In November we remember the veterans who have served our nation. This year we add the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to the honor roll. In a terrorist war, civilians become unwilling veterans of the conflict.
I was recently in New York City. I had not planned to visit the World Trade Center site, yet as I walked through the financial district towards the harbor, I could smell the ashes still smoldering at the spot where massive steel structures had once stood. I felt an emptiness as I looked across the vast void where thousands had been on that beautiful September morning.
Abraham Lincoln, writing to a mother who had lost sons in the Civil War, expressed “how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine, which should attempt to beguile you of the grief of a loss so overwhelming.” The tragedy of Sept. 11 leaves us lacking the eloquence to express our sorrow at “a loss so overwhelming.” At Gettysburg, Lincoln glanced across the graves and declared, “We cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground … those who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.”
Like the honored dead at Gettysburg, those killed in New York, Washington D.C., and Pennsylvania have etched a permanent place in the American memory. We may lack Lincoln’s eloquence, but our legacy to the loved and lost can be as lasting. Most of us never knew a victim of the Sept. 11 attacks, yet we will never forget them.
Everett
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