I had recommended the book by Spencer a few years ago, here. It’s a riveting book.

[Publishers Weekly Starred Review.] “While most Americans watched the 9/11 attacks on television, the guardians of the nation’s air-control and air-defense systems had the unenviable task of trying to halt them.

“Working from interviews and tape archives, Spencer’s minute-by-minute chronicle recreates their heroics in nerve-racking detail. In her telling, air-traffic controllers panicked as a seemingly routine–and quickly spotted–initial hijacking metastasized into a coordinated terror attack of unknown size and direction, and tried to divine which of thousands of planes on their radars had become guided missiles.

“Airline pilots dodged through suddenly chaotic skies while assuring suspicious control towers that they weren’t hijackers themselves. Meanwhile, Air National Guard fighter pilots, hobbled by bad communications and misdirection, scrambled to defend against a murky threat. Spencer’s sources insist there was a fighter in position to stop United 93, had its passengers not brought it down, by having the pilot ram the airliner with his F-16.

“Prepare for a quick takeoff with Lynn Spencer’s Touching History… the personal interviews and Cockpit Voice Recorder transcripts of conversations between pilots and controllers are riveting…. The transcripts provide the book with a sense of immediacy, as though the reader was in the cockpit or control tower, while the interviews offer important background and context.

“Spencer, a flight instructor, expertly elucidates the complexities and pitfalls of American aviation as it faced a staggering challenge.”

http://preview.tinyurl.com/m4q6y96

Me, I saw it from my own roof, 20 blocks away. And the shock was still great enough to make me collapse when the second skyscraper imploded. Knees simply gave way.

Now, I work near “ground zero” and on the PATH ride home today I saw two airline employees who clearly (by their remembrance ribbons pinned on their shirts) had just come from the memorial grounds and, perhaps, the anniversary service.

But, here’s the thing that got me – they both looked VERY young. Too young to be much older than their early or mid 20s, which means they were teens when it happened.

The same is true of many of the “tourists” that I see on a daily basis walking near ground zero – all so young to have much of a memory of the events that day.

I have many memories of that day and the weeks after – most of which I would like to forget. But, there is one which I would like to share:

This was a couple of weeks after 9/11. Ground zero was still smoldering. There were cops from all over the US helping to police the city as most of New York’s finest were busy on high alert

I was on a downtown subway that stopped in the Village at Christopher street; for those outside New York that is the very heart of the gay village. Two guys were asking other passengers for directions – to make a long story short these were two guys who looked like and talked like a couple of “good ol’ boys” from Georgia (and, yes, they were, in fact, from Georgia) and they were cops who were helping to police the Village. They decided, on their night off, to go visit some of the bars in the neighborhood that they were helping to police during the day. And, there is no way they didn’t know that there are almost no straight bars in that neighborhood.

Several other passengers thank them for their coming to New York and helping out. Again, for those outside New York that is something that would ordinarily never happen.

I am stereotyping, and perhaps, projecting a little here; but, the thought of two southern cops who are a couple of good ol’ boys visiting gay bars in New York sounds more like a TV sitcom plot than real life. That New Yorkers would welcome them instead of ridiculing them for their accents is also out of the norm.

We cannot go back to pre-9/11; but, I do wish we could, as a nation, go back to the unifying days of post-9/11.

I am still picked on by my two slightly-younger brothers about what happened a day or two later: we were out playing in the field when a formation of loud fighter jets flew over, close together and low. This happened sometimes, but this time I thought it was the bombers at last. I pushed my brothers down in a ditch and lay on top of them. They were too little to know what had been going on, were outraged by what they thought was irrational aggression, and came up swinging. I was unable to persuade them that I was saving their lives, not attacking them — especially since no bombs fell, then or ever. They still aren’t convinced; I hear about it from time to time, and not with gratitude.

I cannot say that 9/11 changed my political perspective that much. While I had been a C.O. [I-O] during the Vietnam War, the genocide in Cambodia had put paid to my pacifist tendencies. I decided that as long as evil thugs roam this earth, none of us have clean hands.

Similarly, my time in Latin America had shown me that the “progressive” catechisms on Latin America did not accurately describe the on the ground realities I observed.

Well before 9/11, I had become a Post Liberal.