Remembering 9/11 - 2001 Marine Corps Marathon Remembered – Part 1

     I orginally wrote this blog back in July 2009 as I prepared to run the Marine Corps Marathon for the fourth time.  As time had started to fade some of peoples' emotional memories, I knew that I had to help rekindle them so that we would not let ourselves fall into complacency about the terrorist threats.  Yes, I grew up in New York City, and I was born in Virginia, just outside D.C. 

Remembering 9/11

- 2001 Marine Corps Marathon Remembered – Part 1

“He never felt so alive, he never felt so afraid…,” a lyric from Sugarland captures the essence of a race and event that never mattered so much for almost everybody who participated in the race.  It is a race that strikes the same emotional chords as that day in February 1980 when the Miracle on Ice that reawakened American patriotism. It took place six weeks after the tragedy of 9/11 on October 28th, and its course went around the Pentagon, and right past the blown out section of it.  Not since 1980 have I heard a spontaneous and proud chant of “U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!”   Anybody who ran that race shares an unspoken bond that has been difficult to articulate beyond mere adjectives. Attempts to organize the thoughts merely get lost in emotion.  Well, it is right occasion to share this experience with everybody else, before time takes a greater toll on the memories of this incredible day.

           

            Stepping to exit the bus on Friday October 26^th with my Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Team in Training teammates of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society in front of the Grand Hyatt in Arlington, Virginia, it felt like we were on a mission that the legendary NFL Films’ voice John Facenda would have described with heroic grandiosity.  This should not have mission of such magnitude, because the people who knew best, and cared the most about protecting our country had not been able to defend to defend it in the best way possible since 1977. 

            The reality of the veracity of my feelings was quickly removed from my thoughts soon after I stepped off the bus, and saw my parents and dad’s best friend from the company at lunch.  The anger from my dad, directed at both the terrorists and Jimmy Carter as we drove past the blown out section of the Pentagon, is something that I will never forget.  It stemmed from the fact that this attack should never have happened.  Jimmy Carter decided to remove the agency’s effectiveness in removing potential threats to our country.   I was privileged to see two company veterans get together, and talk about what might have been.  That scenario included a country with the World Trade Center, a whole Pentagon and field in Shanksville, PA, and most importantly a country that felt safe and in whom whose neighborhoods had not been touched by terrorism.

            What does the 2001 Marine Corps Marathon have to Vinings?  People who live here ran that race.  They saw and told about the personal affects of 9/11.  Runners wore names and pictures of those that died that day.  Restaurants in the Northern Virginia, D.C. area had pictures of patrons who lost their lives as a result of this inexcusable lapse in our self-defense.

            While the terrorists may have won a battle, they lost a war.  Vinings and all of the United States of America is a great place to live.