21 Years Later

TigerBlog went to put his new chair down on the beach Saturday afternoon when he noticed a woman about 10 feet away who was glaring at him.

What was the issue? He couldn't figure it out. Maybe it was his "Princeton Lacrosse" shirt? Was she a hater? 

Eventually, TB moved further away. Then, about 30 minutes later, he noticed that the woman was yelling at a different guy who had sat down where TB was before. This time, the man yelled back at her. Then they both turned the other way.

At one point, TB walked up to the guy to ask what had happened, and he said she felt he had the whole beach and why did he have to sit so close to her, even though he was nowhere near her. As it turned out, though, the guy was a Princeton fan, a football season ticket holder for that matter. 

He and TB spoke for awhile about the Tigers, about his seats, about his former career as a pilot for United. Nice guy.

This is a great time of year to be at the Jersey Shore. It's post-Labor Day, so the crowds are mostly gone. The weather is perfect — and it was especially so on Saturday, when it was sunny and 80 degrees with a cooling breeze off the ocean.

It was a day at the beach. Yesterday was not. 

Those two sentences are literal and figurative.

Saturday was Sept. 10. For TigerBlog, it's always a bit of a surreal day, a reminder of what the world used to be like. 

Yesterday was Sept. 11. That's always a day to remember when the world changed.

It's been 21 years now since nearly 3,000 people died in the terrorist attacks in New York City, at the Pentagon and in western Pennsylvania. It's hard to believe that most of the current Princeton students weren't even born yet on the day of the attacks.

When TigerBlog was flying back from North Carolina last weekend with the field hockey team, he explained to the freshmen that before 9/11, anyone could go up to the gate simply by walking through the metal detector. If you were meeting someone who was flying in, you could stand at the gate and see them as they got off the plane.

It's a world they never knew. 

This is what TB's memory of 9/11/2001 is, something he's written many times before:

He was dropping off TigerBlog Jr. at the University League Nursery School, on the far side of the parking lot outside Jadwin. It was the most perfect weather day, crystal clear, sunshine, no humidity, not a cloud to be found.

TB dropped TBJ off at the school, and the woman who was the office manager said that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center.

TigerBlog walked outside, looked up, and thought "how in the world did that happen?" By the time he got to Jadwin, he found out how.

Most of that day was spent huddled around the only television around, the one in the athletic training room in Caldwell Field House. It was a day where people spoke very little, where everyone had dazed looks on their faces.

By mid-afternoon, he went back to get TBJ at the nursery school. He can still see the children, swinging on the swings, playing in a sandbox, oblivious - happily oblivious - to what had happened to the innocence of the world outside that playground.

Later that night, after it was dark, TigerBlog walked outside to the end of his driveway and looked up. There were no planes in the sky. They'd all been grounded. TB remembers it vividly, the sight of the stars, without planes, above a world of confusion, angst, uncertainty, fear.

In fact, when TB got to Jadwin that day, the first person he saw was John Mack, now the Ford Family Director of Athletics and then in his first year of working in the department. 

There were 14 Princetonians who were killed on 9/11. There were hundreds more who were near Ground Zero when it all happened.

One of those who died was men's lacrosse player John Schroeder. TB wrote about him a year ago on the 20th anniversary.

When TB went to meet with John's father Jack, he was struck by the American flag that hangs in his kitchen. The stripes are composed with the names of every person who was killed that day.

It's an overwhelming thing to see them all there and to imagine all of their stories. And, each time the anniversary roles around, there are people who mark another year without them.

Sept. 10 is the last day of innocence.

Sept. 11 is the day it all changed. It's a day that always needs remembrance, and reverence.