September 11th 2001 Reflection

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On September 11th, 2001, an event so traumatic would occur that would alter the lives of the world’s population with the terrorist actions of Al Qaeda against the civilian population of the United States. On this tragic day, 2973 people had died in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, as well as in the 4 hijacked planes that were used to crash into these buildings. Such an attack on American soil had not been seen since Pearl Harbor, which left Americans, as well as the rest of the world, confused and scared as to what would happen from these events. In memory of this tragedy, September 11th exhibits, such as the one in Albany, have found themselves throughout the nation in hopes of reminding those who see them to what happened, remembering the dead, and all of those who risked their lives to save people from the wreckage. From my experience at the museum on November 23rd, I found myself experiencing a strong patriotic feel from the exhibit, as well as holding back tears from what was left afterwards. At the exhibit in memorial of the September 11th attack, there was a collection of items from the actual towers, as well as items left in honor of their lost loved ones. …show more content…
When I first arrived at the museum I had found the World Trade Center Family Trailer which had been installed at the World Trade Center in the summer of 2002 by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as a way for the families of the victims of the attacks could recover and remember what had happened. In this trailer (known as the “family room” to the victims) there was a variety of newspapers, letters, pictures, flags, stuffed animals and NYPD memorabilia. After leaving the trailer, I visited the actual exhibit for 9/11, which contained letters written from the families of the victims, a timeline of events on September 11th, steel from one of the towers, information on the cleaning up of the rubble and Engine 6 from the NYFD which was one of the first firetrucks on sight, which got decommissioned due to being crushed by falling debris. From all of the memorial items at the exhibit, the timeline of all of the events with quotes felt to have the most impact on me as it put all the events into perspective for me, as it began at 6:30 am September 11th and continued on until 6:33 am September 12th. From this timeline I was able to feel the proper shock and awe of seeing as all of these events, which seem too bizarre to actual having occurred, had all happened in one devastating day. While the burnt steel, the crushed firetruck and the trailer full of memories of the dead had been shocking, seeing that it all happened on an otherwise normal day helped impact me. Through and through, I believe that the overall message that this exhibit was intending to show was to remember the fallen, honor the fallen, and unify ourselves from preventing this from happening again. Within the exhibit, I had noticed a great deal of newspapers being used as actual “artifacts” of the attack to help make the events seem more “real” and “heartbreaking”. Such articles that I had found were “US ATTACKED”, “AMERICA’S DARKEST DAY”, “America under attack”, and “UNTHINKABLE” which had helped to illustrate the feeling of dread surrounding the nation following this attack, as well as each portraying a sense of patriotic unity between the country. As well as having the newspapers being preserved as artifacts in the trailer, I also saw a television broadcast taken at the time following how the FBI and EPA had collaborated to clean up Ground Zero which had added to the feeling of despair following the catastrophe. One thing I found interesting between the articles was that the articles had presented this story using headlines such as “Savage slaughter takes horrific toll,” “‘This is the second Pearl Harbor’” and “Hijacked jets destroy Twin Towers and hit Pentagon in Day of Terror”; which while all sounding entirely sounding different, had all shown this attack as the horrible atrocity it was, by usage of words generally not used in ‘neutral’ reporting. From this word usage,

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