A 10-Day Nation – 10 Years Later

Its hard to believe that Sept. 11, 2001, was 10 years ago next week. On one hand it feels like half a lifetime ago. But the memories are so vivid that it also strangely feels like yesterday.

I, like many Americans, will never forgot the moments of that day. Where we were. What we were doing. The harsh memories and the painful images. When I think of 9/11, I now can understand what my 78-year-old grandmother felt like when she was an 8-year-old girl witnessing Pearl Harbor, or how she felt as a 30-year-old single mother when John F. Kennedy was shot.

September 11 is a moment not only marked strongly on the history of the world, but it also was a moment that simply made you different as a person.

I had a day off that day and was going to get up and go running down at Veterans Park. I was 27 years old, working for the Journal Sentinel. I decided to sleep in that morning since I was off. I forgot to disarm my alarm clock, and the radio went off to wake me up.

I left it on, and half-asleep I could hear something about an explosion at the World Trade Center. I thought perhaps it was a bad accident that was being reported during a news update. Then I heard about the possibility of an airplane hitting the building. I decided to get up and turn on the television to see what idiot flew their small plane into this massive building. I looked at the clock, and I'll never forget the time. It was 8:02 a.m.

When I got downstairs and turned on the TV, within seconds I watched along with millions as the second plane, flying at 590 miles per hour, slammed into the south tower. Then it hit me. I called my mother, who was at work, and any friend I could get on the phone. Like everyone else, I probably spent the next 12 hours in front of that television.

As the day ended and the next few days came together, 9/11 had a way of bringing family, neighbors and coworkers together. We were all helping each other, happy to see we were OK and dealing with this agony as a national family. Even the symbolic image of Congress as one on the Capitol steps made you feel good.

The whole world was a smaller place over those few days.The United States had the world rallying to its support. We had a moment that was truly world-changing.

As we know, that feeling didn't last. The Iraq War plunged us all into a vicious web of deceit and debate. The housing boom and crash on Wall Street crushed middle America, and the divisive elections of 2008 and 2010 further deepened the gulf.

As we sit here 10 years later, we seem further apart than we were before that morning those towers fell. A poor economy has ignited a class war. Local government has pitted teachers and unions against the private sector, racially charged mobs have taken over the evening news, and as I write this piece a neo-Nazi group is preparing to demonstrate in West Allis.

Where do we go from here? How do we get back? Do we even want to go back?

The one thing I know about our little community of family here in Tosa is this community is the torch-bearer on how to get along and how to bring about change. We can make our community what we want it to be. We can be civil. We can stimulate our own economy.

We can even fix the problems that plague the larger metro area. We have people who live here because they want to be a part of a racially harmonious community. They want to be involved citizens. We take pride in our city. I urge you to get involved. To make your block, your neighborhood and your city what you want it to be. Make it someplace your kids can grow up and return to to raise their kids.

The larger city issues and the national political stage is going to be more divisive then you've ever seen. Use this anniversary as a time to reflect on the recent past and make your world, the world around you, what you hope for it to be. If we all act in our small community, we can keep it as one of the best places to live anywhere in the country.

My grandmother said something that she heard Dr. Martin Luther King say many years ago. She said it to me a couple days after 9/11. She said "Terry, Dr. King said this is a 10-day nation. No matter what happens, 10 days later, it's back to business as usual."

That still sticks with me even 10 years later because it couldn't be more true. But what if we turned that around? What if we remembered the unity and concern for each other we felt that day and in those days following, and lived that way every day. Or for at least 10 years.