With this year being the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, my 16 year old daughter Amber took more interest than usual in the day’s significance. She asked what I remembered of that day, which led to a variety of stories. I told her of my own misguided reaction when my roommate (who had a tv) yelled to me that a plane had hit the Twin Towers, and I (who didn’t have a tv), thought, “That’s a strange accident.” Only when I arrived at work an hour later did I understand what was happening.
I told her about how different people processed what was happening, from David Letterman’s understated but inspiring comments on The Tonight Show to the morning radio host who demanded that, every 36 hours, the US launch a nuclear attack against a different Middle East until the perpetrators were turned over.
Amber mentioned the town that nearly doubled in size because so many grounded airliners landed there after the US and Canada closed their airspace. I told her she was speaking of Gander, Newfoundland, a town of 9,600 that took in 38 commercial airlines in a few hours.
From there, we moved on to other disasters, and how ordinary people became heroes by simply not panicking and doing what had to be done to save themselves or others. The list included Jim Lovell, the captain of the Apollo 13 mission. We watched the movie a few years ago, and I explained that Tom Hanks had a small problem portraying Lovell. When he listened to the tapes of the conversations between Lovell and mission control to prepare for the role, he found that Lovell had remained so calm that the movie would have been boring if he portrayed Lovell accurately. For me, finding out that Hanks was actually overacting in Apollo 13 was a shock, and a testament to Lovell’s levelheadedness.
I told her about Captain Bob Pearson, an Air Canada pilot who, due to a number of errors by multiple people, had to land a Boeing 767 after it ran out of fuel midflight. He and the copilot made an almost impossible landing that resulted in no deaths and only minor injuries. Pearson described the experience by saying “For me it was a cold, unemotional experience. It was the only time in my entire career I felt like I was a computer. I had a job to do and I stayed totally focused.” After his retirement he said that following the Gimli Glider incident, he was always calm when he faced an emergency because he knew he had already faced worse.
We talked about the victims of the Nazi death camps. We discusses Chernobyl. We laughed that doctors used to tell the husband to boil water when the wife went into labor to keep him from panicking.
As Amber and I talked, I also reflected on my role as a parent, and why history is important. My kids know to brush their teeth, look both ways before crossing the street, and to wear their bike helmets. Eventually, however, they will face a situation for which I can’t prepare them. They may see someone get runover. A gunman may enter their school. They may get trapped in a burning building. An industrial accident may release poison gas into their neighborhood. I’d be a fool to think my kids with go through life without seeing or suffering at least one tragedy. On the anniversary of September 11, I was reminded that part of my role is to tell my kids about what has shaped our world and how other people dealt with those times. I hope that when my daughter finally does face a catastrophe, she can draw on the strength and dignity of Pearson, Lovell, Letterman, and all the others who have risen to the challenges they didn’t see coming.
by Marti Maltby, Director Peace House Community – A Place to Belong
Photo Credit: Baset Alhasan
This article originally appeared in “The Alley,” the newspaper for the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis.