PACKET EDITORIAL, Sept. 14
By: Packet Editorial
Where were you when …?
For Americans of a certain age, it was the attack on Pearl Harbor. Then the assassination of President Kennedy. Then the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.
These are our historic milestones the cataclysmic events that came to mark the defining moments of succeeding generations, and remain forever etched in the minds of those who lived through them.
But as the enormity of what happened Tuesday morning continues to sink in, it is becoming apparent that none of our earlier benchmarks not Dec. 7, 1941, not Nov. 22, 1963, not Jan. 28, 1986 left an entire nation, if not the entire world, as shocked, stunned and horrified as the events that unfolded on Sept. 11, 2001.
The destruction of not one but both towers of the World Trade Center struck head-on, 18 minutes apart, by hijacked commercial jetliners, then crumbling like cardboard into the streets of lower Manhattan is mind-numbing. The kamikaze-like attack on the Pentagon by a third hijacked plane which may, in fact, have been bound for the White House still seems unreal, a preposterous scenario lifted from the pages of a Tom Clancy novel. The bone-chilling images of this terrorist attack on American soil the enormous fireball when the second jet hit, people jumping hundreds of feet to their deaths, families frantically looking for their loved ones, rescue workers weeping amid the rubble will never be erased from our memory.
For most of us here in the Princeton area, New York is just far enough away for Tuesday’s attack, and its aftermath, to be principally a television event, one sadly but safely viewed from the comfort of our homes. But for many area residents, this is no small-screen drama; it is a real-life horror. Commuters arriving in Princeton Junction late Tuesday with soot still clinging to their clothes, worshippers in area churches and synagogues praying for the safe return of others still unaccounted for, families mourning the death of loved ones buried beneath the World Trade Center ruins or killed aboard one of the hijacked planes these are our friends and neighbors, and their anguish touches everyone in our community.
And when the dust literally clears, when that great gray curtain of smoke finally lifts from lower Manhattan, when the Broadway theaters re-open, when the Yankees and Mets are playing again, when life has returned to normal (if, indeed, it ever does), we’ll drive back up to New York, or take the Suburban Transit bus or the NJ Transit train, and we’ll gaze out the window at a new and unfamiliar skyline a painful visual reminder of the devastation that has left an immense void where those gleaming twin towers used to be.
As journalists, we are trained to be disinterested observers of events, to check our emotions at the door when we cross the threshold, however unpleasant, of a breaking news story. But we’re not ashamed to say that more than a few tears were shed in this newsroom Tuesday, and that assembling today’s edition of The Packet is one of the most difficult tasks we have ever encountered.
In the days and weeks to come, there will be many more stories to tell stories of great joy and abject sorrow, of unthinkable evil and uncommon goodness, of extraordinary heroism and unimaginable suffering. When all is said and done, there is little doubt that Tuesday’s attack on America will be covered more comprehensively than any other event in human history. For the moment, however, we are certain of only one immutable fact: Sept. 11, 2001, is a date none of us will ever forget.

