So here we go. My 9/11 post. I'm posting a little early to try to prepare. I am going to TRY to get through this on-air at the top of my show tomorrow (9/11) at 9:07am central. But I have a hard time even reading it silently. I have failed every other attempt to tell this story live. I am the "mean, hardcore right wing battle ax" of the radio, after all. Even my own "people" think this. No one wants to hear me be emotional. But on the 25th anniversary of the murder of 2977 Americans, I'll effort through it. Emotions or not. Here is a preview. And no, AI didn't write this. I wrote this. Years ago. I updated it for the 25th anniversary. I am a good writer. Please read this. Not that anyone will, because I am buried by the algorithm. But here it is, anyway.
"On the 5th anniversary of the 9/11 attack, I had the privilege of being able to broadcast from Ground Zero. While in NYC, I met up with a friend and regular contributor to my show who was a former INS agent and a native New Yorker.
He introduced me to a friend of his, a retired NYPD officer who lost his son-in-law in the South Tower collapse. Twenty years later, I have forgotten this man's name. I hate myself for that.
We were all just strolling around the near-Ground Zero area for a time following my broadcast, talking about the day. The retired officer was telling us about how hard things were since his family’s life changed in an instant on 9/11/2001. All I could do was listen in sad silence to his story.
Abruptly, this man stopped walking—and looked right into my eyes. I think he was judging whether he could take a chance on me. He then offered to show me a special place—a place for 9/11 families-only. Not a “club” anyone wanted to be in.
He led us to a nondescript office building—and took us to an elevator that led to a higher floor. He then led us to a nondescript office door—and opened it.
Inside was a room about the size of a two-car garage. On every inch of wall space, on every surface available, were pictures and notes and messages and cards and personal items left by family members of those murdered on 9/11.
Sticky notes, cross-stitch pictures, hand-colored cards, elaborate scrapbook pages, scribbled letters on torn-out spiral notebook paper, wedding albums, yearbooks...even a guitar.
I started to read these messages. I remember a letter left with the guitar. It was written by a man whose best friend died that day. He wrote about how much fun they had together and how much he missed his friend.
I leafed through a wedding album—with sticky notes on some pictures inside, detailing the love and loss that a woman felt at having her husband taken from her.
The most vivid memory I have is of a letter written in colored marker on yellow-colored construction paper. It was a letter from a little girl to her mom. The little girl detailed, in her neat block print, all the things she had done since her mother was stolen from her. She talked about her mom missing a dance performance at school and how proud her mom would have been. She wrote about getting better at soccer. She wrote about her dog.
She wrote about missing her mom on her birthday.
What I saw was so profoundly personal and beautiful that it overwhelmed me. To be there in that room—a room created by the agony of profound grief itself—was so viscerally human, it was almost sublime. To spend any time there was to realize it was even more than that: it was holy.
This room was never meant to be public. It was only ever occupied by the people who lost their families or friends.
That room is gone now, dismantled and deconstructed. Too much time has passed, I suppose, for the public still to grieve along with the ones who loved the dead. The personal items have been returned to their owners. The things not claimed were turned into a professional museum exhibit. That room, forged in love and death, wasn’t a pretty museum exhibit. It was a way to avoid the inevitable voyeurism that emerges after catastrophe. It was a place of sadness, of solace. It was a place to remember.
The little time I spent with those special memories of people I never met made 9/11 personal to me, if only by proxy. I was never supposed to be there. That I was granted the privilege of entering that shrine, I am forever grateful. It changed my heart. In the darkness of their mourning that day, I decided it was time to go looking for God again.
Today, watching the disunity in our nation now makes me profoundly sad. The sheer hate some of us have for each other is something I would have never predicted 25 years ago. I would like to say we're better than this. We certainly were on 9/11. The families of the dead—the ones who left pieces of their hearts in that little room deserve us to be that way again.
It's why we say "Never Forget." Don’t let it become a mere bumper sticker. "