You may not believe me when I say that I remember where I was when it happened. At the time, my mother ran a daycare. I was in pre-k, but that day I was home. We were playing in the dining room: me, my little sister, and some of the daycare kids. I was wearing my favorite dress-up dress, and it was unzipped in the back. I found my dad in the living room, sitting on the couch in silence. I stood in front of him and faced the television, hoping that he'd zip up the costume for me. Instead, I watched with him as the Twin Towers fell onto the city below.
At the time, I didn't understand what it meant. All I knew was that something bad was happening in New York City, one-hundred and eighty-something miles away from my hometown. What I did understand, however, was the sorrow in my father's eyes. If you know my dad, he's not a quiet man. He loves to laugh and goof around. He's a very charismatic character, and it's hard to keep him quiet sometimes, it's just who he is. On the occasion that I see him cry, or even just desperately hesitant, my heart shatters a little. There I was as a four-year-old girl knowing something seriously bad must have happened for my father to look so broken by what was happening on the television.
The events on September 11, 2001, changed the United States. It weakened our belief in the safety of every US citizen, it made national security so pertinent, and it put the USA in a position of war. For my family, it changed the meaning of what my father does for a living: professional firefighting. Every three days, my dad goes to work in Anne Arundel County, Md. for a twenty-four-hour shift as a Captain of a fire station. His station is close enough to the Chesapeake Bay that they are in charge of the fire boats. He willingly puts his life on the line when something goes up in flames, on land or on water.
343 firefighters were lost that day, among the countless other victims. My father visited New York City about six months after it happened to attend the funeral of a Mr. Durrell V. Pearsall Jr. If you look at the pictures of his trip, you see Ground Zero still burning in the depths of the rubble. Six months later, and the coals were still burning red hot.
Unknowingly, Mr. Pearsall has left a lasting impact on my family. In 2012, my family made a trip up to New York City. Little theatre-nerd me was super excited to see "RENT" off-Broadway, and my little sister was pretty hyped up about Chinatown. Though NYC offers endless possibilities, I know we were all the readiest to visit Ground Zero. We toured the Ten House, or Station Ten. It was the first fire station in New York to get to the scene, being just around the corner. The Ten House is home to the 9/11 museum, where several artifacts are stored to tell the story of what happened that day. Mutilated gears of the firefighters that were lost sit in cases, paper cranes from China hang on the walls. You look at pieces of the buildings, of the planes, and of people's lives and you're bound to break down. We all cried, especially my father.
We continued to sniffle as we made our way to take a tour of the Ground Zero memorial. We found ourselves waiting outside the station, along the wall that faces the memorial. Along this wall is a mural of the event, along with the names of the 343 men and women who responded to the cries of help. Dad looked down, and there was the name of Mr. Pearsall. Of those 343 names, we found the one my father was most familiar with without even trying. The same thing happened in the memorial. We found ourselves looking into the reflecting pools and down at the name Darrell V. Pearsall Jr. looking back up at us.
I couldn't imagine if I were to have gone to the Ground Zero memorial that day and instead be looking at my father's name. Being the brave, kind soul he is, I know he would've gone to help if he could have. A lot of firefighters would have. September 11th isn't just a day of tragedy for the United States; it's especially one of tragedy for the Firefighter and First Responder community.
Fifteen years later, we have started teaching children about 9/11 as historic. They weren't alive to see the broken faces of their parents that day. Fifteen years later, the children who lost their parents to the dangers of the ruins are now young adults. Fifteen years later, I still look up to my father and remember what we were both doing when the Twin Towers fell.
One day I'll take my own kids to the Ground Zero Memorial with my father in tow, and I can show them Mr. Pearsall's name and say "Look at Grandpa's guardian angel." I'll show them all 343 of the names of first responders and tell them how those men and woman tried to save all of the other names on the memorials, and how they paid the ultimate sacrifice for our country. I'll take them to Washington, D.C. and the crash site in Pennsylvania and show them that New York wasn't the only place where someone tried to tear down the United States. Then, I'll show them the American Flag flying high in the sky to remind them that the United States rose from the ashes.
