This past Sunday marked 15 years since the dark day in America occurred. I remember exactly where I was when I first saw reports of a plane hitting the World Trade Center. It was confusing to me, reports said that it was a small plane that hit the North Tower, but by watching the news, there was nothing small about it. As I got ready for another day as an 8th grader in middle school in Indiana, terrorists would attack the South Tower, the Pentagon in Washington D.C. and a plane would crash in a small town in Pennsylvania. Thousands of lives would be killed when both towers of the World Trade Center collapsed. Lives changed on that day. Time stood still.
While most of us remember where we were on that awful day-there is a new generation that doesn't know about September 11. The class of 2020 that are high school freshmen were newborn babies or weren't even around when 9/11 took place. This is important that I bring this up because it seems that today's teenagers have no idea how profound that day was.
A hashtag on Twitter or a mention on Facebook just doesn't bring the awareness of the over 3,000 lives lost on that day. Today's teens won't be able to appreciate a time before September 11 where life was carefree and innocent. Today's new Millennials will never experience a September 10, 2001. They will never experience a time where the words and phrases like 'terrorism' or '9/11' would never exist in their daily communication.
It's troubling to me that when I ask 14 and 15 year old's about 9/11/01, they shrug at it as if it was another day in America. To them, 'historical' events means something that Beyoncé or Kim Kardashian did. Many communities will probably have some type of remembrance services and events to reflect back; but as I sit and and do my own reflection, I ask myself, is it enough? Last year marked the 20th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing and I was amazed at how many people vaguely remember that tragedy. 168 people gone-19 of those were small children, mostly under the age of 10.
The Oklahoma City tragedy just seems as if that never happened. One thing while I was reviewing that dark day is that students in Oklahoma are required to learn about that tragic day on April 19, 1995. Field trips to the Oklahoma City Memorial and Museum are a part of the curriculum there. When they interviewed middle and high school students after leaving the site, many students are emotional-some even brought to tears.
Perhaps, today's teens should know about 9/11/01-just not when the date approaches. More dialogue is needed to express to our young people that our country would never experience a 9/10/01 anymore. September 11, 2001 was the day that America matured.
