I just watched the opening of the Jets/Cowboys game and the New York Fire Department’s band played amazing grace on the bagpipes. I’m doing all I can to not tell walter to take one day off or to insult brian for actually being what he hates, uncultured. Your mancards are dangerously close to being revoked today.
I take pause each year to remember this day, and today it is probably the most important because it’s been long enough but not too long. This isn’t about politics, wars, economics, racism or history. It’s about appreciating the human spirit and the hero gene that is dormant in most people (but not all). I can’t explain heroism to those who lack that element in their character. The people on flight 93 were not soldiers, firemen or cops, they didn’t practice risking their lives and they didn’t start their day knowing that this was the day they would have to make that decision. Earlier today, I went into my den and read the various awards and medals I received as a young man, including the one for saving another person’s life while risking my own. My hero days are behind me, yet every time I get on a plane I run through the flight 93 scenario and ask myself if I still have what it takes to give my life for strangers today. I like to think it’s still in me, but I make no mistake in thinking there aren’t men and women out there far more brave than I, and I choose today as the day to quietly thank them, mourn them and appreciate them.
In a few months I will be making the trek to see the memorial and taking my kids with me, my son’s last trip with me before college. Before he strikes out on his own, he gets last lesson on what it means to be a man and what it means to me to be an American.
