Twenty-two years ago this month, I was beginning my sophomore year at LSU, and my first class on Tuesdays and Thursdays was philosophy at 9 a.m. Much like now, I was a creature of habit back then. I would regularly go eat breakfast in the student union before class.
September 11 began no differently from the other Tuesdays before. That morning, though while eating breakfast, I heard news reports on the TV about terrorists attacks on the World Trade Center. My back was turned to the TV, and I just thought it was coverage of attacks that happened previously.
When I got to my philosophy class, however, I learned differently as the whole class was talking about what had happened.
After class, I went back to the union and found a place to sit in front of one the TVs. The area was packed with other students staring at the screen and catching glimpses of everything that transpired in New York City, at the Pentagon, and in the Pennsylvania field.
That year, I was working in the Tiger Den Suites for LSU home football games. The Saturday after the terrorist attack was supposed to be LSU’s football game against Auburn, but it was cancelled like a majority of other sporting events around the country.
I remember LSU’s first home football game after the attacks. The Golden Band from Tigerland played “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” and that was the quietest I ever heard it inside Tiger Stadium. Later that year, Jim Hawthorne sang patriotic songs during halftime for one game. But the best was when Lee Greenwood sang “God Bless the USA,” with LSU’s band playing behind him during halftime.
I also still remember being glued to my TV inside my apartment watching all the post attack coverage, including President George W. Bush’s speech before Congress on September 20. There was also coverage of members of Congress from both parties standing side-by-side on the steps of the nation’s Capitol in a show of unity.
Readers under a certain age probably won’t know what I am about to talk about, but I still remember surfing through the TV channels and watching CMT and GAC every time a patriotic music video was playing. Toby Keith, I think, had the most, but there were countless others from artists like Alan Jackson, Aaron Tippin, and Brooks and Dunn. Really and truly, these videos solidified me as a Country music fan because some times I would watch CMT and GAC and wait for one of the patriotic music videos to play.
My favorite, though, was the video for “Have You Forgotten” by Darryl Worley. Part of the song goes like this:
Have you forgotten how it felt that day
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away
Have you forgotten when those towers fell
We had neighbors still inside
Going through a living hell
And you say we shouldn’t worry ‘bout Bin Laden
Have you forgotten
The answer to that question seems to be clear. We have forgotten. We have now become more divided than we ever were before September 11, 2001, because of countless -isms. As a result, this is not the country it was back when I was in college.
This country, for it to remain, as Ronald Reagan called it, that “shining city upon a hill” needs her people to come back together and work toward the common good. Hopefully, though, it won’t take another terrorist attack to do so.
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