9/11/01--Where were you when you heard the news?

In hindsight, I realize that. At the time, though, it seemed like a fear-based reaction. Like more terrorists were going to strike Podunk. And, as a newspaperman, it kind of felt the same as it does on holidays -- we're working, so why does the rest of the world have to grind to a halt?
Did I mention I was young and stupid at the time?

 

Didn't read about it in the newspaper, did you?

Sorry I don't have time right now to find the AP version. If there is one.

http://www.soldiersperspective.us/2007/09/10/vietnam-memorial-wall-defaced-september-7-9/


Cliff was a West Point grad and dear friend, mia. Pick the name of your choice; he's mine.

 

I have posted this before, and I'm sure I'll post it again:

Growing up in NY, I was able to go to the roof of my building and stare at the Manhattan skyline. On a clear day, I could see the Towers standing tall and proud.

Sunday, September 9, 2001, was a beautiful Indian Summer day. Absolutely picturesque.

Before going into work on the first NFL Sunday of the season, I stared at the Towers. Gleaming monuments to man's will and ingenuity, and I had never been to the top.

I vowed that I was going to go to the top of the Towers that week.

Two days later, they came crashing down.

A week later, I was down at WTC, helping out newsside with a couple stories. Lower Manhattan looked like what I imagined downtown Beirut to be or what Jerusalem after a bomb went off. Rubble as far as the eye can see. Dirt. Glass. Bewildered people shaken, flinching as airplanes flew overhead, wanting to get back to a pre-9/11/01 life but knowing that it was never going to happen.

 

You know what was real weird?

That next Sunday. No college football the day before. No NFL. No baseball. No NASCAR. The lone sporting event that weekend was the CART race in Germany, where Alex Zanardi lost his legs.

The silence ... it was deafening.

 

Sorry.
A post from the Freepers blaming "the antiwar crowd"?
Not a single google entry I can find from a legitimate news source, or a direct quote from the Park Service?
Forgive me if my standard of proof is a tad higher.

 

There's a reason it wasn't in any paper...

I got this in an email….

Patriots and Comrades All:

After several attempts, I was able to contact SGT Booker
of the National Park Service (NPS), to check on the facts
about the defacement of the Vietnam Wall last weekend. He
explained it was a cleaning accident by a Park Ranger and
NOT a defacement as was originally reported by the Vietnam
Veterans of American (VVA). The NPS is regarding this as
an accident instead of an act of vandalism or terrorism.

Our National Commander Patriot Henry Cook III has the
direct phone numbers for SGT Booker of the NPS, and can
verify these facts with him directly. A copy of this
correction is also being sent the VVA for their follow up
and verification. My apology for the error, as sometimes
it is not always possible to reach the NPS immediately.

Any future report of attempted or actual vandalism will
be verified with the NPS in advance, even if that means a
significant delay in reporting the incident.

Yours in Patriotism,

Steve Cobb
Commander
Region I, MOPH
NE/Mid-Atlantic USA
Military Order of the Purple Heart

 

When I heard, I was just landing at home on an American Airlines flight whose gate was four gates down from one of the fated planes, on Sept 11 at about 9:10 a.m.
My flight left about 20 minutes before the others. Who knows, I might even have seen the perpetrators and not known it.

Had stayed in New York after the U.S. Open an extra day to have lunch with an old boyfriend of mine who worked at Cantor Fitzgerald in the WTC. We had lunch, yes, in the restaurant on the top of the W.T. Center.

He didn't make it. He had planned to come in late that day for a change, because he was going to stay up late to watch Monday Night Football, but ended up, as usual, getting to the office about 7:30 that morning.

 

OK. What's not disputed is that there is a a clear oily substance--comparable to WD-40, for example, and that's my example from reading and viewing the video--on areas (names) on the base of the Wall. Accident or deliberate defacement, it bothers me. It's not easily removed, whatever it is.

Is it news or not? Well, to me it is, but you're right, it was only reported by people who care. And they aren't professional journalists. Call 'em freepers, call 'em veterans, call 'em any name you please. They jumped to a conclusion, and so did I. Still don't like it.

 

And one more thing. My original post was on topic, with an aside about the oil on the wall. I thought of Three Bags Full when I wrote it, so I brought it up again when he showed up. It's off topic, and although it still bothers me, I don't intend to discuss it further here. It's personal, a matter of emotion more than logic, and frankly, I probably shouldn't have brought it up at all in this forum.

 

I was sitting in Biology class Sophomore year of high school. When I entered my weightlifting class with my football coach he told me what had happened. The rest of the day is/was a complete blur. I spent the day with a friend and no classes went on as scheduled. We watched the television the rest of the day to find out what happened. A life-changing experience to say the least.

 

Wow.

Condolences, scribe.

 

I don't like it, either. As it happens, I covered the controversy over the building of the Wall back in the late '70's when I was a baby reporter for an alternative weekly. There was a lot of noise from the stab-in-the-back crowd -- the Freepers of their day -- about how dirty hippes were attempting to memorialize our vets with an "ugly hole in the ground." There even was some noxious stuff about the fact that the designer -- Maya Lin -- was Asian. I don't know anyone today who thinks of the Wall with anything less than almost mystic reverence, including me. I, too, am upset that it was marked up, but to charge this up to "defacement" by "the antiwar crowd" is noxious paranoia from the worst of the right.
All's I'm sayin'.