Community memorial service remembers September 11, marking 15 years
“Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is despair, hope…”
Reverend Fernando Valasco of St. Thomas Acquinas Catholic Church opened the 9/11 memorial Friday evening with the calming words of the Peace Prayer. Heads bowed in fervor, the people of Cache Valley gathered in the Logan Tabernacle to remember the lives lost on that dreaded day, fifteen years ago.
Dr. John Carmen, a professor at Utah State University, recounted his experience that morning when he looked up from the safety of his taxicab to see the first plane strike the north tower of the World Trade Center at 8:45am, Sept 11th, 2001.
“The cab rocked back and forth with this horrendous noise,” he said. “It felt as though two football players were trying to tip us over… I was safe in that cab. I watched the nightmare unfold through a screen not unlike many of you.”
Carmen, a plant biologist, used the concept of evolution in order to heal and encouraged his audience to do the same. He admitted that for much of his adulthood, science and faith overlapped and came in conflict with one another. It seemed that in order to have a belief in the divine, one must forgo scientific reason. And similarly, in order to think scientifically, one must abandon the things of the heart. Chuckling over the tabernacle pulpit, he said, “Eventually I realized God is more concerned about my interactions amongst my fellow man, than he is about answering my questions.”
Carmen expressed that evolutionary thought, the idea that we are constantly evolving together with one another, can help ease our wounds. “It is humbling to accept that each of us is part of a greater human race,” Carmen said. “That there are three billion letters in our DNA code, and you are I are just sequences of that code. We are 99.9% identical, biologically, to every human that has ever lived. We are each equally capable of good and terrible things.”
Carmen related an experience of his before leaving Vienna, Austria for New York on Sept 8th, 2001. He accompanied his Egyptian friend, Mohammed, to what was known as the “Egypt House,” wherein Muslim men gathered to dine and socialize. He described the experience as “uplifting”; one he now feels lucky to have partaken in, given what was about to unfurl just days later.
His point being, one good experience can often save a man’s heart from hatred.
Upon arriving in New York on Sept 9th, Carmen began his stay at the Marriott located between the Twin Towers. He dined at the hotel’s Greenhouse Buffet, and upon telling this story, Carmen’s countenance grew nostalgic as he recalled the storm that ravaged New York that evening. Great, flashing bolts of lightening struck the towers’ rods and Carmen watched from below as the light penetrated the gathering rainclouds. “It was magnificent,” he said, softly. “Completely awe-inspiring.”
Twenty-four hours later, those towers would crumble; lost forever.
The morning of September 11th, 2001, Dr. John Carmen paid $14.95 for a small bowl of Raisin Bran and a banana at the Greenhouse Buffet. Pausing to stifle his growing emotion, Carmen told his audience that he still recalls seeing the time on his receipt: 8:35 a.m.
At 8:46 a.m, the north tower was struck, and Carmen looked up from his cab window to see three hundred men and women “instantly vaporized” on those upper floors. Flames billowed from the windows. His peers, stunned, watched from below blinking repeatedly, attempting to wake from the nightmare in which they were trapped.
When the towers collapsed in a cloud of rubble and smoke, Carmen felt the overwhelming “survivor’s guilt.” He recounted how instinctive his behavior became as he fled the chaos, tipping over a stand of crates in order to block the street and protect himself from the approaching crowd. “Whether or not someone survives in that situation is a little like watching rain fall,” he said. There is no rhyme or reason to what saves one person and dooms another.
Fleeing the city and finding refuge in a friend’s New Jersey home, Carmen was without belongings, transportation or communication. The Marriott was no more, and flights everywhere were canceled. He bought some clothing, a suitcase and rented a car, which drove him across the country and back home to his wife. Adorning every bridge, building, avenue and tunnel, American flags were flying; their bright, crimson stripes dancing in the breeze with unaffected strength.
Carmen remarked that the fourth-grade daughter of his New Jerseyan friend came home from school, only to give her parents the heartbreaking news that seventeen children had lost a parent that day. Five had lost both.
Reverend Derek Forbes’ closing remarks reminded his listeners that no one escapes being wounded in this life. He earnestly plead with us to make it our mission to become “wounded healers.” That is, made whole by our scars and together in sorrow. Because we are better together, even in mourning, than we are alone in seclusion.
Carmen’s counsel encouraged his listeners not to be so arrogant as to think that they are “above those trying to annihilate us from afar.” He urged we not “switch off our humanity”, insisting that we could never inflict such destruction, us being above them. Carmen’s hope for the healing of the world stems from forgiveness, kindness, and education. And above all, “that we remember what it is to be human.”
Closing with a prayer, Reverend Forbes of the First Presbyterian Church offered the following:
“You’ve created us for love. Show us how. May we see the divine spark in one another, Lord. We pray for better days ahead. May we set our hearts and feet forward and move toward a lasting peace.”
@viviangates29