Class News
Angus Gillespie '64 writes opinion piece on remembering 9/11
The Twin Towers still stand in our memory 18 years later
by Angus Gillespie '64
NJ.com
September 11, 2019
So here we are at the 18th anniversary of the attacks of 9/11 and the destruction of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. There is the obvious question: why did the terrorists attack this particular landmark?
Today, the Twin Towers stand only in our memory, an image that calls to mind sorrow and loss. But during the years that they straddled the skyline, the towers meant many things to many people. On the most basic level, the towers could have been taken to symbolize the Manhattan skyline or the City of New York.
However, for nearly everyone at home and abroad, the Twin Towers symbolized something much large than the aesthetics of a single city. The building represented American engineering know-how. It showed America reaching for the sky. It stood for American capitalism and, with time, for America itself. Indeed, that is the reason it was chosen as a target by the terrorists. Terrorism is a weapon used by the weak against the strong. Because the terrorists were not powerful enough to destroy America, they had to destroy instead an important symbol of America.
It’s hard to believe that 18 years have passed by. For many of us, the memory of that day is a vivid as if it happened yesterday. I imagine that every generation has its own catastrophic memory: Where were you when you learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor? Where were you when you learned of the assassination of JFK? For me, I clearly remember where I was on 9/11. I wrote about it in my “Introduction to the Paperback Edition,” shortly after the attack.
I was at home in New Brunswick, getting ready for an appointment later that Tuesday morning in Princeton. I was drinking my morning coffee and reading the newspaper. Then, I got a call from my older son from his car phone. He said that a small airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I turned on the television, and I saw smoke billowing out of the North Tower.
I watched with rapt attention. I assumed that it was accident, at least up until the moment, in real time, that I saw a second airplane crash into the South Tower. Then, I knew that this was no accident; rather, it was terrorism. I was not overly worried because I assumed that the firefighters would come along and put out the fire, and the damage would be repaired, and life would go on as usual. I turned off the television, and I went down to Princeton. On the way back, I heard on the radio that both towers had collapsed.
In a state of shock and disbelief, I returned home just past noon. I checked my telephone answering service. A mechanical voice said, “You have sixty-seven messages.” Then it hit me: my obscure book was getting attention. That book asked the question: What do the Twin Towers mean? I argued that the Twin Towers might be taken to symbolize American capitalism, or event America itself. I wrote, “Indeed, the World Trade Center is a global symbol, instantly recognized to stand for America, just the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben stand for their respective countries.”
Reporters all over the country, reading a summary of my book on the Internet, put two and two together. If the World Trade Center was a symbol of America, then it was the perfect target for enemies of America. I had no time to grieve. I just started answering the phone. While I was on the phone answering one reporter’s questions, my answering service stacked up two more requests for help. This process went on, hour after hour, day after day, until Saturday morning. Then, just as suddenly as it started, the phone stopped ringing. The news cycle had moved on.
Now came the hard part. I was all alone with my feelings. On the one hand, I was proud of the book. It contained much useful information. Perhaps, I told myself, it could serve as a tribute to the victims. On the other hand, I was profoundly upset that it took a tragedy of this magnitude to draw attention to the book. I had always dreamed of a wider readership, and now I had it. But I was reminded of the proverb, “Beware of what you wish for.”
On Sunday morning, I woke up crying. The realization of human loss had hit me. Many of those that I had interviewed had become friends, and now they were gone.
Angus Gillespie is a professor in the department of American Studies at Rutgers University and author of Twin Towers: The Life of New York City’s World Trade Center.