On 9/11, Americans will gather to fulfill a promise that they made to the nearly 3,000 people who died that day: Never forget.
In Michigan, that means groups are planning to hold remembrances on Friday, Sept. 11, in places as varied as the War Memorial in Grosse Pointe Farms, Heritage Park in Canton, City Hall in Warren, Fire Station No. 1 in Ann Arbor and the bucolic campus of Hillsdale College.
"It’s a day that Americans can remember the tragedy, but also the unity of how people banded together in the wake of such terror," Alex Szwarc, the War Memorial’s patriotic programming administrator, told the Free Press. "We just want to do our part.
But how will a nation in which 100 million people who weren’t even born when the deadliest terrorist attacks
in U.S. history unfolded choose to commemorate what occurred?
And what details of that day will the 70% of the U.S. population who lived through the attacks choose to recall, especially now, more than six months into another Middle East conflict.
To Szwarc, what matters most is to tell the stories of the 2,977 who died.
Of those, he said, at least 19 were either born or grew up in Michigan.
"It was such a huge part of American history," Szwarc said of 9/11, adding he hopes the events at the War Memorial and nationwide unite communities. "There were many victims and many heroic actions by first responders on 9/11 and in the days and months that followed."
Public service inspiration
When the Al-Qaeda terrorists attacked in four hijacked planes, Eric MacKinnon was in class at Frankenmuth High School. He was 15 — no longer a young child, but not yet an adult — and 9/11 events, he said, were among the moments in his life that influenced him.
MacKinnon recalled he didn’t know what had happened until lunchtime, even though the first plane, American Airlines Flight 11, had smashed into the World Trade Center’s North Tower at 8:46 a.m. It sliced into the 93rd through 99th floors. The building burned for an hour and 42 minutes, then collapsed.
The second hijacked jetliner, United Airlines Flight 175, struck the South Tower 17 minutes later, slamming into the 78th through 84th floors. It took even less time, 56 minutes, for the skyscraper to fall. The third plane, American Flight 77, whacked the western side of the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m.
And the last plane, United Flight 93, went down off target in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 10:03 a.m.
Flight 93, investigators later concluded, was likely headed for the Capitol or White House, but the passengers aboard, including Flint-native Todd Beamer, got word of the other flights through on-board phones and made a plan to confront the terrorists, forcing the plane to crash in an empty field.
The targets were buildings that represented financial, military and governmental might.
MacKinnon, who is now a Frankenmuth firefighter with two young daughters of his own, said he can’t remember why it took so long for him to learn the news of the day. But it was still years before mobile phones, social media and digital news were ubiquitous.
Later that day, he said, a teacher rolled in a TV and "we pretty much spent the rest of her class watching it."
MacKinnon described 9/11 as a major event in his life and one that changed the world.
The events, he said, inspired him — like it did a generation of other Americans coming of age, including Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin, who was in graduate school in New York and persuaded to join the CIA — to eventually become a firefighter.
They also, in 2011, motivated him to go to New York with another firefighter to pick up a 900-pound, 10-foot twisted steel beam from the World Trade Center to become a local memorial in front of the Frankenmuth fire station, a physical reminder of what happened that day.
Lives were 'ended by evil'
The day of the attacks, the Free Press published a 16-page special edition, with "EXTRA" stripped in red across the top, along with the big headline "TERROR IN AMERICA," and photos of planes crashing into the twin towers.
At 8:35 p.m., then-President George W. Bush went on TV to tell Americans that "our way of life, our very freedom" was "under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts," and “thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror.”
America, he said, was targeted "because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining,” and, he added, the priority was to get the injured help and "take every precaution to protect our citizens."
The huge headline in the Sept. 12, 2001, edition was "AMERICA’s DARKEST DAY." It was paired with a photo of what was left of the World Trade Center, and a smaller headline declaring that: "Bush promises to hunt down masterminds of terror."
Americans were grief-stricken, angry and afraid all at the same time.
They wanted justice, retribution — and to feel safe.
They also sought to express their patriotism.
In the days and weeks after 9/11, people rushed out to buy American flags, waiting in line, wrapping around American Flag and Banner in Clawson, for example, even in the rain. And they bought up anything red, white and blue, including underwear.
Whether the terrorists who planned 9/11 intended that date to have meaning or not, it has, in the quarter-century since, taken on much. It is a number that, for some, represents a "wake-up call" and to others is the universal emergency telephone number.
New foreign, domestic policies
The terror attacks, Oakland University Professor Peter Trumbore said, also changed U.S. foreign and domestic policy, and ignited a nearly 20-year war, what is now known as the Global War on Terror.
"What 9/11 did was end a period of foreign policy drift after the end of the Cold War," the professor said, adding that it gave the United States renewed purpose. Instead of focusing on the Soviet Union, "the war on terror became the primary focus of foreign and defense policy."
In terms of domestic policy, Trumbore said, 9/11 gave many Americans reason to feel vulnerable and to trade liberty for a sense of safety, agreeing to policies and legislation that curbed civil liberties, allowed the government to expand digital surveillance and data collection.
And that’s something younger Americans, who know the tragic events of 9/11 only from history class, might not realize, because they have no memory of airports with no security lines, no federal Transportation Security Administration and no Department of Homeland Security.
Still, Trumbore, 62, and MacKinnon, 39, hold different views on 9/11 commemorations.
After the 20th 9/11 anniversary in 2021, the professor wrote an essay about his feelings toward them. He noted that "ritualized remembrances ring hollow" to him and can be used to stoke fear that erodes "our core values" and unleash suspicion, hate and violence.
The firefighter, however, said that he believes that 9/11 memorials can strengthen common bonds and are reminders to Americans of how they are alike, not just different. His daughters, age 5 and 7, are still too young to understand what happened. When they are older, he’ll try to explain it to them.
"I wasn’t alive when Pearl Harbor happened, right?" he said of the Dec. 7, 1941, date President Franklin Roosevelt said would live in infamy. "But you learn about it in school, and you understand how pivotal it was in world events and how that changed the trajectory of history."
Over time, MacKinnon said, people's connections with the past tend to diminish. But, he said, annual memorials and pieces from the Twin Towers placed in conspicuous places can be helpful to keep reinforcing memories and shared history.
What the two men do agree on is that there is value in remembering the dead, both those who went to work on 9/11 oblivious that it might be their last and those who rushed into the collapsing towers to rescue others, knowing full well that it likely would.
Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or fwitsil@freepress.com
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, a new generation has no memory of it
