9/11 – A Changed World, a Changed Town

(Above: 9/11 aftermath at the Pentagon: Flight 77 wreckage -- US Navy photograph)
This twenty-year anniversary must be one of the strangest. So much has changed, and so little.

How the recent events in far-off Afghanistan will impact us and our veterans remains to be seen. But for so many individuals, September 11, 2021 is simply a jarring reminder of an event whose consequences never seem to end, whether it’s the ever-present challenges of traveling, the losses sustained by first responders and the military, or the thousands of victims and their families and friends.

Today, the Franklin Fire Department will be holding a short ceremony, as they have done every year since 2001, to honor the lost and bring strength to the living. It will be held at 10 am and anyone can attend.

Other local events this weekend also connect us to our shared experience.

Sunday, the Franklin Rod & Gun Club’s breakfast, from 7:30 am to 11:30 will be a fundraiser. For every breakfast sold $3 will be given to Mission22, an organization dedicated to healing America’s veterans when they need it most.

Then, on Sunday at 1 pm, Paul Faenza, a Franklin native, will share his recollections of service with the New York Police Department during the crisis, at the Franklin Historical Museum.

And, many of us will be simply replaying recollections and trying to make sense of it all.

Jane Callaway-Tripp recalls being “at work and on the phone with a client who was there when the phone went dead. I didn't know what happened until my boss came in and told me. We left work early and I went to get my daughter. I was pregnant with my son. I felt scared, empty, and sadness filled my heart. All those people for what? Why?”

Monique Doyle recalls that day, when she was a teacher in Medway. “School had just started. My eighth graders were attending a back-to-back school assembly when another teacher told me that a plane had crashed into one of the towers. When my class returned and as I sat on my stool in front of them, I realized that nothing in my teacher training or experience had prepared me for a moment like this. I reassured those frightened and questioning faces that they were safe in school and that our military and government would be ready to protect our country. I told them that we would only talk facts and not speculate. After about ten minutes, I said that it was time to return to the day's English lesson. I heard a murmur of relief. I would not allow any classes to watch the developing news as I did not know if any students might have been personally impacted by the tragedies, but I fled to the library every chance I got to view the ever-unfolding news.”

* * * *

For the author, the recollections are of wondering how to explain the inexplicable to a three-year-old viewing an endlessly repeated image on the  television of a big plane “disappearing” into a building – and of calling the school to find out what if anything older children were being told.

And that night, a spontaneous, twilight gathering on the Town Common and a town counselor offering words of consolation and strength at the gazebo.

For that evening, neither he nor anyone else had a single political impulse. That would come later. Instead, in Franklin and in every community of the country, we were simply Americans.

And in their hearts, so were many others around the world, who felt our pain and shared our sadness.