Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Date of 9-11 will forever serve as wakeup call

Americans united in a grim moment Tuesday, equalling or surpassing historic events that defined past generations.

Older residents remember the sudden reality of World War II coming through their radios, when, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Franklin D. Roosevelt declared Dec. 7, 1941, a "day which will live in infamy."

Baby boomers can define the exact time and place they learned of John F. Kennedy's assassination and the stunned silence that befell a nation.

Generation Xers -- often described as apathetic -- were still schoolchildren when President Ronald Reagan was shot and when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded.

But Sept. 11, 2001, is already being described, with the 9-11 of the date's abbreviation, as a wakeup call for the country.

"This is going to affect the psyche of America for many years," said Ron Smith, Sociology Department chairman at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "It shows how capable (terrorists) are and how defenseless and vulnerable we are."

While Pearl Harbor spurred an estimated 1 million Americans to enlist in the armed forces, Tuesday's attacks in New York City and outside Washington, D.C., left the average resident with few options and what President Bush described as a "quiet, unyielding anger."

Peter Ruchman, general manager of the Gambler's Book Shop in Las Vegas, felt that passion after seven hours of hellish attempts on Tuesday to reach his father, who works at the World Trade Center.

A bookkeeper at Ruchman's shop mentioned the attacks early Tuesday morning, sending Ruchman scrambling to the television for pictures and to the phone to try to locate his father, Norman, a 79-year-old who has worked in the financial arena for six decades.

Hours of calls to relatives proved fruitless. Then Norman phoned Peter Ruchman himself to report how he walked down 36 flights of stairs and all the way to midtown Manhattan after watching people jump to their deaths from the collapsing Twin Towers.

"I was never so happy to hear someone's voice," Ruchman said. "He was right there. He saw the whole thing happening."

Even casting his personal fear aside, Ruchman said nothing in his memory compares with Tuesday's events.

"There's no parallel," he said. "There's nothing. This was unprecedented. The entire scope of this is unheard of, and I hope we don't sit on our hands."

Smith, an organizational theorist, had a full class Tuesday to discuss the effectiveness of the attack from an organizational standpoint.

"It appears to be something that we're not going to be able to stop," Smith said of the attacks.

Matt Wray, an assistant professor of sociology at UNLV who specializes in race and ethnic relations, notes that some of the language expressed in televised coverage of the attacks proved shallow.

"I heard about senseless acts of terrorism by madmen," Wray said. "That's an unfortunate and easy way to console ourselves.

"We were bombed for a reason."

If anything positive emerges from Tuesday's loss of lives and a national sense of security, Wray said, it will be to alert younger generations to the effects of U.S. policy on the world.

Rather than pointing fingers and looking for revenge, Smith said, Americans should look within themselves for answers.

"They attacked the crowning symbol of U.S. capitalism," Wray said. "When we jump to the conclusion that this is unspeakable acts of madmen, it ignores the sentiments many people have about America."

The estimated thousands of deaths Tuesday could surpass those lost in other single-day events, such as Pearl Harbor, D-Day and the bloodiest previous moment, the Battle of Antietam in 1862 -- etching Sept. 11, 2001, as one of the darkest days in American history.

Its impact could also eclipse other modern historical events.

Smith, 57, was watching television with 20 fraternity brothers at Southeast Missouri State when he learned of Kennedy's death.

On Tuesday Smith was on his way to work when his wife called his cell phone with news of the attack.

"This is one event that will be remembered," Smith said. "There's nothing in my lifetime that compares."

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