From 9/11, It Is the Picture We Can Only Imagine That Hurts Most

I saw the Pentagon explode that day. I was stuck in traffic on I-395, battling my way into the city in my ’78 Fiat Spider – top down. It was less than half a mile away, and I saw it all. The ball of flame, the thick black cloud of smoke that seemed to just swallow the deep blue sky. The panic that slowly emerged from the otherwise drone-like faces of commuters all around me. And about two hours later, when I came home to Amy’s warm embrace, we watched in horror all the images from New York. What I saw that day was unlike anything I had seen before, and I pray will ever see again.

But for all the visuals, the image that still haunts me the most today was not one I saw unfold before my own eyes or viewed on TV. It was a picture placed in my head by the words of a reporter in the days following 9/11. There was a piece about the victims of American Airlines Flight 77, the plane that hit the Pentagon. The article is long gone, and I don’t recall the author, but he or she was writing about a three-year old girl. Imagining what the girl must have looked like getting ready to board the flight, probably wearing a big pink backpack that was twice her size, and clutching a teddy bear or doll. I immediately went – and still go – to my own four children, all of whom I have travelled with at that age. Their big backpacks filled with books, stuffed animals, hidden candy – so full they nearly topple backward. Their knobby little knees, poking out from shorts or dresses, as they struggle to fasten the belt around them. Their little shoes, just barely dangling from the edge of the seat, still miles from the floor. Their wide eyes. Their boundless excitement. Their eternal innocence.

And then the author speculated that the little girl’s killers must have been right there too, perhaps right behind her in line. They must have seen her, in all her beautiful innocence. And yet they carried on.

In the years since, nothing has troubled me more about 9/11 than imagining that scene… and those that would follow. I’ve asked myself time and again how a human being could possibly justify murdering an innocent child. Just collateral damage in a larger war? Revenge for children who have perished at the hands of U.S. foreign policy? God’s will? No. Simply put, there is no justice to be had in the murdering or maiming of children – there is only despicable ill will. And God hates it. I expect He hates it more than anything.

In 2004, about a year after Amy and I founded 25:40, I was talking with an airline agent in Johannesburg airport. He asked my birth date, and I told him June 16, 1969. “June 16?” he asked. “That is a bad day. That is our 9/11.” He was referring to what is now known as Youth Day, commemorating the horrific events of June 16, 1977 – when police of the apartheid government opened fire on children peacefully protesting in Soweto. I was once again reminded of the events of 9/11, and the role they played in my even being in South Africa at that time. As I reflect on that, South Africa’s 9/11 and ours, it is again the children that underscore the magnitude of the tragedy. And I have to wonder, how long will we continue to allow this? How long will children needlessly suffer at the hands of men and women? What are we doing about it? What am I doing about it?

That child on Flight 77 could have been 3-year old Dana Falkenberg. Or her 8-year-old sister Zoe. Or 8-year-old Bernard Brown. Or 11-year-old Asia Cotton. Or 11-year-old Rodney Dickens. All on the same flight. She could have been 2-year-old Christine Hanson. Or 3-year-old David Brandharts, or 4-year-old Juliana McCourt. All on United Flight 175. She could have been 2-year-old Teaspoon, one of the children we have lost to AIDS and TB. She could have been Princess, another child senselessly murdered. She could have been one of the millions of children lost every year to poverty, violence, neglect, indifference.

And indeed, it is the very person that little girl – all of these children – could have been if given the chance that makes this day so much more tragic. Had I been on that flight, I would have had 32 years of life to be grateful for. To die would have been a horrific tragedy, but at least I could have thanked God for all that He had given me over those 32 years – especially a beautiful wife and, at that time, three wonderful children. 32 would have been a tragedy. 3 is simply unspeakable.

But what we do – or indeed don’t do – with this is the key. We can react in anger. We can cry. We can pursue justice. We can just move on, indifferently. Or we can simply vow to do with our remaining years everything we can to give our children theirs. Right now, there is a three-year-old little girl in heaven. And she has too many friends there her age. My dream is that someday, 80 or 100 years from now, she’ll make a new friend. A friend who came home to his Father in his 80’s or 90’s, and can thank the little girl. Thank her because in her dying, she inspired someone to care about him. If in my years I can be even just a small part of making that dream a reality, it might just give me peace from the image.