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FROM THE PUBLISHER

The chills are with us still: ‘This is no accident’

Posted

In the summer of 1945, on a very foggy day in New York City, a B-25 military plane crashed into the Empire State Building.

All three crewmen died, as well as 11 people inside the building.

It happened to be a Saturday. Otherwise, the number of casualties inside might have been much greater.

On a bright, clear New York morning 56 years later, an airliner hit the north tower of the World Trade Center.

Even in 2001, plenty of people still recalled that 1940s incident. The network television morning shows, airing from New York City, quickly made those comparisons, and some had already dug up and broadcast images from the old event.

On that Tuesday, Sept. 11, however, there was no fog, eliminating that as a possible cause for the accident. News hosts wondered if the plane might have malfunctioned. A few people thought maybe it could be a hijacking.

The speculation didn’t last long.

Seventeen minutes later, another airliner crashed into the south tower.

With live cameras fixed on the smoking north tower, millions of Americans saw the second crash live as it happened.

Everyone who saw it said, collectively, “This is no accident.”

The myriad ramifications of that day are still with us, 19 years later.

If you’re like me and were getting ready for work while the TV was on, you saw it unfold. The memory is indelible for you. You likely remember that whole week of darkness, sadness, anger, confusion. At the time, I was publisher of the Alamogordo Daily News, and early in the day we learned one of New Mexico’s own, former Alamogordo police officer Al Marchand, had died on the plane. We followed the stories for several days, including in an “EXTRA” edition.

Even the skies recognized the sadness, as it rained the whole week in Alamogordo.

Because the memories are so clear for so many of us, it makes it more difficult to realize we just graduated a group of high school seniors who weren’t even born when 9/11 happened.

Anyone who is 25 or younger has no live recollection of the events.

As we look around at our nation today, divided in so many ways, arguing constantly about matters both deathly serious and frivolously trivial, maybe it’s worth a backward glance at 9/11. There was a positive side effect out of that truly horrible day.

We Americans came together.

I’ll never forget attending a special Mass one evening that week. The church was packed, and everyone expressed their care and their hearts.

We Americans still have that care and those hearts.

We don’t have to have a national tragedy to use them.

Remember.

Richard Coltharp

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