An 11th anniversary can be difficult to commemorate — it’s easy to forget an anniversary without a five or zero behind it.
Nevertheless, the unique and intriguing effects of 9/11 on the University make the date difficult to forget, even on an off year.
Over years of looking back to the event and further into its reverberations, we at The Reveille have spoken with numerous members of the Tiger community who directly witnessed and even influenced our country’s trial 11 years ago.
Take Rick Blackwood, associate English professor. Before 9/11 took place, Blackwood worked with the Pentagon preparing the United States for the next era of global warfare — whenever and however it may come.
“Of course they came up with something we’d never think of,” he told The Reveille last year.
And in a most twisted case of coincidence, Blackwood awoke on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, in Pearl Harbor to the news of another suicide attack.
But the most touching accounts came from students who moved to Baton Rouge from the northeast, carrying their memories with them.
Greg Giacopino, then a communication studies senior, gave us his account of the attacks in an interview last year. He was 17 at the time, and he could easily remember the day he was released from class early at his Coney Island high school to return home to his family.
Giacopino could remember the beautiful weather that day, the incessant rumors circulating around his high school and the eerie silence outside when he left.
Hearing from the men and women at the University who have felt the effects of September 11 so directly is a humbling exercise in understanding just how deeply the attacks affected our country and community.
And speaking with almost any international politics professor can also reveal the influence of the attacks abroad, considering the toppling of two governments in the aftermath, the death of Osama bin Laden and the decisions weighing in the minds of our leaders to intervene further into the politics of the Middle East.
With every passing year we can allow ourselves to rest evermore assured and secured.
As Professor Mark Gasiorowski told The Reveille in the days before 9/11’s 10th anniversary, Al-Qaida “is really just a shadow of what it once was.”
Just days ago, the U.S. government made new motions to isolate the Taliban-supporting Haqqani terrorist network in Pakistan, and only days before that Mark Bissonnette, Navy SEALs Team 6 member, made headlines for his account of the killing of bin Laden.
And the stunning One World Trade Center in Manhattan now stands 104 floors above Ground Zero.
According to the Associated Press, about 4.5 million people have visited the 9/11 memorial site sitting below the tower in Manhattan since it opened last year.
We are neither too far to forget nor too far to deem ourselves unaffected. The effects of the attacks run deep in our community, and with each year we should celebrate the progress of American culture since that tragic day.
On the eve of the 10th anniversary, Giacopino told The Reveille, “I would like people to remember the American spirit that followed.”
One struggles to find a more fitting and honorable commemoration.
