One year after the attacks, Dave Barry wrote a moving piece about the ground where flight 93 went down, and the courageous passengers who fought back against the terrorists. That author is the same Dave Barry who writes glib and humorous articles, but there is nothing trivial or funny in this piece.
“The passengers and crew on Flight 93, when they set out from Newark that morning, had no cause in common. They were people on a plane bound from Newark to San Francisco. Some were going home, some traveling on business, some on vacation. People on a plane. Which makes it all the more astonishing, what they did.”
I wrote in the Fun House on Sept 12, 2001:
The fun is absent from the fun house. Our thoughts are with the victims, and the families of the victims. And with the fragility of our own lives. The most frightening thing for everyone is that we can imagine ourselves in their places with only the slightest change in circumstances
As any history professor will tell you, people don’t much care for the minutiae of dates. Yesterday morning, most Americans could identify only three by heart.
- July 4, 1776
- December 7, 1941
- November 22, 1963
Now there will be four.