By Ed Wendell
Did you know that Woodhaven has its own 9/11 Memorial?
The September 11th Memorial Garden, paying tribute to all of the victims from Queens, sits adjacent to the Seuffert Bandshell in Forest Park, just to the right of the stage. It has been there since October 2002. Yet, somehow, it has escaped the notice of most residents of Woodhaven. We hope that will change in the years to come.
Last Friday, residents gathered at the Seuffert Bandshell to quietly observe the 25th anniversary of that dreadful day that left thousands of civilians and hundreds of first responders dead and buried beneath the rubble of two of the most famous buildings in U.S. history.
Sponsored by the Woodhaven Cultural & Historical Society, American Legion Post 118 Woodhaven, the Woodhaven Residents’ Block Association, the Woodhaven Business Improvement District, and Sen. Joseph Addabbo, and hosted by the wonderful team at Forest Park, residents came together to remember the events of that day a quarter of a century ago, when the horrors of war came to our very doorstep.
I read recently that more than 100 million citizens of the United States were born after 9/11 and might not have the same emotions or feelings about that day as those who lived through it. That’s discouraging, because those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
I worked at JFK Airport, with a direct line of sight to the Twin Towers. Even though we were more than 10 miles away, we could see the flames, the black smoke, and finally the massive white clouds of smoke and dust left behind in the wake of each collapse, which killed so many innocent people.
By the time I got home, my mom had filled the bathtub with water. She was worried that additional attacks might interrupt the water supply. She had also closed the windows, wet some towels and pressed them against the windowsills to protect against possible gas attacks. And she sent me out right away to stock up on groceries, canned food in particular, in case the food supply chain was disrupted.
My mom was prepared for war, and that was something she had experience with, having seen the horrors of World War II up close and personal while growing up in Scotland. She had survived the “Clydebank Blitz” in March 1941, when she was just three years old.
The German Luftwaffe targeted the shipyards, which she lived across the street from, but the surrounding residential areas suffered tremendous damage, with thousands of homes destroyed and more than 500 people killed.
One of those killed was a three-year-old girl who was my mom’s neighbor and playmate. My mom remembered her wee pal for as long as she lived, including her in her prayers every day.
As a young boy, I visited Scotland and my mom showed me the house where her friend had died. It was still a pile of rubble. In fact, there were still many piles of rubble and empty spaces where people had once lived in the early 1970s, nearly 30 years after the war.
Children in Scotland in the early ’70s were constantly warned to be careful should they ever uncover any unexploded bombs that were still buried in the soft ground of the fields surrounding their homes.
I think that a lot of people around my age grew up understanding the terrible cost of war because our parents and grandparents had lived through it. If they didn’t witness the horror up close, they knew people who had been killed in the war. They knew someone who had suffered.
It was a real horror to them and, growing up, it was a real horror to us.
We grew up learning to duck and cover and knowing where the nearest fallout shelter was. We worried about the very real possibility that we could one day face a catastrophic attack. And so, 9/11 really resonated with us. The fear was something very real.
I don’t know if many young people today have the same reverence for the horrors of what war can bring. So many seem to embrace violent acts, seemingly more inclined to lift up their phones to record violence than to work against it.
And that’s why it’s so important that we remember 9/11 each and every year.
We have to remember, not simply to honor those who were lost, but to make sure that future generations understand what happened, understand the terrible human cost of violence, and never become so accustomed to it that they forget its consequences.
Because if we forget, we risk repeating history. And that is something we cannot afford to do.
