What Does Never Forget Mean Now?

Last week, on the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001, I shared a song I had written called “We Promised We’d Never Forget.”

The title came from something all of us heard over and over in the days, weeks and months after the attacks. We said we would never forget the 2,977 people who were killed. We would never forget the firefighters and police officers climbing stairs while everyone else was trying desperately to get out. We would never forget the passengers and crew of Flight 93 who fought back. We would never forget the Pentagon, the smoke over Manhattan, the families waiting for telephone calls that never came, and the terrible realization that an ordinary Tuesday morning had changed America forever.

We promised.

If you missed the song last week, I have included it again above in this newsletter. I hope you'll take a few minutes to listen, because this closing message really begins where that song ends.

After the reaction I received to “We Promised We’d Never Forget,” I started thinking more deeply about those words.

What exactly does “never forget” mean 25 years later?

It certainly means remembering the people who died. Last week, I printed all 2,977 names in this newsletter because I wanted them to be more than a number. Every one of those names belonged to somebody who had plans for that evening, somebody who had people waiting at home, somebody who expected September 11 to be followed by September 12.

It means remembering the first responders and the courage we witnessed that day. It means remembering the people aboard Flight 93 who realized what was happening and decided they were not going to sit quietly while innocent people were killed. It means remembering the volunteers, the blood donors, the people who worked at Ground Zero and the families who somehow found a way to keep going.

But I think “never forget” has to mean something more than remembering the events themselves.

Most of us who were adults on September 11 remember exactly where we were when we first heard something had happened in New York. We remember turning on the television and seeing images that didn't make sense at first because there was nothing in our experience that prepared us to understand what we were watching.

For us, September 11 doesn't feel like history.

We lived it.

But that's changing.

A child born on September 11, 2001, is now 25 years old. There are adults working, raising families and making their way through life today who have absolutely no personal memory of the attacks. To them, September 11 occupies the same kind of place in history that Pearl Harbor did when I was young. They know it happened. They may have studied it in school. They have seen photographs and video.

But they weren't there.

At first, there's something unsettling about realizing that. Then I remind myself that it isn't their fault and it isn't even a problem. That's simply what time does. I talked to two teachers on the air last week wondering if they taught kids about the events of that day. Both said they did and one was passionate about it, you could just tell.

The responsibility belongs to those of us who do remember. We have to tell them.

And I don't think we should tell only the story of four hijacked airplanes and buildings coming down. We need to tell them what happened afterward too, because I believe that may be the part of September 11 we're in the greatest danger of forgetting.

For a while, America changed.

People put flags on houses that had never had flags before. Strangers spoke to one another. Churches filled. Blood banks had lines out the door. People called relatives they hadn't spoken to in too long. Police officers and firefighters were thanked by people walking past them on the street.

For a little while, we stopped asking what divided us and remembered what connected us.

Nobody running out of the World Trade Center asked the firefighter running toward him whether he was a Republican or a Democrat.

The passengers aboard Flight 93 didn't stop to compare political opinions before deciding what they had to do.

A stranger helping another stranger didn't ask where he was born, what he did for a living, how much money he made or which television network he watched.

None of those things mattered.

For one terrible moment in our history, America was reminded with brutal clarity that some things are much bigger than the arguments that consume us on ordinary days.

That thought found its way into my song: “We Promised We’d Never Forget.”

When I wrote the song, I wasn't trying simply to describe what happened on September 11. There are documentaries and books that can do that far better than a song ever could. I wanted to remember how the country felt, what we lost, what we saw in one another and the promise we made afterward.

The response to the song told me I wasn't the only person who still feels that way. Many of you wrote to me after hearing it. Some told me you cried. Some told me where you were that morning. Others shared memories of people you knew or stories from your own families. What struck me most was how personal September 11 remains for so many people after a quarter-century.

But emotion by itself isn't enough to keep a promise.

If “never forget” means only becoming emotional once a year when we see the old television footage, then we've made the promise too small.

Maybe never forgetting means remembering the courage without needing another tragedy to show it.

Maybe it means remembering that the police officer, firefighter or paramedic we pass today is still willing to run toward something the rest of us would run from.

Maybe it means remembering that the stranger beside us is still our neighbor, even when we disagree.

Maybe it means flying the flag on September 12 too.

Maybe it means calling the person we've been meaning to call, helping somebody who can't repay us, forgiving something that really isn't worth carrying for another year, or simply treating one another with a little more grace than the world seems to encourage these days.

None of that requires us to pretend we agree about everything. We didn't agree about everything on September 10, 2001, either. We simply discovered the next morning that some disagreements weren't nearly as important as we had imagined.

Twenty-five years is long enough for memories to fade. Another 25 will pass faster than any of us want to admit. On the 50th anniversary of September 11, I will not be here to see it, and there will be far fewer people around who remember watching that second airplane hit the South Tower in real time.

Eventually, everyone who personally remembers September 11 will be gone. That's how history works. Which means the promise we made cannot depend entirely on memory. It has to become something we pass along.

That's why I printed the names last week. That's why I wrote the song. That's why I am talking about it again this week.

I want somebody who wasn't alive on September 11 to understand that those 2,977 people weren't simply victims in a history lesson. I want them to know what firefighters did in those towers, what happened aboard Flight 93, what families endured, and what ordinary Americans did for each other afterward.

Most of all, I want them to understand why millions of us said the same thing after the smoke began to clear:

We promised we'd never forget.

If you haven't heard the song, please scroll back up in this newsletter and listen to “We Promised We’d Never Forget.” And if you have heard it already, maybe listen one more time with a slightly different thought in mind. Share it with someone you love or a co-worker.

Not simply, “Do I remember September 11?”

Ask yourself, “What am I supposed to remember from it?” Maybe keeping the promise was never supposed to mean thinking about September 11 every day for the rest of our lives. That's impossible.

Maybe it means remembering what that day taught us about courage, sacrifice, freedom, family and one another, and refusing to let those lessons disappear when the memorial services end and the flags return to full staff.

Twenty-five years ago, we promised we'd never forget.

Now comes the harder part:

Remembering what we were supposed to remember.

Straight Talk and Honest Answers — always.

-Jerry