NEVER FORGET 9-11-01

NEVER FORGET has become a motto of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon nine years ago.
Many things stick in our memory of that day: the brave words ‘Let’s Roll!’ in an airplane over the Pennsylvania countryside, the billows of smoke and ash surging through the narrow New York streets, the hole breaching our ideal of protection at the Pentagon, a mass of people walking across the Brooklyn Bridge to escape the aftermath, disbelief, horror and personal, private memories that will never fade.
We will Never Forget that day and the ones following. But let’s extend that motto to Never Forget those lost in the fighting initiated by the attacks on our country. Let’s Never Forget those lost at Pearl Harbor, D-Day, and for that matter in Hiroshima and Auschwitz; Vietnam, Korea and any and all the other times and places that people have paid the ultimate price in a conflict that someone started in the name of right and righteousness.
Let’s extend that to Never Forget the ones who rushed to help, who lost their lives trying to save others – as they do for you and you and you every time they answer a call for help every day in every part of our country.
Let’s extend that to Never Forget the civilians lost, the ones who are always the innocent victims of conflict, the ones who pay that same ultimate price only because they were there.
Because if enough of us Never Forget, maybe, just maybe, there will be enough of us to remember that maybe there’s another way, a better way, a way that doesn’t end in disbelief and horror.
And meanwhile, let’s Never Forget to honor all of those mentioned here, and do it every day in every way we can.
NEVER FORGET. 9-11-01