Tower. Glenn's medical kit was at his side. The casket was dug up and his remains added. "It was a very hard [funeral] service," Winuk remembers.

That same spring, Paine, a native New Yorker who had moved to California, was still feeling haunted by the attacks, though he had lost no family members. Looking for a way to help, he learned that the New York Mets were each giving a day's pay to help 9/11 victims and their families. "That's it!" he remembers thinking. He rushed to buy domain names on the Internet: Onedayspay.com, .net, .org and so on. He thought the idea was catchy -- Americans donating salary or one day's effort to some sort of volunteer effort, in honor of Sept. 11 victims. On his Web sites, he invited people to "do a good deed" and post it on the site as a means of inspiring others to do the same.

"More than 50,000 people posted their deeds on the site," he says. "That was with no advertising, no anything. It was amazing." He had worked with Winuk at a public relations firm earlier in their careers, and they had remained friendly. Knowing Winuk had lost his brother, he approached him with the idea of trying to turn Sept. 11 into a day of volunteering. Winuk leapt at the chance. It was a slightly bewildering scene to wade into. More than two dozen Sept. 11 charities had sprung up. They had to establish a clear line of action that would not interfere with other projects. "It could be a little competitive back then," remembers Terry Sears, executive director of Tuesday's Children, a nonprofit organization that offers help to families of 9/11 victims.

"David and Jay had a very clear vision of what they wanted to do that was very forward-looking when most people were looking at the here and now," Sears says. "They wanted to make some good come out of 9/11. I would say they saw the rainbow before everyone else did." By the summer of 2004, they had changed their organization's name to My Good Deed and were ready to reach out to Congress. On July 4, they tracked down Washington lobbyist (and native New Yorker) Fred Dombo, who had been recommended to them. Dombo remembers he was "sitting in the attic at my mother-in-law's beach house in Rehoboth" when the pair called him, asking for advice in negotiating the mysteries of the Hill.

Dombo, working pro bono, reached out to Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), who immediately took to the idea of a day of service, Dombo recalls. For the next five years, Winuk and Paine made dozens of trips to Washington to build support on both sides of the political aisle, getting key backing from then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and her fellow New York Democrat, Sen. Charles E. Schumer. By this spring, it was attached to the Kennedy bill and sailed through both the House and Senate.

Meanwhile, their national outreach and good relations with Sept. 11 families had helped their volunteering idea catch on with any number of groups across the country. Earlier this week, while arranging volunteer events for this weekend, Paine was walking through the Tribute WTC Visitor Center. He bumped into Jennifer Adams, the chief executive of the center. He asked about an event scheduled for Friday that Adams was arranging, stuffing care packages for troops deployed overseas.

"We've got 300 volunteers coming!" she said, excited. "Which is good. It might rain." Across town, former New York Giants star George Martin, a client of Winuk's, was sitting at Foley's Pub and Restaurant. In front of him was a chicken sandwich named in his honor ("The Chicken Cordon Big Blue"), an effort to raise perhaps $1,000 for the continuing medical expenses of first responders to the Trade Center. It was the latest of his many efforts related to Sept. 11 volunteering, inspired by the friends he lost that day. In 2007, he walked across the country for the same cause, and to help with raising awareness for My Good Deed. He hoofed 20 miles per day, and raised $2.5 million.

"None of these are huge sums but if everyone did a little bit, the sum total would be tremendous," he said. Sitting across from him at the table was Winuk, manfully ignoring the heat in a wool pinstripe suit, quiet. He was smiling. It was unclear if this was in response to what Martin was saying, or if, perhaps, he was lost in memories of his brother, the little boy on Long Island who had once ridden down a fire pole in the arms of his uncle, grew up to save lives and would later serve as the inspiration for a day dedicated to helping others.

Still not all Americans are old enough to understand the memory of 9/11, yet alone the impact of it. So for some Americans 8 years after 9/11 is more of a lesson rather than a memory. Eight years later, the Sept. 11 attacks are pages in the history books to a generation that's too young to recall them. Some student in a high school in Vincennes, Indiana filed into their social studies class just after lunch and slumped into desks where they had learned about the Civil War, Lewis and Clark, and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. On this day, teacher Michael Hutchison said, the class would feature "another of those huge moments in our history." He reminded the high school juniors and seniors that he would be grading their notes. Then he dimmed the lights and played a video on the classroom TV.

Some students set backpacks on their desks to use as pillows, and others pulled the hoods of their sweat shirts low over their eyes. "Nap time," one of them said. Meanwhile, on the screen at the front of the room, a skyscraper burned. A woman screamed. A tower crumbled. A mother sobbed as she recalled her son's final words.

"There was a fire," one student wrote in his notes.

"People died and went missing," scribbled another.

"It was an example of 'terrorism,' " wrote a third.

Eight years later, this is an example of what Sept. 11, 2001, has become for a generation that's too young to remember much, if anything, about that day: It is an educational DVD, a 167-page textbook, a black binder of class handouts titled "A National Interdisciplinary Curriculum." In Room C215 at Lincoln High School, images of the collapsing Manhattan skyline are now a classroom "warm-up exercise." "Militant," "imploding" and "rubble" are boldfaced vocabulary words for students to memorize. Homework assignments and essay questions ensure that Sept. 11 will indeed be remembered by millions of schoolchildren, if with a new sense of detachment.

From the personal to the preserved -- this is the uncomfortable transition that time requires of all great tragedies. Anthony Gardner, whose brother died on the 83rd floor of the World Trade Center's North Tower, conceived of a Sept. 11 curriculum as a tribute to the victims. He partnered with two professors in Manhattan, who partnered with an education company in San Francisco, which partnered with a cadre of researchers and copy editors, who sent the final product to a handful of test schools nationwide last week.

One copy was mailed to Hutchison, 53, a longtime history teacher in Vincennes who has never visited New York City. A former Indiana Teacher of the Year, Hutchison had been chosen to help roll out the curriculum because of his reputation for bringing multimedia history lessons to a school edged by cornfields near the Illinois border. On Wednesday, he stared out at 22 students who have lived about half of their lives since the 2001 attacks. What they remember of that day is now scattered snapshots. One remembered his third-grade teacher saying that a plane had crashed. One remembered an administrator locking the front door to the elementary school. Parents hurried into town to stock up on gas. Neighbors hung American flags. A brother talked about being drafted to war.

"You might have been too young to realize it," Hutchison said, "but I knew that we were seeing history made as I was watching on TV." He distributed a handout that had come with the curriculum, and the students counted the pages in each packet -- "Seven, eight, nine! Seriously?" -- and let out a collective groan. The first two pages contained flight-path diagrams for the four planes that crashed on Sept. 11, followed by a 30-year history of U.S. relations with Afghanistan. Hutchison asked the students to form groups of four and create their own Sept. 11 timelines

"This is going to take us forever," complained a boy in the back.

"Just try to focus until the bell rings," Hutchison said.

Over the next several weeks, if Hutchison continued to follow the curriculum, his students would eventually build their own Sept. 11 memorials, create maps of terrorist activity and debate the cleanup of Ground Zero as members of a fictitious town council. But at the end of their first day studying the attacks, Hutchison assigned a more basic task for homework: to interview somebody older about Sept. 11 and write an article based on their recollections.

"I'm going to select the two best, and those students will receive some major extra credit," Hutchison said. "So take this seriously, because it could be huge for your grade." In the second row, a senior named JaLeah Hedrick looked up from her notes.

"Wait," she said. "Extra credit?"

"Yes," Hutchison said. "Interview a few people. It can be uncles, parents, grandparents -- anybody you want. Then write down whatever they can remember."

Anthony Gardner, who has never been to Vincennes, needed to remember everything. Long before he created the curriculum destined for Hutchison's classroom, Gardner, 33, taught himself to retain every detail of the terrorist attacks that changed his life.

On Sept. 11, 2001, he was a recent college graduate listening to Howard Stern's radio show while walking to work in New York. Stern interrupted one of his gags to announce that the World Trade Center had been attacked. Gardner immediately thought of his brother, Harvey, who worked on the 83rd floor of the North Tower. He called Harvey's cell phone but received a busy signal. He dialed again, and again, but never got through.

Gardner walked seven miles through Manhattan and took a ferry home to New Jersey. He searched for pictures of his brother and hung one in every room of the house. He found a video recorded at his wedding four months earlier and watched footage of Harvey laughing so hard that it jiggled the boutonniere pinned to his chest. "I had this unbelievable urge to see him," Gardner said.

Weeks passed, then months, then years, and still Harvey's body was never recovered. Craving a tangible connection to his brother, Gardner collected rocks from the rubble of the World Trade Center and filled a water bottle with wet soil from Ground Zero. He printed transcripts of news conferences, saved newspaper articles and spent six years working as the director of a nonprofit organization representing Sept. 11 victims. "My family told me that it was unhealthy and obsessive," Gardner said. "Some things about 9/11 are still more clear in my mind than whatever happened this morning."

There was the moment a few months before the attacks, when the two brothers met for a quick lunch near the World Trade Center and idled at the base of the North Tower. Harvey mentioned the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. "Look at this thing," he said, gazing up the shimmering face of the tower. "They'll never take these buildings down." Or the moment a few days after the attacks, when Gardner sat at his computer and created a missing-person flier. Name: Harvey J. Gardner III. Age: 35. Hair color: black. At the bottom of the sheet, under a photograph, he typed a physical description -- "Hairline receding" -- and then imagined how furious Harvey would be if he ever read it.

Or the moment later that first week, hope fading now, when Gardner stopped by his brother's house and sifted through toiletries, collecting a razorblade and a toothbrush to provide rescue workers a sample of Harvey's DNA.

Eight years? Could it really be that long? In that time, Gardner began a marriage, struggled to have children, celebrated the birth of a first baby, then a second, then a third. He changed careers three times and returned to school for two new degrees. And yet still he suffered from nightmares and wondered if he had post-traumatic stress disorder.

A few years ago, Gardner's oldest daughter asked him about Sept. 11, and he realized how vague the event must have seemed to her. She needed to remember, he decided. Everyone needed to remember. He helped form the Sept. 11 Education Trust, which conducted 100 hours of video interviews with survivors, firefighters, politicians and relatives of the victims. The videos formed the backbone for a curriculum intended to "remind everyone that 9/11 was a collective experience, affecting everyone, everywhere," Gardner said.

With the help of history professors at the Taft Institute for Government at Queens College, Gardner developed a seven-lesson curriculum intended for sixth through 12th grades. He spoke at a news conference in New York on Tuesday to mark the release of the curriculum, recalling eight anniversaries of the attacks. First it was mourned, then memorialized, then made into history for future generations and shipped to a high school in Indiana.

Now JaLeah Hedrick, 18, had never learned about Sept. 11 in school until she entered Hutchison's class this week, but consequences of that day surrounded her as she began her pursuit of extra credit. For Hedrick, Sept. 11 was the pledge of allegiance that Vincennes area schools had begun playing over loudspeakers every morning since late 2001. It was the "Threat Level Orange" that she heard each time she visited the Indianapolis airport. It was the way her grandfather, a World War II veteran, grimaced when he spoke of "those Muslims." It was the USA T-shirt her dad wore when he picked her up from school in an aging Pontiac with a red-white-and-blue license plate inscribed with the phrase "In God We Trust."

And now, it was homework -- due to Hutchison by 1 p.m. Friday. Hedrick wanted to interview her grandfather Ed Hedrick, because he is a veteran and, she said, "an American hero." Other classmates were planning to interview fathers serving in Iraq or distant relatives who had worked at the Pentagon, but Ed Hedrick, 83, was the only person his granddaughter knew whose recollections of Sept. 11 might have the gravitas worthy of extra credit. She rode a mile across town and sat across from her grandfather on his front porch. She pulled a blue notebook and a pink pen from her backpack and then looked at a class handout that provided a list of possible interview questions. "I have to ask you some of these for homework," she told her grandfather, her eyes still fixed on the sheet. "Where were you when you first heard about the attack?" "I was sitting in that red chair over there in the living room," he said.

She nodded and then read the next question. "Did you continue to listen to the radio or watch TV?"

"Yes," her grandfather said. "I barely moved all week. I couldn't stop watching."

"How did it affect you?" she asked.

"Severe anger, for days," he said.

"What action did you want the government to take?" she asked.

"Well, I guess I wanted them to load up three or four of those H-bombs and send them over there. That's how I felt at the time."

"How has it affected your daily life since?"

"Not much. I don't think about it. They teach you not to think about ugly things when you fight in a war."

Hedrick had a full page of pink notes now, enough for a good start on the assignment. She thanked her grandfather and patted him on the knee. He stood up with her, a distant look in his eyes. "I was born into a war, I fought in a war, and now here's another war," he said. "You might not know it to look at me now, but when I was 18 they made me walk 25 miles with 70 pounds on my back." "I know, Grandpa," Hedrick said. "I know." He looked ready to tell her more, but his granddaughter was already heading into the house, the door swinging behind her. She had heard this story before. She remembered it. It was history. So she walked off the porch, carrying the class handouts on Sept. 11, and returned home to finish her assignment.

Therefore 8 years after 9/11 it seems that for some it is a day of mourning, for others it is a day of service and for a select few of young Americans, it is a lesson. No matter how anyone looks at 9/11 it is a day for our nation to mourn but it is also a day to help the living which is why we must serve our nation to the best of our abilities. 9/11 is a day to teach of how a country came together to uplift one another, to encourage one another and most of all to motivate one another to love this nation regardless of its flaws because there are people who have dead for this great nation of ours to give us many of the freedoms and liberties that we have. 9/11 is more than just a day of mourning, it is more than just a day of service and it is more than just a lesson plan in the history books but it is a day to renew our love for nation and for its people. 9/11 is a day for us to realize that political bickering should not prevent us from working together to conquer the greater good of our nation.

9/11 symbolizes that and so much more. 8 years after 9/11 and we are at a moment when we can teach other Americans why we mourn, why we serve and why we love America so much all on this day when all Americans realized that our nation was not as safe as we thought it was. Eight years later, we as a nation continue to be divided by old political ideologies and by extremists within our own nation who would rather see us divided as Americans not united. America, this 9/11 anniversary is not just about serving others or mourning those we lost but it is about us realizing that together we can accomplish so much more than divided. This 9/11 is about us helping each other live and prosper. This 9/11 is about producing a new generation of Americans who are willing to serve the least of us, the elderly, the sick and the most vulnerable. This 9/11 should be about Americans finally putting aside hate of any kind in order to preach and work for equality for all. This 9/11 should be about us as a nation rallying around the American flag to show that we will not stand for injustices of any kind and we will not stand for racism or race-baiting of any kind. This 9/11 should be about us as a nation fighting to end discrimination of any kind so that we all have the same opportunities to succeed as everyone else. This 9/11 should be about us as a nation finally judging people not on the color of their skin but only on their character, skills, talents and values.

9/11, 8 years later is still a day to remember for all Americans both young and old. 9/11 will forever be remembered as a day to mourn, a day to serve and a day to learn. Therefore don’t let this day go by without understanding what it is really about and why it is important to our “Great” nation.