On September Eleventh each year the weather has a strange ability to place me in a surreal world. If it’s rainy or cold when I pause to reflect on the past, I feel distant from the past. If, however, it is warm and the sun is bright without a cloud in the sky, I am transported. This year, as I sit in the morning on the Arts Quad near the campus memorial, it feels like the day itself, eleven years ago.
I close my eyes and I’m nine years old again. I live in officers’ housing on a military base in Washington, D.C. School hasn’t started yet, and I relish the last week of summer. My mom reads a story to my sister, two brothers, and me. My youngest brother, Ian, is six months old. I’m the oldest, and therefore feel very responsible for everyone.
The phone starts ringing, interrupting the story. I follow my mom to where she answers it in the kitchen. My mom and dad have a short conversation and after hanging up, my mom turns on the television in her room. I follow and sit on her floor and watch. My siblings are downstairs, still waiting to finish the story. I barely comprehend the news we’re watching. Planes hitting large buildings in New York City. Fire. People jumping out of windows. I naively believe that they will be caught by the firemen. My mom explains that they won’t—and I am horrified. For the first time in my short nine years on Earth, I question: how secure is the world?
Then the next image flashes on the television screen. There is no sound, no commentary. Only a live image of a building on fire. I recognize the building, even without commentary. I recognize it because I’ve been there before: for office family parties, to visit my dad. I’ve been in its conference rooms, sitting at the large table coloring, while I’ve waited for important-looking adults to finish working in offices behind complicated security systems. The building on fire, engulfed in smoke, is “Daddy’s Pentagon”, the place he has gone to work every morning for the past three years. My mom opens the blinds of her bedroom window. From our military base in DC, she and I watch as smoke rises into the sky.
In a rush, my mom leaves us in the house and goes outside. I watch from the front door and she and the other military wives silently gather. I push past the door and join them —they are terrified and suspect that everyone, their husbands and co¬workers, are dead. We are warned by a news report that our air force base in DC is one of the next targets. Everyone is praying for a loved one. I silently pray for my dad.
The cell phone network is down. Even if people want to call to say they are safe, it is impossible. Finally, my dad calls. His office had been hit, and if he had been in it, he would have had no chance of survival. But construction had started the day before to renovate the office and he and everyone else in it had been relocated. This part of the Pentagon did not receive direct impact, though it was very, very close to it. For the first time in hours, my family is able to breathe. Other neighbors are not as lucky.
During the next months, armed men with large guns strapped to their backs patrol the base. Everywhere you go, you are asked to show identification. Sand bags are placed on the playgrounds for defense in case of an attack, but no one goes on the playgrounds anymore. Neighborhoods once alive with children outside are eerily quiet. The atmosphere is somber—we mourn for the loss of life our base has sustained.
When people ask me why I’m a government major, I give a number of reasons. Strong national defense policy, a set of courageous moral values, and liberty are principles I greatly value. Perhaps it is because I have witnessed firsthand how these values are essential to survival for our nation’s troops and civilians. What I observed that day, eleven years ago, is why I am a conservative, and why we must never forget the lessons learned on 9/11.
Laurel Conrad is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at lrc54@cornell.edu.