(HOST) As we pause to remember events that took place seven years ago today, commentator Willem Lange wonders if you remember where you were when everything changed.
(LANGE) We were all at Grandma’s for Sunday dinner when the radio announced the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Grampa prayed for the killed and injured, and for victory in the war that was upon us. I was too young to understand it then, but the news during the next four years; the incredibly rapid war mobilization of American industry; the rationing of sugar, gasoline, and tires; and the trips we kids made through our neighborhoods collecting newspapers, metal, lard, and even milkweed pods (for life jackets) left an indelible impression. Most of all, I remember the overwhelming strength of our nation when we all focused on a common goal.
I was at breakfast in the kitchen at home not quite four years later when my father came in with the newspaper headline, "President Dead." My parents were lifelong Republicans who considered Roosevelt the Antichrist, so I wondered: Why they were in tears? The world had shifted beneath their feet. Four months later the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and the world changed for all of us. When I think of those days of relative innocence before the bomb, sometimes I’m in tears.
I was supervising a high school study hall when the principal announced that John Kennedy had been shot. Just like me over twenty years earlier, the kids didn’t understand it. One of them stood up and punched his fist in the air in celebration. It was a small town, and I knew his parents. I’ve never been able to forgive them for teaching their child such hatred. I wonder if he ever grew to understand, during the chaos that followed – Civil Rights, Vietnam, Bobby, Martin – how much our country and our history began to change that day.
Tuesday, September 11, 2001, was a beautiful early fall day. I was in my office, writing about another September 11th, 144 years earlier, when a Mormon militia group, probably by the order of Brigham Young, who called himself "a second Muhammad," slaughtered the unarmed members of a peaceful wagon train crossing Utah Territory for California. My daughter called. "Turn on your TV!" she shouted; and we watched the second airliner crash into the South Tower.
It was difficult, here in northern New England, to appreciate the shock of those living close to the destruction. Each of us reacted in his own way to the realization we no longer were protected by two oceans and friendly allies. Many of us responded with exaggerated patriotism, vowing revenge. Our government invaded a country that demonstrably had nothing to do with the attacks – rather like dropping a brick on your foot to take your mind off a headache. Security became paramount; it took me half an hour to clear airline security the other day because I was wearing a little splint on one hand. Nobody wants to be holding the bag the next time something goes wrong. I had rather hoped September 11th would bring out our better angels.
This is Willem Lange in East Montpelier, and I gotta get back to work.