Remembering 9/11 is right thing to do

It's been six years, but if I close my eyes, the pictures come easily to mind.

The planes crashing into the World Trade Center. The Pentagon in flames. New Yorkers racing down the street, clouds of ash filling the sky behind them.

It has been called my generation's Pearl Harbor. A Zogby International poll, conducted Sept. 6-9, found 81 percent of the 938 people questioned see the 9/11 attacks as the most significant historical event of their lives.

Six years after almost 3,000 people — sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, people with the future bright ahead of them — the images are sharp in our minds.

I still hear phone ringing early that morning; a friend saying in stunned anguish, "They've attacked New York." I see myself, watching TV, as newscasters recount the first plane's crash, watching in horror as behind them a second plane comes into view on the monitor, heading toward the remaining tower.

In the Zogby poll, 83 percent say there should be some kind of formal recognition on Sept. 11 — a memorial, a moment of silence, something to honor the dead, the police officers and firefighters who died trying to save them and the soldiers who fight in their memory.

Bonner County residents will gather at 11:30 a.m. today at Jessie's Park in Ponderay to do just that. Organizers hoped to have it at City Beach, but Sandpoint officials told them the request came too late and denied the permit.

Rules are important, but sometimes exceptions for what is right are even more so.

It is our duty and our responsibility to remember — and to honor — those killed in the attacks.

Caroline Lobsinger is the managing editor of the Daily Bee.