How do you feel about September 11?

By TAD BARTIMUS

Since September 11, we've been bracing for the first official commemoration of America's worst terrorist attack. We know we must honor the dead, comfort the living and pay tribute to the brave. But how do we observe such a collective experience of unprecedented magnitude without turning its anniversary into an ideological, political and media three-ring circus?

For 11 months, New Yorkers have taken their own pulse along with the rest of us trying to decide how to spend this September 11: Should we go about our business as usual or suspend all routine and, as we did last year, sit glued to the television set?

Even if the rest of us haven't decided how to honor the day, the City of New York has. Its commemoration on the land where the World Trade Center's twin towers collapsed will feature five male politicians reading excerpts from historic documents written and delivered during wartime.

There will be no official words from mothers and fathers who lost sons and daughters, from spouses who lost wives and husbands, from children who lost parents. None of the more than 50 widows who gave birth after their husbands were killed will talk about bringing new life into a dangerous, but still beautiful, world.

Survivors, relatives and friends will share in the reading of all names of those who perished in the World Trade Center attack, but will be supporting players to New York Gov. George Pataki, New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, current New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and President George W. Bush.

Amid suspicions that the United States might launch a pre-emptive attack on Iraq, the official observance will begin with bagpipers and drummers, a historic call to arms. A trumpeter will play Taps, the traditional closure at military funerals.

Profound as they are, the three oratories chosen to be read by Pataki, McGreevey and Bush were not written for this occasion.

The Gettysburg Address was delivered by Abraham Lincoln in the midst of a civil war. Some of Lincoln's thoughts are appropriate, such as " in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate -- we cannot consecrate -- we cannot hallow -- this ground." Others, such as "we have come to dedicate a portion of (a great battlefield) for those who gave their lives that that nation might live," are not.

It is the same with Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" State of the Union speech, which he delivered to Congress on Jan. 6, 1941. Delivered as Hitler's jack-booted Nazis threatened all of Europe, America was less than a year away from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Although it still can be said, as Roosevelt did, that this nation places "its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women," the "armed defense of democratic existence" in an all-out world war is no longer being waged on four continents.

Excerpts from the Declaration of Independence will also be quoted. This most hallowed of American documents was written by our founding fathers at the start of the Revolutionary War to galvanize colonial rebels to throw off the yoke of foreign tyranny.

All the eulogies to be read at Ground Zero are borrowed words from other times. The secretaries, executives, waiters, fireman, police officers, dishwashers, CEOs and others who died when hijacked airplanes crashed into the twin towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania were not soldiers in battle. They were civilians going about their daily lives when they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Their unarmed innocence demands its own eloquence.

Because each of us who lived through that most recent day of infamy carries his or her own impressions, no one's thoughts are any less valuable than anyone else's. So I invite you -- urge you -- to share with me and other readers, in 30 words or less, your insight into the events and aftermath of September 11, 2001. If you were invited to deliver brief remarks at the anniversary ceremony in New York, what would you say?

The most important lesson I've learned since I began writing Among Friends is that readers are smart, thoughtful and eloquent, so I will choose as many of your essays as possible for my September 11 column. To be considered, you must include your name, address, telephone number, and the name of the newspaper in which you read Among Friends.

I look forward to hearing from you.

© 2002 The Women Syndicate

Send your own great stories – 300 words or less – to friends@tadbartimus.com or write c/o The Women Syndicate, P.O. Box 728, Puunene, Hawaii 96784. Thanks for sharing.

© 2002 The Women Syndicate. The content on these pages is the property of The Women Syndicate and may not be used without express written permission. Contact friends@tadbartimus.com