This week I finally had a chance to visit the 9/11 Memorial in New York City. The last time I had seen the site was in 1998. Back then, of course, the Twin Towers were still standing. At the time, I had made it a point to go to the observation deck at the top of the World Trade Center. I remember the amazing views of New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty, and the surrounding area that I enjoyed from that man-made summit.
We all thought those towers were a permanent fixture of the Manhattan skyline. How sad we were when the attacks on 9/11 tragically disproved that notion.
I’m not completely sure why it took me this long to come back to the World Trade Center site. Certainly, those of us in the military at the time of the 9/11 attacks were busy crafting or supporting the nation’s response to this act of terrorism.
It took a lot of time and effort on the part of thousands of men and women in uniform to bring the perpetrators of that heinous act of war to justice. The psychological culmination of that effort was the killing of Usama bin Laden this past spring. Maybe subconsciously I felt I could go back now that that specific job had been taken care of. Whether that’s the case or not, I finally did make it back to Ground Zero and could bear witness to the transformation that site is undergoing.
For those of you who haven’t been there yet, the new memorial to the victims of 9/11 is breathtaking. It is starkly simple. Rushing waters feed two pools which mark the spots where the Twin Towers stood. The names of the victims are etched on black stone tablets that surround these two pools of water. What is striking about the names is their sheer variety. Even a cursory glance reveals that the victims came from the four corners of the Earth; reflective of the diversity that is New York and, by extension, America.
The victims were bond traders and firefighters; Secret Service agents, FBI agents, and policemen. I found the names of the heroes of Flight 93, Flight 77, Flight 11, and Flight 175 alongside the names of those unheralded thousands who simply showed up to do their jobs at the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. In the section dedicated to victims at the Pentagon, I recognized some names from other memorials I had seen before.
As somber as this 9/11 Memorial is, there is also a palpable resiliency that can be felt in this most hallowed of grounds. The design of the memorial itself celebrates the lives of the people it names. It celebrates their sacrifices. It celebrates their families.
Ultimately, though, that resiliency is made real by the rising of the new World Trade Center towers that will soon grace the Manhattan skyline. Maybe the first towers we built did not last as long as we had hoped, but the new ones will serve as a tangible reminder of America’s resolve. There is no better way to memorialize the 9/11 victims than that.
