This column was written on the morning of Sept. 11, 2019.
Tears in my father’s eyes were as scarce as hen’s teeth. I saw him cry when his mother died and when he and my mother went to Hawaii with us. We visited the memorial site of the USS Arizona.
Daddy had been a Navy man before the war, and was engaged in shipbuilding for its duration. Even after those years, the horrors of Dec. 7, 1941 stayed in his memory.
It was the day that the world changed; yes, Europe had been battling Hitler since 1938, but now America was attacked and our period of isolation was bombed out of existence. Since then, most Americans view it as a “day of infamy” and there are still people who can say, “I remember exactly what I was doing when I heard the news.” There was such a surge of patriotic feeling, that thousands of men rushed to recruiting centers to join the fight.
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I was a college student in Atlanta, Ga. Nov. 22, 1963, and was sitting in a car waiting for a friend to finish a class. Someone knocked on my window to deliver the news that President Kennedy had been shot.
“Assassination,” that was such a foreign concept. It couldn’t happen here, but there it was, right before our eyes.
Our young, handsome president and his lovely, sophisticated wife dressed in pink, dissolving as we watched. Our country mourned. My generation lost our hearts and innocence as we watched and wept while John-John saluted his father’s casket.
During another day – as beautiful as fall can be here at the shore – I quickly packed the car for an early flight to the family farm in Louisiana. The drive was quiet and peaceful as I anticipated the fun of birthday tea (everybody wear a hat, please) for two of my aunts in Louisiana.
Just before I reached the Philadelphia airport, my phone rang.
“Mother, turn on the radio. Something is going on in New York. There’s smoke and a plane and nobody knows what’s happening.” I did, but still, nothing was clear and I kept listening as I drove into the departing flights’ lane. There I was met by a guard.
“Don’t get out of your car,” he said. “All the airports are closed.” Only as I returned home, did the enormity of what had happened become clear to me as I kept the radio on.
Rivers of tears trickled down my face as I felt the pain of everyone that was lost.
I awoke early in the morning 18 years later, to see the rivers of flags flowing down every street in Wildwood Crest. Students from Crest Memorial have made it their service project to “plant” them on every street corner in the borough. These kids were not even alive when the attack occurred, but maybe like me, they have seen a parent cry as they remember that brilliant, but sunny, awful day in September.
Three days of tears remind me of how much I love this country. I wish that the next generation would have no more to cry about, but it isn’t like man to make it so. As long as man lives, there will be evil, but as a nation we can band together to stand against it.
That is what will be required of those children who today are placing flags, but tomorrow will be in charge. God bless them and may their tears be few.
ED NOTE: Patricia is the wife of Publisher Art Hall, and a frequent contributor.
