Marking Major Anniversaries

 

9-11 Memorial NYC

One reason for marking fateful days in history is to remember how much the world has changed in your own lifetime.

Fifteen years ago today, 11 September 2009, I was a soldier on a one-year deployment to the Iraq War with the US Army.

Fifteen years before that, in 1994, I was a civilian still not quite believing the Soviet Union had collapsed in 1991.

Fifteen years before that in 1979, I was tank commander on the East-West border in Germany waiting for the Soviet invasion of that never happened.

Fifteen years before that I was an 11-year-old 5th grader at Robin Hood Elementary School in Stoneham, Massachusetts. Our school was a fallout shelter. Nuclear war was a shadow on life during the Cold War.

The world has changed a lot in some ways, and not at all in others.

In just over a week, I will be advocating for Ukraine in the US Congress. Russia invaded. The attack I was waiting for for the first four decades of my life happened in Ukraine.

Huge changes, some sad consistency.

Glory to Ukraine!

15th Anniversary of September 11, 2001

Fifteen years ago, I saw this image on the computers of the dot-com where I was working at the time.  I knew a dozen people who worked within blocks of the World Trade Center.  I called them.  I know that when you are inside a disaster, you can lose the larger perspective. I wanted to be just a bit of  perspective from outside New York City for Joe Chang, Helga Tilton, Esther D'Amico, Rob Westervelt, Rick Mullin and Andrew Wood among many others.  Those I was able to reach reacted like the New York journalists they are, calm and ridiculously confident that all would be well.

In 2009, in Iraq, I spoke about September 11, 2001, and my long road to Iraq from the day Islamic Terrorists attacked America.  In Iraq, I spoke about Helga Tilton.  She walked home from south of Ground Zero to the northern end of Manhattan in heels.  She was born in Germany in 1943 in Frankfurt, one of the most heavily bombed of the Germany cities.  Helga grew up in rubble, and now in 2001, at nearly 60 years old in her adopted country of America, she walked through that rubble to go home.  Helga died in November of 2007, not long after I re-enlisted. I still wonder if the dust of her birthplace and the dust of Ground Zero contributed to her death.

Marking the 14th Anniversary of 9-11

The 9-11 Memorial today on the campus of Franklin and Marshall College: 2,936 flags in the center of the campus to honor the victims.

Today at 8:45 a.m. I was walking into Russian class, just at the moment 14 years ago when America was attacked by terrorists.  When I left the class I looked north and saw the quad filled with flags:  2,936 flags, one for each victim of the attack.  

As memorials go, I far prefer these to the endless pictures and videos of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center.  The flags honor the victims.  The burning towers glorify in a perverse way the attack and cowards who kill innocent victims.  

Another way of marking the day is to tell the stories of those who stepped up to defend America after the attack.  My favorite story is part of this New York Times article.  It is about my former commander Joel Allmandinger and what he did in the wake of the attack on America.  They are all good stories.  

It's Not Just Me: Rejected by the Allentown Morning Call

Today one of my public affairs colleagues complained that he has sent stories for years to the Allentown Morning Call and they never pick up any of them.  Other media in central Pennsylvania run stories about local National Guard soldiers, but not the Morning Call.

I just searched Army on the Morning Call web site and got no results about current soldiers.  I did get a World War 2 veteran.

Two people in the same profession, finding the same difficulty can make each other feel better by sharing difficulties.  I could do that very thing today.  I told my colleague that one of the best stories I ever had about a National Guard soldier got rejected by the Morning Call, but later was picked up by the New York Times.  It was one of the soldier stories the New York Times used in a feature about the tenth anniversary of 9-11.  The whole story of Lt. Col. Joel Allmandinger leaving the Army just before the 9-11 attacks and then re-enlisting is here.  Or you can scroll down to The Officer.  I also copied that section of the New York Times story at then end of this post.

You can also read my story about him from 2010 here.

When I can back from Iraq, local newspapers picked up my stories about several other soldiers from sergeants to colonels.  I thought the one about then-Major Allmandinger was the best of the bunch, but he is from the Allentown area and the Morning Call did not pick up the story.

 My colleague was relieved to hear I also got rejected by the Allentown newspaper and may use my story about the New York Times picking up the story the Morning Call rejected to say "It's not just me" to his commander.

Getting rejected is part of this job, but getting this story rejected really surprised me.  But if I had to choose between the New York Times and the Morning Call, it turned out for the better.

The Officer

He had graduated from West Point, served eight years as a Black Hawk pilot and wanted to try his hand in business. It was June 2001, and Joel Allmandinger was leaving the Army.

He was in California for a wedding when the attacks occurred. The groom, a firefighter, held a vigil at his wedding and introduced Mr. Allmandinger as a soldier, though he no longer was one. And that troubled him. 

“I didn’t feel part of that brotherhood of the uniform anymore,” he recalled. “These guys could immediately identify with what happened in 9/11.”

So back home in eastern Pennsylvania, he signed up for the National Guard. On his first day of duty, he wore his uniform into a store and someone thanked him for his service.

“It was odd and uncomfortable,” he recalled. “But when I got into the car and started driving to the armory, I thought, ‘That was neat.’ ”

His unit deployed twice: first in Kosovo in 2004, to fill in for an active-duty unit being sent to Iraq; and then in Iraq in 2009, where he flew dozens of missions.

A one-year commitment turned into a decade. Today he is a lieutenant colonel and battalion commander. He is also the director of sales for a national food company and a father of two.

“I think I have a much, much better appreciation for the civilian soldier,” he said. “In some ways, I see it is an even bigger commitment, the sacrifices people have. There is a duality to it that is tough.”