To the editor:

Last week I stood in New York City overlooking the crater where the World Trade Center had been.

If we visitors had not known what had been there, it would be easy to assume this was a routine construction site.

Debris is gone and one of the ancillary buildings is being built.

A New Jersey reporter was nearby.

He introduced himself, asked me if I was a tourist and what brought me to the city.

I told him I was a delegate to the Republican National Convention – first time as a delegate and first time in the city.

He then asked me to talk about what I was seeing in lower Manhattan.

I told him that it wasn’t what I was seeing, but what I was remembering.

When I talk with students about Vietnam and Watergate and the assassination of Pres. Kennedy, they sit with puzzled gaze.

This generation doesn’t remember those events so pivotal in the lives of us baby boomers.

But 9/11 is an event that crosses generations.

We all remember where we were and what we were doing when we heard what had happened and saw those awful images on television.

It was a moment of terror unlike anything we’d known before.

The reporter then asked if Republicans were exploiting the events of 9/11 for political gain.

This was, after all, the first ever RNC meeting in New York City, though Democrats have met there five times.

I reminded the reporter that Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York lobbied for the Democrats to meet this year in New York, but was outgunned by Sen. Ted Kennedy who wanted the convention in Boston.

I insisted that the WTC site didn’t belong to one political group, but to the nation.

On 9/11 we were all Americans.

Football is something like a religion in the south, I continued, but in the days following the attack, southerners put aside their football shirts and wore NYPD and FDNY logo shirts.

Even now it seems strange, but this was one way we showed our solidarity with the people of New York and honored the heroism of police and firefighters.

This week marks the third anniversary of the 9/11 attack on our country.

It was an attack on all of us, and we’re all part of the continuing war on terror.

We pray for our soldiers and for our president.

And we pray for peace.

God bless America.

Michael Brooks

Assistant Professor of Speech and Journalism

Judson College