ASHBURN, Va. — The sky was beyond a normal blue tint that morning. Its shade was … cerulean. Bad weather the day before had moved out quickly. It was one of the most beautiful mornings you could imagine, up and down the East Coast — what air traffic controllers call “severe clear.” The exquisite weather was perfect for flying.
Michael Jordan, then 38, woke up that morning in Chicago, after six months of shaking off rust and doubt, about to begin an improbable third act of his NBA life, this time playing with the Washington Wizards.
Dan Quinn, who turned 31 that morning, was a few months into his first NFL job, as a defensive assistant/quality control coach for the San Francisco 49ers, having gone to the West Coast that spring after a stint as defensive coordinator and D-line coach at Hofstra University.
Tress Way, then in the sixth grade, was in Mrs. O’Brien’s science class.
Jayden Daniels, then 8 months old, was likely cruising along the furniture in his family’s home in California.
All these years later, the 23rd commemoration of the Sept. 11 terror attacks (“anniversary” is not an appropriate word here) Wednesday was conducted in the appropriate places: at One World Trade Center, where the Twin Towers stood, before being destroyed by the al-Qaida terrorists who crashed planes into them; at the Pentagon, where terrorists crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the western side of the building; and in Somerset County, Pa., where the heroes of United Flight 93 finally perished, after giving up their lives to save the lives of people they had never met and would never know. The U.S. president and vice president, along with the former U.S. president, took part in the New York ceremonies.
The ceremonies were solemn, of course, but they did not rivet the country’s attention. The country, so different now from the one on that cerulean morning along the East Coast, noted the proceedings but was not engrossed by them.
This is not noted with rancor. Life goes on. It went on 23 years after Pearl Harbor and 23 years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The lessons from Sept. 11, 2001, like all lessons, begin to fade with time as the witnesses’ memories begin to dim and the symbols of the nation change. History can be riveting, but it is nonetheless static, two-dimensional.
“I think it’s just hard for guys that weren’t around to really understand what happened,” said Commanders linebacker Bobby Wagner, who was 11 that morning. “It would be like Vietnam (for me). Like, I know about it. But I wasn’t around and, probably, the people who would tell me about it aren’t around, either.
“So with this, I was in the sixth grade, I believe. I was in science class or social studies. And I remember turning the TV on … and I remember watching the second plane. It’s an age thing. It’s on us to remind the guys what actually happened and how many people sacrificed and lost their lives, things of that nature.”
Washington, of course, was one of the cities most impacted by 9/11. Flight 93, according to other terrorists involved in the plot, was supposed to crash into the U.S. Capitol. The terrorists who hijacked Flight 77, which took off from Dulles at 8:20 a.m., were supposed to crash into the White House but couldn’t locate it from the air, so they targeted the easy-to-identify Pentagon instead.
Though the young heads on this year’s Commanders squad understand that more than 3,000 people died that morning, the lessons of 9/11 hit them in other ways.
“My parents were telling me before that you could just walk up to your gate at the airport, stuff like that,” Daniels said. “But now, me growing up, you see TSA, you see things like that.”
It is early in another NFL season, and Washington has its home opener this Sunday in what is now called Northwest Stadium, against the New York Giants, in Quinn’s first season as head coach here. Yet there were 9/11 reminders to the players, many of whom — 34 of the 52 on the active roster — were younger than 5 on that awful September morning. (Safety Jeremy Reaves had just turned 5 a couple of weeks prior.)
Honor. Remember. Reflect. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/F2uOgMPsXS
— Washington Commanders (@Commanders) September 11, 2024
One of the messages on the big electronic board in the facility flashed, “We Will Never Forget” with pictures from that day. And Quinn, who turned 54 Wednesday morning, made 9/11 part of his message to the team before practice. He understood that day is no longer front of mind. But he wanted his team to understand what had happened.
It was not quite 6 a.m. that morning in California when Quinn’s wife, Stacey, who was in New York to train her replacement at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy before moving west to meet her husband, called him. She told him to turn on the TV.
“And so (I) kinda explained to the team today, 15 minutes after the first (tower was struck), the next one was hit,” Quinn said. “Then I talked about the flight from Dulles, where we leave from, to go to the Pentagon. Then, another 30 minutes after that, to Pennsylvania. And the thing I probably remember about being at (work) … it wasn’t about football after that.
“You guys know that week was canceled, and that was the last thing on our mind. But I do remember after that how long it took for flights to go back up. And much like here, where we would see flights go and you’d hear them all the time going to Dulles, I imagine it was the same here, where practice was quiet. And where the (49ers’) training facility was in Santa Clara in San Francisco, the same San Jose airport was really close, and I remember how quiet it was at practice and when we got back to football the week after that.”
That morning in class, as Way sat at his desk, Mrs. O’Brien wheeled a TV set into her class.
“She turned on the news,” Way recalled. “And I remember her saying, ‘You guys will remember this the rest of your life.’ People’s parents were coming to get them from school. And then we saw the second plane hit and heard about the Pentagon. I know it sounds cliched, but I’ll never forget being in science class and that happening.”
If you are a certain age, then, the memories are locked in forever. But they are the memories of an older generation. The next generation has its own realities, its own issues that shape how it views the world.
“Just like they’ll probably have the same thing with their kids, and their kids’ kids, about COVID,” Wagner said. “And they’ll be like, ‘What? You had to wear a mask? That’s not a big deal. Who cares?’” Wagner said. “There’s always certain moments where they won’t understand how we feel until they’re trying to explain COVID to somebody, how everything got shut down, when the water turned clear and you found out what the earth really is supposed to look like.”
It was a beautiful, warm day in Ashburn on Wednesday afternoon. The sky was mostly clear — not cerulean, but blue. Wispy clouds were here and there. A plane, from nearby Dulles, had just taken off. It was a beautiful afternoon for flying.
(Photo of Dan Quinn: Kirby Lee / USA Today)
