2001 is a year like no other; personal memories and history will record it as such

In the entire 20th century there are a handful of years that are inextricably connected to an event. Ask almost anyone of a certain age to respond to a year by naming an event, and the list of certainties is quite short.
1929: The Great Depression.
1941: Pearl Harbor and the entry of the United States into World War II.
1945: The dropping of the atomic bomb and the end of World War II.
1963: The assassination of John F Kennedy.
To be sure, there are some others, and the list will vary from person to person. President McKinley was assassinated in 1901; Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy in 1968. Man first walked on the moon in 1969, and the Challenger space shuttle exploded in 1986. Other wars -- the first World War, Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf -- are tied to years that will always reverberate with the veterans of those conflicts.
Nonetheless, through the entire century there are only a few years that automatically create an intellectual and emotional response in most people.
The new century: And that brings us to the 21st century, and to both a startling conclusion and a fervent hope.
The first year of the 21st century -- we're adopting the purist's view that the year 2000 belonged to the 20th century -- may well have produced the century's most notorious event. The first year of the new century will always be remembered in the United States as the year of the World Trade Center attack. And while we don't wish to give any less respect to the victims at the Pentagon or to the passengers on United Flight 93 that crashed in Somerset County, Pa., the twin towers are likely to be the historical shorthand by which the horrible events of September 11, 2001, will be remembered.
No one old enough to appreciate the visual images produced by the events of September 11 will ever forget them. Further, modern technology ensures that those pictures will be available for generations to come.
In many ways, we as a society are still riveted by those pictures of the skyscrapers collapsing on, at the time, untold thousands of people. We now know the number to be just under 3,000, and even as we are still trying to assimilate what it means to lose 3,000 fellow citizens in a single day, we have not yet begun to imagine what the future may hold in 2002 and beyond.
Other stories: There were, of course, other events in 2001, and Sunday's Vindicator gave a splendid account of them -- local, national, sports and arts. But the anthrax scare, stem-cell research, an artificial heart, the first year of the Bush presidency, China trade, the ABM treaty, the recession, the lost budget surplus, a drought, shark attacks, a California congressman's sex scandal and an Ohio congressman's bribery charges can be barely seen through the dust of the collapsing towers. Some of those stories may have long-term consequences, while others are, quite literally, yesterday's news.
Such is the legacy of this year. The events of September 11 do not allow us to lightly put the year behind us or to blithely declare that the new year will be a better one.
The best that can be said of it on this day is that 2001 will be a year engraved in our memories, and that it will go down in history in a way that very few other years have. Unlike most years, it does not even allow us on its last day to bid it farewell.