Those first few years we came out in droves. Remember? By the hundreds. Pushing strollers. Waving flags. We came together on the anniversaries of the horrific terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. We came together to recall, to honor, to memorialize.
To never forget.
But aren't we doing just that 17 years later, forgetting? Doesn't it get a little easier with each anniversary date that sneaks by to not think about it so much, to care a little less?
Last year the city of Duluth didn't even have a 9/11 commemoration.
It's back this year - thankfully and appropriately - but how many of us have given any thought at all to being there? To participating? To recalling and honoring and memorializing?
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The annual event used to have to be held at spacious Bayfront Festival Park, a venue that can accommodate impressive turnouts. Tuesday's brief 11 a.m. ceremony will be held west of the DECC auditorium and across Harbor Drive from the Great Lakes Aquarium on a little-used, largely unnoticed square of land that's home to a miniature Statue of Liberty. (If it rains, the ceremony will be held inside the DECC foyer.)
How many of us will join Mayor Emily Larson, who'll offer remarks; chaplains, who'll offer prayers; Fr. John Petrich, who's organizing; the combined honor guard; the sheriff's and police and fire departments' honor guards; the bagpipers; and the few others participating? Will the press even be there to cover it?
Anyone looking for good reason to remember and honor, even all these years later, can consider the words of former New York Gov. George Pataki. He wrote these words for CNN on the five-year anniversary of the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City, on the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and aboard Flight 93, which crashed in Shanksville, Penn.
"The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, reshaped the face of the nation and the course of history," he said. "Our lives and the lives of those to come ... changed forever.
"The date, Sept. 11, will forever evoke recollections of unimaginable tragedy, of lives callously lost and brutally cut short, and of unspeakable horror and sorrow in the hearts and minds of all of us. We must never forget the depths of inhumanity to which terrorist fanatics are willing to sink in the name of their depraved cause as they seek to destroy the very principles of freedom and democracy on which this great nation was founded. ...
"Remembering that day is not a choice but our solemn obligation ," Pataki continued. "Always remember that we were attacked not for what we do wrong but for what we do right."
All the more reason to come together Tuesday to recall, to honor, to memorialize - to never forget. And to pray there never will be another attack. Not today. Not ever.
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A version of this editorial was first published in 2014.
