Monday, September 12, 2011
I like the pause that comes when you ask someone about Sept. 11.
I liken that pause to the dash on a tombstone that separates the birth and death years. Those two years are vital, but that dash represents the life that was, and all that it contained.
Those life events aren’t noted on a tombstone, but left to be understood or imagined.
Just like the pause.
The buildup to the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11 has pulled me in as well.
Six months ago, I didn’t think much more of Year 10 than I thought of Years 9, 8 and so on. They are all important to me, mind you. But I didn’t expect to take in this year any differently. But media has a way of drawing you in — even if you’re in the media.
And in talking more and more about Year 10, I like the pause that comes with it.
Ask someone about where they were when the planes struck, especially here with skies touched by Flight 93. It seems that regardless of what the topic was before you ask, the reaction is similar:
Their presence shrinks.
Their eyes look down to the ground or up to the skies.
And the voice tends to trail off.
And they pause. That silence about Sept. 11 says plenty.
Vulnerability. Humility. Loyalty. Duty. Purpose. Conscience.
And I think we’ve lost that in America.
In the 10 years since we first paused about Sept. 11, tick off the list of incidents that are absolute contrasts to the sense of vulnerability, humility and duty we once had after Sept. 11.
Start with our public leadership, and tally up the elected officials who’ve stumbled nationally and locally amid an absence of conscience or humility.
We’re blessed with anchors of a generation before, such as the Sherrod Browns or Joe Liebermans or the Orrin Hatches. But many — not all — who have emerged post Sept. 11 seem at this point to be lacking of that same fortitude.
A glance at corporate and union leadership yields the same volume of episodes.
Madoff? Real-estate and banking greed? Haliburton? Public-employee pay raises and benefits?
I’m not sure which resonates most with me. But I often think of the working-class town of Bell, Calf. — and the ruse that everyday, run-of-the-mill local officials pulled on citizens and peers to the tune of millions of taxpayer dollars in salaries and benefits paid to the chosen few.
I know fraud is an ongoing, happens-all-the-time challenge for society. Some of my first headlines as a newspaper person were of Leona “Little People” Helmsley.
And maybe I’m plagued by recent history being my most relevant, and being a little na Øve of some of our older history.
But when I think of world events that challenged America, I think of Pearl Harbor, which then became World War II for us, which then, after the pause, spun into phenomenal U.S. development that spanned decades.
The Greatest Generation paused. And then they responded in a way that fueled generations, including today’s.
My uncle is part of that generation, and with Sept. 11 on my mind, I asked him last weekend if he thought my generation could do what his did. He was polite.
His answer started with the same trailing “Oh, Toddo, I don’t know ...”
It’s different now than then, he said. But he gave my generation more credit than I would have.
Life has stopped for America several times over the decades, from Pearl Harbor to Sept. 11. And we paused.
I just wish my generation could have done with its pause what my uncle’s generation did with theirs.
Todd Franko is editor of The Vindicator. He likes emails about stories and our newspaper. E-mail him at tfranko@vindy.com. He blogs, too, on vindy.com.