The 9/11 Generation

I don't remember JFK's assassination.

I have a dim memory of watching a blurry TV when we took our first step on the moon.

But on 9/11 I can tell you precisely where I was, what I was doing, and what I thought and felt.

So can you.

You and I are members of the 9/11 Generation. Your children and children's children will think of you that way.

It's an uncomfortable label, full of undeniable truths that we've spent the last 7 years trying to escape.

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Each of us has a personal story, memories and feelings that we've pushed into a corner. The drumbeat to 'move on' is natural, perhaps essential. But I'd gently suggest that you make sure that your story isn't lost or forgotten, as both historians and your grandchildren will hunger for it one day.

In that spirit, here's my story.

I'm a filmmaker. I listen, record, and organize memories into tapestries and timelines. I've done it all my life.

On September 11th, I was the CEO of a film and television production company. I arrived at work with the customary laundry list of to-do's. The truth was that as my company had grown large, I'd become less of a filmmaker and more of a manager of day to day operations. As a big company, with lots of details, the storytelling was often left to others.

Then, a plane flew into the World Trade Center.

I remember the jolt, the spike of fire in the blistering blue sky. Photographers and producers who worked with me back then were stopped in their tracks.

Then, the second plane. I think there are literally millions of people - maybe tens of millions - who shared in the collective shudder. We knew it was over. Whatever that era was, a page turned. The stunning impact of the attack didn't take a Historian or a Journalist or a Politician to explain - we all knew. Our lives would change, the world would change, and there was a painful awakening that shook us all.

Seven years later - I'm driving with my now 18 year old son Max on his way to start his freshman year at college. We're walking back through his life, reliving good times and challenges. Fun we've had, and the journey he's about to embark on. And I flash back to a walk we took on September 15th, a trip hand in hand to Union Square where New Yorkers had gathered to mourn and protest, sing, and cry. He was 11 years old. For a moment I feel a pang of guilt. Did I take him there to help him understand what had happened, or to shield myself from the realities I was trying to come to grips with. We'd brought a video camera, and we recorded the brass trumpet glinting in the fall sunlight. He held the camera. We walked to a firehouse, and he shook a fireman's hand, not entirely sure why. And then, standing in front of a park fence covered with 'missing' posters and peace signs - he told me and the camera that he felt that the proper response to the attacks was not to attack, but to turn the other cheek. To respond to anger with love. He was 11. He knew that.

I'm not sure it's anything that I ever taught him, or even at that moment even believed.

Back in the car, I ask him if he remembers that walk, and if he's angry that I exposed him rather than shielded him from the pain of 9/11. He's gentle, even generous. Thanking me for finding a soft sunny day to let him connect with the emotions of the time. I'm privately relieved, but whether he's scarred by our walk or not hardly matters. He's scarred by 9/11 - as are all kids his age. Too young to rationalize, to old to ignore, he is the first generation of children born with the knowledge that buildings fall down, that passenger planes are weapons, that America is both envied and reviled in the world.

At 10:27 a.m. on September 11th, 2001 - I decided to make a film. It was called "7 Days In September" and it was about that day and the week after the attacks. I knew intuitively that a week would be all we'd need. That the direction of things would be set. That the "post-9/11" world, as Dick Cheney so lovingly calls it, would be set in motion.

Max is in the film, his squeaky pre-pubescent voice a caricature of the broad-shouldered young man he has become. So is Rasheed Daniel's breathtaking video of a fierce argument in Union Square that dissolves in tears. And Postal Worker Rob Santana's heartbreaking story of the two 'twins' - both doomed to fall, Gary Pollard's haunting smoke filled office lobbies, Brian Gately's home video shot from a private plane flying around the World Trade Center, King Molapo's lilting South African street level video, and Alan Roth's personal dislike of the Towers and what he felt they stood for. These are New Yorkers. Their stories. Their images. Their memories.

Preserved, organized, woven together.

On 9/11 - I did what I felt I had to. I gathered. Cataloged. Remembered. Tiny moments, recollections, observations. Images of a tiny bird, lost and wandering on a sidewalk. The god-awful smell that permeated Manhattan for days and then weeks after the buildings came down. The flags, the tears, the fear, and the strange resilient solidarity that made stockbrokers, street peddlers and steelworkers into New Yorkers in a very new way.

Back on our trip, we drive through the College entrance, under the balloons welcoming the class of 2012. And I wonder when the right time will be for me to talk about 9/11 with my younger son, soon to turn 11. His brother experienced it as it happened, is 11 to soon, or too late? I know one day he'll watch the film, see his brother, wince reflexively as the planes hit the towers, and ask me questions about what happened and why. I'll tell him my story. It's mine to share.

You've got a story too.

You've witnessed a moment in History. Your story matters. Your children want to hear it. Their children will ask you to retell it.

I've chosen to keep, protect, and embrace the memories of 9/11 in all of its pain and complexity. How you manage your memories is, of course, up to you.

Your story is woven into the past and the future.

You are a member of the 9/11 Generation.

ABOUT THE WRITER: Steven Rosenbaum is the Director of "7 Days In September" and the Chief Curator of the CameraPlanet Archive, a collection of more than 400 hours of 9/11 archival video. Mr. Rosenbaum is the CEO of Magnify.net, a web video platform that allows video to be shared and curated around collections of shared interests.

Comments

[RobinSeattle]

This is just another instance of the media wallowing in 9/11. Move on! It was tragic as hell and used as a predicate to erode our civil rights and engage in a misbegotten oil grab in Iraq while we are blowing the battle where terrorists really are, Afghanistan. Thus is has been our failure to disengage from it emotionally that has cost us huge.

I remember watching JFK's funeral live on tv. I watched the Watts riots live on tv and then went with my grandparents to have a look at the damage, which was horrific. I remember the Apollo fire. I remember waking up and hearing of Bobby Kennedy's assassination as an 11 year old and of MLK being taken by James Earl Ray. These were all terrible, but they did not define me as a person.

And since when were planes NOT weapons? You ever hear of thing called World War I?

There is no attempt to "runaway from 9/11". In fact, the more we commemorate it, the more it emboldens Osama Bin Laden.

No, the lesson of 9/11 isn't the event itself, but of how foreign policy myopia can come back to bite you in the behind economically, constitutionally and militarily. We should have learned that in Vietnam. To our discredit, we did not.

[OnTheCusp]

For what it is worth, I always felt like I was part of the Tiananmen Square/Berlin Wall Generation. Both of those events were absolutely riveting!! I arrived in front of a television on 9/11 in time to see the second plane hit, but I felt it was our comeuppance, and did not revel in the flag-waving, "righteous anger" comraderie that followed. I'm of a certain age and I saw it coming, one way or another. After all, a wave can only get so top-heavy before it crashes in on itself. And yeah, I agree with CastroChavez08 that the "official" story is beyond full of holes.

[Peddler]

As a Vietman Veteran (medical corpsman), I visit the memorial every year to honor and respect those that have given all so Americans can continue to live free. I have seen enough of death and suffering to appreicate the value of life today. And everytime I visit the memorial I quote a saying: 'THE FLAVOR OF FREEDOM IS SELDOM KNOWN TO THE ONES IT PROTECTS." I think sometimes Americans often take our freedom for granted, and 9/11 brought reality to our nation. May they all rest in peace...because their wars are over. "Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending."

[gringoRFD]

Sorry to tell you but Vietnam had nothing to do with "giving so that all Americans can continue to live free". It was a stupid war just like the Iraq war and neither were justified. All those that suffered did so for a big set of lies.

[castrochavez08]

I allowed my lingering fear and anger to keep me well in line until 2005.
Then after so many Bush lies and the Ohio voting fiasco I finally decided to take a second look at 911.

The hype, the lies, the use of 911 for various agendas creates a mountain of information on the 911 crimes. It doesn't take very long to start to see some of the obvious lies, and things that do not add up. It was a very difficult process for me to come to some sort of realization that the official story is full of holes and lies. What that leaves me with is difficult to say, but at the very least I want a new investigation from honest people.

Maybe the 911 generation will do what the JFK generation could not do. Find the truth and see that justice is done. Will Huffingtonpost help out, or kill the conversation?

[jaundicedview]

I hope there comes a day (I doubt I'll live to see it) that September 11 ceases to be a date of somber reflection, and becomes, as Armistice Day, and Memorial Day have become, a day for taking off work and grilling hot dogs for the kids. I hope that our Republic survives, and is able to move past shock, move past anger, and heal.

The Horror of 9/11 has been somewhat attenuated by other horrors visited upon us by the current administration, the war in Iraq, a staggering national debt, an economy in shambles, and the very rights our country was founded on in ruin. It's hard to sort it all out, the dread and worry I feel. I take a kind of perverse comfort in the idea that sometime, years from now, 9/11 will mean tire sales, not tears.

[jferguson]

Steve,
This is off-topic, but I don't seem to be able to find any other way to email you.

In June, when you wrote that you thought McCaine would self-destruct before the convention, I agreed. I would never have thought of it but watching him through the summer made me more confident that it actually was happening as unthinkable as it seemed to most people I talked to.

After absorbing your idea, I did take one variation in sharing this with other people. By June 20th, I thought the Republicans would pick a replacement that was young, attractive, and had no visible history. This way, they could invent his history and there would be too little time for the press to react AND for the public to sort out which biography was the correct one.

Well we were wrong about the McCaine self immolation. But I have to say your vision has been produced in the nomination of Sarah the P.

Thanks again for your exceptional insight.

John Ferguson Green Cove Springs, FL

[RedDogBear]

Yes, I remember where I was on 9/11. I was stuck in the middle of Kansas as the result of a meeting that was supposed to take a few hours that Tuesday. I knew friends who lost friends and my company lost a few people, although it was a large organization and they weren't anyone that I knew. So I agree 9/11 was traumatic and should be remembered. However, I also wish that the US wasn't so focused exclusively on our own trauma. When a US citizen dies it is a catastrophe that can never be permitted to happen again. When, as happens a thousand times more frequently, someone outside our country dies as a result of policies we support, its an unfortunate accident of collateral damage. To quote Noam Chomsky:
"if you go south of the U.S. border, there's something called the other 9/11, ... September 11, 1973, when operations supported and backed by Henry Kissinger ... led to the bombing of the presidential palace in Chile, the overthrow of the parliamentary government and the killing, [of 3-6 thousand people] Three thousand people in Chile is the equivalent of, ... 60,000 in the United States."
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20031209.htm
I wish Americans had a memory of the harm we've caused as well as the harm we've suffered.

[TheEmptinessOfTruthiness]

Well said, I was looking for a way to say something similar, but there it is.

American media seems to try to shield Americans from the reality of the rest of the world, much as pravda did in the soviet union. It was said that 9.11 changed everything, but it sure didn't change that.

Last week i picked up a copy of Chomsky's "Failed States," and I'm almost afraid to start reading because it might confirm everything I already know to be true.

Root causes are not the disease, it's the cure.