Sept. 11 is probably one of the most important days in American history because of how we as a nation came together.
I am writing my column for this week on this day. We remembered Sept. 11 on the 20th anniversary of a date that everyone can remember exactly what they were doing and where they were when the tragedy struck.
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I was a junior in college and was leaving my first class of the day when the news broke. Everyone went to Washington Hall to watch. Most of us sat there and watched the second plane slam into the tower. I mention those things to point out the fact that the entire country sat in panic. We didn’t know what would happen next, and that goes for the entire country – that one nation under God.
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Eventually, that day ended. But we didn’t. Every state, city, town and community stood up. Similar to the way you can’t find gas in a crisis these days, that’s how it was with seeing American flags or anything symbolizing patriotism in this country. Every pole had a flag, every shirt had a quote, every person had a greeting and was proud to be an American.
It took a tragedy striking for us to remove all party lines, all racial lines, all religious lines and live together and arm up to fight the true enemy: anyone who was trying to infringe on our peace. That we did. It seems like every greeting was a little stronger, every pledge a little louder and our national anthem sung with a little more oomph. We wanted to show our allegiance to the greatest country on earth.
We put down our hate and picked up hope.
We stopped condemning and began caring.
And most of all, we stopped looking at skin, and we looked within.
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We looked within to people’s hearts and understood we all were suffering at that time from the same thing, but we didn’t let it get us down. We pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps, got dressed for the day and put on a little face paint because we were going to battle. That battle was to hide the pain we had inside.
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There’s a movie called Groundhog Day where a person lives the same day over and over again. I never want to relive September 11, but that day and the days immediately following could be the most loving days in American history in my lifetime.
I apologize for the mushy column; you’ll just have to wait to hear how Commissioner McKnight jumped all over me about… Oops. I still keep getting ahead of myself.
Michael Meyers is a Columnist for The Augusta Press. Reach him at Michael.meyers@theaugustapress.com.
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