Each generation of Americans has a defining event that sticks in living memory ... and it’s not a good memory. Maybe we remember where we were when we heard that President Kennedy had been assassinated, or that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.
Many who are alive today will never forget where we were, when news broke of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. When the first hijacked airliner struck one of the Twin Towers in New York, the thought among some must have been, “It’s happened before.” A B-25 Mitchell bomber lost in the fog hit the Empire State building in 1945.
But then, we learned that a second airliner had hit the other Twin Tower, and a third the Pentagon, and we knew that somehow, life for us had changed once more. Except for a brave group of passengers who wrested control of their hijacked airliner from the terrorists who had seized it, and crashed it into a field less than an hour’s drive from Cumberland, the White House or the U.S. Capitol might also have been devastated.
America has been at war ever since, not a well-defined war declared formally by our Congress against other nations, as was the case with World War II, but a war in which the enemy is much harder to find and confront.
Let us pause to remember and honor not only those who died on 9/11, but also those who have served and are serving in our defense — as first responders or members of the military.
Cumberland has a memorial to more than 5,000 service members who have fallen during the Gulf Wars, located behind the VFW and American Legion posts on Front Street.
Please visit it some time, to read their names and be reminded that freedom is maintained only at the dearest of costs.
