How 9/11 changed us

A metro Atlanta resident, Junod has written for Esquire magazine since 1997. In 2003, he wrote “The Falling Man,” a widely acclaimed article about his search for the identity of a man photographed jumping from the World Trade Center.

It was a nice day. Everybody remembers that. Everybody remembers how blue the sky was, how mild the temperature, how low the humidity, how endless the visibility.

I do, certainly; I was living in New York at the time, though not in the city, drinking coffee outside while my wife listened to the radio in the kitchen. And even before she emerged into the sun with the curious news — “I don’t know if this is some kind of War of the Worlds-style hoax, but they’re saying that a plane just hit ...” — I remarked to myself the beauty of the blue sky, its burning beneficence.

I’d grown up there, and shared the local habit of keeping score on everything, including the weather — of announcing, practically every time the sun came out, that this day was one of the “ten best days” of the year, and then arguing about it.

But it was beyond argument: Sept. 11, 2001, was one of 10 best days of that year, or any year. And then it became the worst.

And so the question of whether that day changed us or not is always answered in my mind by the weather.

The weather changes, the weather stays the same. There have been blue-sky days since, and there will be blue-sky days in the future. But I have never seen a sky that blue without foreboding, without half-expecting something terrible to emerge from it, without recalling that the morning’s seeming perch on infinity is what greased the skids of disaster.

It’s in my nervous system now, a permanent twitch, and so while the horrors of that day turned out be prelude to the horrors to come, the weather is what turned out to be climactic. There simply has never been a day as cloudless — as untroubled — since.

I am not proud of the way my country responded to 9/11. We have questioned our best impulses, and left our worst unexamined; we have met the moral cowardice of the left with the moral arrogance of the right, and our souls retreated while we marched forth to a state of war. But trauma does things to countries, as it does things to people — things as hidden in the sunshine as they are in the dark of night.

I do not think that we have ever quite owned up to the trauma we experienced on 9/11, or even put our finger on what scares us so.

All I know is that when I see a sky so blue it’s edged with purple I find myself wondering what’s going to happen next, and that when a day has the power to change the weather, it has the power to change everything else.

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The day we joined together as one

By Gov. Roy Barnes

Barnes was governor of Georgia from 1999 to 2003.

Early on the morning of Sept. 11, I went to the airport to fly back to Atlanta from the Southern Governor’s Conference in Louisville. About halfway home, the pilot told me something bad had occurred, and Gen. David Poythress, commander of the National Guard, Col. Hightower, director of public safety and Gary McConnell, director of the Georgia Emergency Management Agency, were all waiting for me to land at Charlie Brown Airport.

When I landed, they told me an attack on the World Trade Center had occurred, and it looked like it was an enemy attack. I ordered the call-up of the National Guard, the evacuation of the Atlanta airport, the securing of CNN and the protection of the CDC, all potential targets of an attack. When I got to the Capitol, the leaders of the General Assembly wanted to adjourn, and I said the state of Georgia does not shut down under any circumstances.

During the day everything that could happen, did. A suspicious package was found in front of the Atlanta City Hall. It turned out to be a duffel bag full of clothes. Some small rural banks were running out of money because people were withdrawing cash. Workers were leaving tall buildings in Atlanta for fear a plane might come crashing into one of them.

I saw true panic for the first time in my life, and it was an ugly sight. After the attacks of Sept. 11, I witnessed something else I had never seen. The people of the nation forgot their differences and became simply Americans. They joined together in one spirit, as they had during every other national crisis in our history, and they became one. I became convinced, as I am today, the American people can rise to any challenge when asked.

The lessons we learned from Sept. 11 are many. We can deal with threats to our security. We still have the power to unite as one people. Although there might have been some initial overstepping of our civil rights, as a free people we are diligent to make sure such does not become a permanent part of our national identity. Yes, what we learned from Sept. 11 is that we are a great people and when confronted with great challenges, there is nothing beyond our grasp.

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We were robbed, awakened

By John Schuerholz

Former general manager and now president of the Atlanta Braves watched his team play the New York Mets in the first game at Shea Stadium after the 9/11 attack.

On the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack on our nation, those horrific images of destruction, chaos and fear are as vivid as the day it occurred.

What was happening? Could this be real? Who is doing this? We are vulnerable! The United States of America is vulnerable. Unbelievable! I recall a conversation with a co-worker in which I said “our country will never be the same.” And it isn’t.

Days passed, and then weeks, and we responded quickly as a nation with renewed unity. We would, for an all-too-brief period of time, live and breathe the pride and strength of being Americans joined together to find and fight our new enemy.

Not long after, I found myself traveling on a commercial flight. We had all been advised of the new and tightened security procedures now in place during pre-flight check-in and clearance. When I completed that process, it was then I knew and I exclaimed to my traveling companions, “They got us.”

I explained further that those terrorists and their leaders had effectively robbed us of our most precious American gift — freedom.

We would no longer enjoy air travel as we once did — unconcerned with, and inconvenienced by, new and strict security measures on all air travel.

We lost our faith and trust in other human beings and a measure of our safe and comfortable ability to move freely throughout our country and the rest of the world.

Indeed, they got us — but they also awakened us.

They awakened our true American spirit, our sense of vulnerability, our need for one another and our love of our great country.

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Defining moments of sacred memories

By Rabbi Joshua Heller

Heller is in his eighth year as senior rabbi of Congregation B’nai Torah in Sandy Springs.

On Sept. 9, 2001, I assumed my first congregational position as a rabbi, at “The Downtown Synagogue,” a new congregation meeting just footsteps from the World Trade Center site. Our congregation lost no members in the attacks, but nearly all of our families were forced from their homes. Some lost friends, and many suffered the trauma of seeing the horrifying events of that day, not on television but out of their bedroom windows. They showed remarkable resilience — volunteering to help as best they could, looking after those who had difficulty evacuating, and re-establishing contact when phones and email didn’t work.

The Jewish High Holidays were to start less than a week later, on Sept. 18, and this congregation of Manhattan refugees had nothing: no place to meet, no prayer books, no prayer shawls, no Torah scroll and no ark to put it in. And yet, these people of faith refused to give up. They gathered in a gym at 14th Street, every single thing needed to run a High Holiday service borrowed from other congregations. For three years, the “little congregation that could” overcame astonishing odds, as people who had been distant from faith found new meaning in community, in study and in mutual support.

And yet, a few years later it was all gone. Worn down by the logistics of sustaining an ongoing organization and the increasingly complex politics of a Lower Manhattan that would take years to rebuild, the group fell to bitter disagreement and broke into several splinters, all now inactive. That is the fate of many start-up congregations, to be sure, but I believe that 9/11’s lingering effects, the anxiety and trauma that we each carried with us, lie beneath the surface.

Our American experience is perhaps not so different. Our country responded to 9/11 with a remarkable burst of energy and activity. We shared so much with each other, and we had the goodwill of the world as we sought to capture and punish those responsible.

And yet, somehow, the tide turned. We cleaned up with remarkable efficiency, but have struggled to actually rebuild. On the deepest level, I believe that we have lost some of our national ability to trust and cooperate, so that our nation’s civil discourse is more bitter and fractious than it has been in living memory.

And yet, I believe that there is cause for hope.

America is a country where the choices of individuals to build, grow and do can still matter. I had planned to spend my career in the ivory tower, and it is as a result of my experience working with survivors of 9/11 that I chose congregational and pastoral life.

I know that there are many who felt called to even more meaningful service as a result of that day. America is a country that constantly renews itself. All wars eventually end, and moments of national shock like the Alamo, the Maine and Pearl Harbor eventually find their place in the history books, as moments, not of fear and outrage, but of sacred memory and inspiration.

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Thanks to those who sacrifice

By Sen. Johnny Isakson

Johnny Isakson of Cobb County represents Georgia in the U.S. Senate.

On the anniversary of the horrific attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, all of us as Georgians and Americans first pause to pray for the victims and the survivors of that terrible day, whether it was in New York City, the Pentagon or Shanksville, Pa. It was a day that opened with great hope of a warm autumn and soon became the most tragic day in American history.

I ask Georgians to pray that our country continues to have the inner strength both to move forward and to protect our citizens in the years to come. We must never forget that our country was forever changed when terrorism made its first major attack against the United States on our own soil.

These attacks marked the beginning of the ultimate war between good and evil. Ten years later, Osama Bin Laden is gone, most of al-Qaida is dismantled and Afghanistan is no longer a safe haven for the training of terrorists. Yet, the threat of terrorism will always be with us, and we will always have to be prepared.

We must remember and express our gratitude for all of the men and women who keep us safe. Some have given the ultimate sacrifice of their lives, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to root out terrorists and to destroy the network that brought about the terrible attacks of 9/11.

To all those soldiers, and to all the men and women who fought and sacrificed in the War on Terror, we thank you.

To the leaders who have guided us through these trying times, we thank you.

To all of those whose hard work every day make it possible for us live in a country that is safer and freer, we thank you.

And may God bless the United States of America.

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The day the nation matured

By Curtis James Miller

Miller, a former Marine firefighter, has been sculpting steel retrieved from the ruins of the twin towers at the World Trade Center. He’s fashioned a soaring monument — a phoenix wing, rising from the ashes. It will be unveiled today at the DeKalb Public Safety headquarters.

We’ve had to adapt. This was not like anything most Americans are used to. It was violent — scary things, happening in our backyard.

Has it changed the way we think? Of course it has. How can it not? It was a kick in the pants, and that wakes you up.

I was traveling in Europe a couple of years ago. People everywhere asked me about [9/11]. We have a lot of street cred in Europe from World War II, but this ... helped mature us to the rest of the world. We were once considered a baby nation.

Tragedy gives us an identity with the older countries of the world. They’re defined by centuries of disasters. Nations that don’t survive those tragedies aren’t around anymore.

The fact is, we weathered it. We’re still at war. There are economic things we need to fix. We’ve got to keep improving. We’ve got to keep going.

And we do.

As told to AJC staff writer Mark Davis.

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Compiled and edited by Tim Ellerbee. Some essays were edited slightly for style and length.