Thomas J. West Music

Those of us who were alive and old enough to understand remember clearly the day of September 11, 2001 and the weeks immediately following the damage. Tomorrow is the tenth anniversary of the falling of those two gigantic buildings.

One of the defining moments of those early days was President George W. Bush's visit to the site of the destruction - what has come to be known as Ground Zero. An excellent website called American Rhetoric has a page dedicated to his famous "Bullhorn Speech" delivered to the rescue workers on September 14.

Here is the YouTube video of that short but poignant address:

President Bush was a figure of leadership at a time when Americans demand that their highest public servant provide them comfort and direction. Quite literally, there is little that he could say that would not have been "the right thing" for the occasion. Workers at the site and the rest of the country needed to hear words from him that mattered, and this impormptu moment became a defining one for America's response to the events of 9/11 and a defining moment for the Bush Presidency.

Emotions still run high among adults about the events of that day. Watching this video again and seeing the emotion etched on the faces of the President, the fire chief he stands with, and the other workers summons emotions of the same even now after ten years. For the rest of that fall season in 2001, the high school marching band I directed would take the field at the end of each Friday night football game and play the service songs of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. We had a crowd of several hundred people stay to watch us each week, and I received many words of thanks.

Today, I am proud to say that my father is currently the quality oversight manager for the World Trade Center construction site. It's the single largest construction site in the country, with hundreds of different contracting firms involved in the construction. My father has been honored to work on this job for several years and wanted to see it through to the opening of the Memorial Center before considering retirement. It has been interesting to hear his experiences with the job over the years - there is so much about it that the general public is not aware of, just as I am sure there are things about the events of that important day that are shrouded in secrecy.

There are many conspiracy theories about 9/11, and I must say that some of them are very plausible. Human beings, however, seek to make meaning out of events that happen to them. We create our own stories about how people, places, times, and events fit into our own construction of self-image. Many Americans have chosen to make 9/11 a part of their persona that picks a fight and stands up for rigid beliefs in the American way of life. Others have chosen to make 9/11 a point of reference for spreading hatred for the etherial "terrorist" threat and unfortunately expanding that reference to the entire religion of Islam.

I prefer to use 9/11 to remind myself that narrow-mindedness is something we all possess, both in the events of our everyday lives and in our choices to view events in ways that support our own stories. People are our enemies because we create them to be so out of fear. Fear of protecting what we perceive as "ours". The human experience is one of isolation, viewing the world around us from a solitary perspective, yet yearning to reach out and connect with others. 9/11 is a reminder to stay awake, look around, and make our everyday lives into something extraordinary.

To all Americans and anyone reading this affected by the events of September 11, 2001, I wish you health, safety, and a moment of quiet meditation tomorrow during the ten year rememberance.

This article (c) 2011 Thomas J. West. All content on ThomasJWestMusic dot com is licensed under a Creative Contributions Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Please contact the author before publishing on or off-line.

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