A Distinctive Memory By: Connie Hunter-Urban

I flipped my long, dark-brown ponytail from my shoulder and stuck my tongue between my teeth in an unconscious attempt at concentration. I wasn’t very good at jacks, but I had made it through the threes and was going into my fours. I shifted my legs, bending my left one to rest beneath my right leg, which was extended from beneath my shirt-waist dress. I tossed the jacks in a sideways motion, bounced the ball while I put four fingers on the sidewalk, and started to pick up my first set of four when the heavy door behind us flung against the brick wall.
“Connie,” my sister blurted, in her I’ve-got-a-really-good-secret tone.
I turned, irritated at missing the scoop because of the interruption.
“What?” I quipped in my perennially sarcastic tone.
“Guess what Mr. Garnett just told us?”
By then, she had our attention. In the back of my mind, though, I was formulating an argument that I should get another turn when Lynda’s words changed my life forever.
“He told us President Kennedy was just shot.”
Her words, forever seared into my awareness, were unfathomable. The principal had told her class because he thought sixth graders were mature enough to handle the emotions. He was right that we fourth graders weren’t.
The only time I’d heard of an assassination was Abraham Lincoln, and I didn’t understand how anything that removed from our time could touch our lives. I struggled with a plethora emotions that accompanied the forbidden news. I wondered if Mom and Dad would be happy since they had voted for Nixon. I wondered how our lives would change. I wondered if we could get shot too. When I got home, those conflicts weren’t any clearer. Mom was crying, something I had rarely seen her do. Images became burned into my brain--Jackie with her stained, pink dress, the President being thrown forward as the bullet hit. Later, the funeral procession, John-John’s salute, and the eternal flame were all intensely poignant.
Over the years, other major national events have created indelible impressions. The Watergate hearings, the Gulf War, the Berlin Wall coming down, and the end of the Vietnam Conflict all kept me riveted to newscasts. However, none of those events match the intensity of September 11th.
After a year of reflection, we see how events that unfolded that morning have changed our lives forever. Air travel will never be the same; the Stock Market is reeling. Jobs have been lost; people are more fearful. At first, as a nation, we grew closer to God. En masse, sinners were saved; backsliders who hadn’t entered church doors for years renewed their relationship with a long-lost Friend. Even Christians who hadn’t been as close to God as they should found a new intensity--for a while.
Eventually, though, things went back to normal. Churches didn’t have crowds standing out the doors. People missed church and didn’t think it bad when a week slipped into months. Soon 9/11 was a memory relegated to a place of great emotions but not something to impact a relationship with God. Christians had again become lulled into complacency. But God doesn’t like noncommittal attitudes. He admonishes that “because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:16).
America, with all our wondrous accomplishments and possessions, has to put God first again. We have great wealth, but we must seek God to be a solvent nation, truly based on Him and His ways. When Solomon finished the temple, he sought the Lord for Israel’s well-being. God came to him in the night and said, “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land” (2 Chron. 7:14). America has a lot of healing to do. But we are America, and the healing begins with a commitment to grow closer to God, and that starts with each of us. In our lives as in our nation we need to return to the godly principles upon which our nation was founded by our Christian forefathers. In Him is true healing for both our nation and our personal lives.
I had done my morning routine before work. I watched the Today show while I dressed, ate breakfast, packed my lunch, and then left for school. I hadn’t been there too long, when another teacher came across the hall. A tower was hit in New York, and now another plane had struck the second. The implication was clear--terrorism of that magnitude on our own soil. As we watched throughout the morning, the rest of the news came as a blur--a plane going into the Pentagon, a crash in a Pennsylvania field, the towers’ decimation, people scattering like rabbits from the danger of a predator. The day will forever be etched in my memory as a tragic, devastating part of American history. Though that day should teach us many things, the main one is to lean on and grow closer to Him.
“America, America, God shed His grace on Thee. And crowned thy good with brotherhood, From sea to shining sea.” We are a blessed nation. Let us never forget the lessons we have learned from our past and know from Whom all our blessings come. Let us cling to Him as our fortress and uphold our nation and American brothers in vigilant prayer.