The 9/11 Attacks: A Story of Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas

On September 12, 2001, a Dallas leadership group that I was involved with hosted a candlelight vigil at Dealey Plaza, the iconic location in the Kennedy assassination.  The city of Dallas closed off the historic plaza for our use and provided their support.  I was asked to write three speeches for the event, the third of which I had the privilege to present personally.  

World Trade Center

The World Trade Center had great personal significance, and many family and friends were involved that day… 15 years later, it’s interesting for me to see and revisit the raw emotions and perspective of the moment.  I remember so much of those emotions… at that time, we still were unsure who had been lost from our family and friends, and so many feelings were in play.  But I also remember hope, and at the end of my speaking, I tried to give it a voice.  The speech was a purging of so many thoughts, and on review, it wasn’t particularly well constructed, but it was… honest.

This is that speech, unedited.

We are a nation awakened.

Before the debris of the first crumbling tower reached the pavement below, our immediate destiny was clear.  We will go to war.  This is a nation that believes in capital punishment, and this is a crime for which no other sentence would ring true.  The murderers themselves have escaped to the hell of their own choosing, but their accomplices remain at large, and they will be held accountable.

But then what?

Can the destruction of the instruments of evil truly cause the death of their source?  Or will the removal of these lurking dealers in misery simply create a vacuum, to be filled by vermin equal — or even greater —  in their willingness to trade their lives for the innocent lives of others?

There are clues to be found, hints of a possibility that we might not yet see.  In the joining of hands across oceans, past mountains and through ideological walls comes a vision of a united world, a congress of humanity that may have finally tired of the insane pain of random violence.  And if that weariness had become enough of a force, then this might be the blessed hour that we begin to cure one more illness; the sickness of heart that promotes the devaluation of human life.

Our attention is singular, our focus pure.  We stand connected by the media, and it is that media that I look to for the cleansing catharsis of our national soul.

The papers have shown the corpses, ripped apart, burned beyond recognition, twisted in the ash-grey rubble.  The magazines have lowered their cameras into the bowels of the blast site and brought that demonic picture into our homes in perfect clarity.  The hardest reporters have thrust a thousand microphones into a thousand widow’s grief and kept their lenses steady as the frightened children clung to their parents’ side.  And by every means, the words have flowed — rich and full of the colours of our agony, dark and desperate paintings of inconceivable loss.

We have seen the worst.

I want the horror, the unyielding misery of this unspeakable act to resonate across this country like a wave, washing out to sea forever our imagined ability to separate ourselves from our brothers and sisters around the world.  I want to stand with my fellow man, shivering in the darkness of their hatred, and finally recognize that the only warmth remaining is to huddle close together, and look eastward to the coming light.

Now is a time, a chance, a reason.

Now is the door cracked open, while the world is connected by this filament of the awakened vulnerability?  Now is the staggering multi-coloured giant that we are finally seen as human by a hundred nations that could never before find kinship in our countenance.

We have been cut.  We have bled, and in bleeding, that wound exposed not only the myth of our inhuman dimension but the awesome nobility of our common origin.  For in our pain, our brothers and sisters around the world have clearly seen that we are no more than them; in our heroic refusal to falter, they have also seen a reflection of the best that they have in themselves.

If we truly understand what has happened, this abrupt awakening that we now grapple with so fiercely, then the task before us is clear.  We must build a planet with no dark corners, no snug hiding places for the terror mongers to flee to.  They must be forced out into the open, friendless and exposed, and we must have no hesitation in removing them from our newly consolidated world.  To build that brightest planet, we must share ourselves freely, admitting to ourselves and our partners that while we are great indeed, we are no longer willing to live apart.

This shall be the test of the third millennium.  To trust that we can fulfil our destiny of leadership while standing side by side, rather than simply dominating by the strength of arm and wallet.  To embrace humility, and to acknowledge our common mortality even as we celebrate our indisputable strength.  We are the first nation in the history of our species to have the real possibility of uniting this planet without conquering it, and ultimately we should be judged by the steadfastness of our progress toward that glorious end.

There is no good in the death of thousands, no blessing in the theft of so many precious lives by such unworthy parasites.  But there is within this great nation, and within us as a great people, the extraordinary ability to turn our pain into passion, and our suffering into triumph.  Let us honour our lost brethren, and forge a magnificent monument to their sacrifice.  Let us demonstrate to the evil that slithers among us that in wounding us, they themselves have created their doom — a planet united against their very existence and a world that they cannot corrupt.  Awakened now, it is just barely within our grasp… awakened now, we must reach out, and own that future for ourselves, our children and our posterity.

 Look into the Eyes

In the vigil, people gathered across the plaza, on the streets below, across the way near the Book Depository… I don’t know how many attended that night, but the television report estimated broadly between five and ten thousand.  We were all struck by the solemnity and the feeling of people huddling together.  

The first speech of the night was given by J. Smith, and was titled “Look into the Eyes”.  It was a reflection of a conversation that I had with him prior to writing and represented a desire that we shared to bring the audience into the conversation directly and to have them recognize the power at that moment.  Hopefully, it manifested a combination of our voices, sharing some of his phraseology and mine.  

This speech is also unedited, presented exactly as it was given 15 years ago… 

Welcome.  We stand together here today to acknowledge the greatness of our Nation, and to send a critically important message to the world.

That we are rising.

We are off our knees now, stretching tall and proud to our full height, and we are awesome.  And standing, we will once again tower over our attackers, and remind them of the terrible mistake that they have made.

This is the way of the American people: in the adrenaline of the moment, we are immense.  We rise to the challenge before us.  We envision great things.  We are vibrant, powerful, critically important and committed.  We are shining, and the universe stands and applauds.

But this is also the way of our American people.  The adrenaline will wane, and life resume.  We will notice that the laundry is undone in the hamper.  We will once again feel the weight of gravity and remember the missed workouts.  The mail will bring bills, and we will fret about them.  We will bicker over nothing, really, and we will fell a sense of annoyance.  We will be earthbound, and the universe will nod back off to sleep.

It can be different.  It must be different this time.

In the roaring urgency of this moment, mountains appear as bumps in the fields.  Tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that, when the mountains grow back and the fields are muddy, will we carry the same passion for our species, the same compassion for each other?

Look around you.  Today.

Look right now into the eyes and hearts of the people standing next to you on this important field.  Look at their common greatness, and understand in your heart — today and forever — that these people are your partners in this amazing country.  That regardless of where they came from, what they look like, what they believe about God or how they worship Him, they stand beside you as Americans, as brothers and sisters in the triumphant family of your land.

Drink in the intoxicating perfume of a great people, standing free and united, unafraid to demonstrate their love and their passionate commitment to their ideals.  Ordinary people being extraordinary, a festival of the best in man brought out by the beast in some men.  Drink it all in, and etch those precious feelings deep into your soul.

Then, someday, when the skies aren’t blazing with glory and the radio stations are back to shock and shock, when the horns are going off from the impatient cars around you, and the random cruelties of selfishness seem overwhelming… when that day comes, stand up.

Remember this moment.

And commit yourself to find a way, one precious way, to inspire a bit of that memory into reality.  Commit yourself to recreate enough of that adrenaline to find again, even if for just a moment, that incredible strength and beauty that is all around you today.

And when you find that strength, when you make that greatness in this tragedy a permanent power in your heart.. then we will all truly be the victors in this time, and in our world.

Thank you, and God Bless America.