9/11 and 9/17, Inexorably Linked: Remember
The events of 9/11/2001 and 9/17/1862 remain inextricably linked in my mind, tied together not only by the horror of what happen on those days but by national resolve to “Never forget.” Even as we build skyscraper-sized memorials to the dead of 9/11 and set aside hundreds of acres of sacred ground, we struggle to remember those who fell a century and a half earlier.
And so, on this anniversary of the battle of Antietam, as has become my custom, I urge all of us to remember.
Really, you don’t think the majority of the country has forgotten 9/11?
Some of my students, just the other day, told me that they have younger siblings who know 9/11 as “something we read about in our history books” and not as an “actual” event. It was just another history fact to memorize, not something people lived through and died as a result of.
Let us not forget those civilians who lost their lives at the Allegheny Arsenal.