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September 11 Writings
09/11/2003
I confess that I haven't written anything of substance to commemorate September 11 this year, but I thought I'd put up the two more-formal pieces that I'd previously written. The first, my poem "Safe at Home: September 11, 2001," has been published in the Redwood Review, for which I also designed the apple logo to the left.
The second piece, an essay that I wrote about a year ago, addressed the idea of monuments, and I presented it with reference to the two alumni from my high school who died at the WTC that day. Rereading it, I feel badly that it isn't more explicitly a tribute to those two students, but I very much don't want to gratuitously overstate my relationship with them, because that would shift the emphasis from where it ought to be: on them.
Occasionally, people searching for their names have come to the Just Thinking page of that essay. Unfortunately, two columns ago, it slipped into the "promotion zone" for Just Thinking: Volume I. Well, I don't want in any way to exploit that day or those fellow River Dell alums, and I do want to continue to pay tribute, in my little way, to them, so I've reprinted the entire column here:
The Heart Is Always More
by Justin KatzTodd Ouida was born on my first birthday. I didn't know him then. I went to a different elementary school, so I didn't know him when he was forced to stop attending as a regular student to grapple with panic attacks for three years. I didn't even really know him when he returned and our two elementary schools fed us both into the River Dell Regional junior and senior high schools, where he became a 5'6" starting defensive back on the varsity football team. I knew of him, of course, because we shared a birthday and it was a small school.
Even our small school has had a number of brushes with history. As I recall, there was a plaque by the auditorium with the names and portraits of alumni who had died in Vietnam. I think there were three. The usual understanding of that war being what it has been throughout my entire life, such memorials have always seemed to ask, "See what they did to our community in order to fight their war?" I think it was one of my high school history teachers who related to me that every town lost some of its children.
Of course, memorials ought to be kept as tributes, and I don't mean to dishonor those young men when I suggest that the motivation for etching their names in metal and stone seems to be to make a statement about unnecessary loss rather than about accomplishment. They were heroes all, but the Vietnam War Memorial's emphasis on names rather than representations confirms that, in the words of the National Park Service's official Web site, "The purpose of this memorial is to separate the issue of the sacrifices of the veterans from the U.S. policy in the war."
Sacrifices. It seems that the quickness with which we commemorate the deaths of our citizens corresponds to the degree to which they were sacrifices — victims. The memorial for the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing has already been completed, each name etched in its own symbolic chair. The Vietnam Wall predated the Korean War Veterans Memorial, and both came before the World War II Memorial, which isn't slated to be dedicated until 2004, about sixty years after that war ended.
If this trend continues, the September 11 memorial might be finished long before time has granted its designers much historical perspective. Hopefully, it will nonetheless capture the mood of our times. Just as the Vietnam War era marked a tremendous shift in citizens' conception of the United States of America, the Vietnam Memorial's lack of iconography makes quite a different statement than the statues and proclamations of grandeur and confidence that had come before. I think the September 11 memorial ought to make a statement of internal, national reconciliation. Sacrifice and confidence. Compassion and strength. Personal loss and triumph.
I envision a field of stone pillars recalling the World Trade Center towers in a pentagon formation, each about ten feet in height and bearing the names and portraits of those who died. Interspersed, for the visitor to come across while walking among these pillars, would be statues of the various heroes of that day — firemen, policemen, emergency and medical workers, and regular citizens — all in poses corresponding to their activities, helping others. At the center of the field would be a statue of the three firemen raising the U.S. flag, above which a giant sculpture of an eagle would hang, wings spread, from some type of supporting structure.
As for my high school, I don't recall any plaques devoted to alumni casualties of other wars that occurred before I walked the halls, and as far as I know, alumnus Marie Rossi, who died in a post-ceasefire accident in the Gulf War, has gone without such a tribute. But I think Todd Ouida and Scott Rohner, class of '97, ought to have one. They both worked on the 105th floor of One World Trade Center, which American Airlines Flight 11 hit between the 95th and 103rd floors.
Todd and Scott's memorial ought not be placed with the Vietnam one by the "official" entrance, near the auditorium and administrative offices, but by the common entrance, near the gym and the cafeteria. The two ought to be a reminder that the world is not separate from our lives. Every student at River Dell High School will play a part in history. It is unavoidable. They don't have to go in search of it; they don't even have to be drafted into it. History will come to them, and the implication should be that they ought to live their daily lives heroically and triumphantly, no matter how profound or mundane the sacrifices that they are called upon to make.
(For more information about Todd Ouida, visit The Todd Joseph Ouida Memorial Children's Fund at www.mybuddytodd.org.)
Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:27 AM EST
1 Comment
ADDENDUM:
September 11 second anniversary–related posts:
September 11 Writings
The Personal Nature of the Fall
September 11, 2003, Must Reads
Justin Katz @ 09/12/2003 02:14 PM EST