From living memory into history

Friday marks the 25th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Shanksville, Pa., which claimed nearly 3,000 everyday American lives. Life as we knew it, including air travel, changed forever.

A thought-provoking new documentary, "Turning Point: Generation 9/11," began airing on Netflix this month, and we watched it over the weekend. A few sobering takeaways as someone who was 49 when the attacks happened … “We’re at a moment in American life when the events of 9/11 are beginning to slip meaningfully from living memory into history.”

The narrator also said that in the not too distant future we’ll cross the point where “50% of Americans were born after 9/11 or were too young to remember the events of that day.”

The horror of Sept. 11, 2001, should never be reduced to rhetoric or symbolism. Those horrific images, both print and electronic, should be kept fresh in all of our minds. Those who died were real people, with real families, who terrorists murdered. And those are real people wearing the uniform of our armed forces, still fighting for freedom on foreign soil this very moment.

In addition to the heroic first responders who lost their lives on Sept. 11, 2001, the flight crews of American Airlines Flights 11 and 77, and United Airlines Flights 175 and 93, spent their final moments comforting and attempting to protect their passengers during the hijackings. Thirty-three pilots and flight attendants died that day.

I’ve shared in this space in past columns our emotional experience that morning as the parents of a rookie flight attendant, who’d just been flying for a year and routinely in and out of LAX, SFO and SEA, major West Coast airports. She turned 25 a couple of weeks after 9/11 and continues to work as a flight attendant today as she nears her milestone 50th birthday, although the industry profoundly changed from her first year with the airlines.

It’s my heartfelt hope that we as American citizens never forget the attacks, both the horror and the heroics. Those who were too young to remember or who were born in the years after 9/11/2001 should study the historic event that shaped who we are and how we live today.

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The Tuesday following Labor Day weekend is probably one of my least favorite days of the year. Even though the calendar says that the last day of summer isn’t for three weeks, it’s all over, but the shouting is for all intents and purposes.

Tradition, or at least generations of people who summer in the Hamptons, tell us that it’s a fashion faux pas to wear white after Labor Day. Pshaw. If I owned a pair of white shoes that weren’t athletic shoes, I’d sashay about town showing them off.

I can’t turn back the clock on summer, but we can have a little fun by rockin’ the white until it’s fashionably acceptable to take the winter white out of the closet.

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Happy Main Street Birthdays today to Dani Zibell-Wolfe, Mary Larson, Kibbee Walton, Seth Anderson, Dominick Pokosa, Daniel Connelly, Krysta Azzollini, Marty Meyer, Donna Boise and Chase Price. Tomorrow, Kim Cox, Gregg Gain, Mary Ellen Denton, Tami Martinez, Helen Terway and Annette Kennedy put on their party hats. On Friday, Jim Pierce, Hannah Epstein, Cameron Epstein, Cyndie Brubaker, Jeremy Siegler, Kelly Hanson, Mark Compton, Patty Roberson, Lily Hollibaugh and Darrell Dlouhy mark another year. On Saturday, Rose Backs, Nelson Gourley, Tiegan Horton, Nancy Adam, Walter Cole, Norman Oss and Polly Gava raise a glass to another birthday. Shelley Cornelius, Mike Pearce, Larry Riley, Janell Mollett, Kelly Sheffield, Ryan Bartlett, Thomas Vigil, Mary Langenberg, Stormy Purcell, Ray Harwood, Lori Turchik, Laura Fierro, JulieAnn Sparrowgrove, Cher Rhoads, Nicole Hamilton, Gina Davis and Debbie Margraff have Sunday birthdays. On Monday, Leslie Orth, Connie Glass, Tammy Rubino, Diane Lemas, Wayne Dust and Anna DeTar will celebrate. Pat Near, Claudia Brennan, Brad Medlock, Jerry Deitz, Jean Wright, Shannon Englander, Kathie Colosimo, Angie Purcell, Liese Razzeto and Nick McDonald take another trip around the sun Sept. 15. On Sept. 16, Bob Dietz, Jeff Thompson, Courtney Hurt, James Hoialman, Charollett Morehouse and Terrie Lynn Gonzales will eat cake and celebrate!

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Kerri Rankin Thoreson is a member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and a former publisher/editor with the Hagadone Newspaper division. Main Street appears every Wednesday in The Press . You can reach Kerri on Facebook or by email at [email protected].