Out of the clear blue.

My Dear Fellow Patriots;

Days that you remember for the rest of your life come out of the blue, just like those two jets on a crisp September morning ten years ago. The memories leave you permanently altered; a portion of your brain is scarred with the tragedy - a permanent repository for the disbelief, the horror, the sadness and the anger.

So when we hear the words “never forget” it is a warning most of us don’t need, simply because we are incapable of forgetting that day and that date, and will forever remember the last moments of existence for those two towers. When they were built, gleaming steel thrusting skyward as a monument to American capabilities and American exceptionalism, such was their majesty that they redefined the skyline of the greatest city in the world. We let our guard down and paid a terrible price.

But in the end they were just steel and glass and mortar, and we would sacrifice a thousand of those buildings if it could bring back just one human being we lost that day. If it could bring back a single bond trader, or busboy, or secretary, or flight attendant, or maintenance worker, or banker, or cop or fireman; a son, a daughter, a mommy or a daddy, a dear friend or a total stranger. If we could reclaim just one, just one, there is no material possession we would not offer in sacrifice - because in the end, the spark of life given to us by our Creator has a value that is beyond calculation and cannot be balanced on any scale.

Each of us uses the occasion of the anniversary of that day to cope in his own way - and damn those who presume to tell us how to feel, what to think, or to dedicate this day to “service.” And damn those who tell us that we cannot fly the American flag alone in commemoration of this attack on United States soil, that we must fly the flags of many nations, that we must be reminded that we are part of a “global” community. I am not interested in your politically-correct spew - least of all on this day.

I am interested in the cars that sat in a parking lot at a ferry terminal for days, the keys that would start them having taken a horrific journey from a high floor to the ground; eventually to be transported by truck to a final resting place in a burial mound near a body of water known as the Arthur Kill.

And I will reflect upon the barbarians that committed the deed, who fired the opening salvo in this existential war, whose deranged brains triggered filthy tongues into shouting the two words which I will not repeat, but which exposed them as beasts in service to a monstrous strain of religion. Just as there are no words that will return to us the innocents whom these animals destroyed, there are no words to describe the hell in which they must now dwell.

And today I will vow again that they will not beat us, they will never defeat us.

And finally, although a small man has decided that a memorial ceremony to thousands of dead innocents is not a proper place for prayer, I hope we will all speak to God today in our own way. I, for one, will thank Him for my humanity, my free will, and for blessing me with the greatest gift of all - the gift of being born free in the United States of America.

Yours in Liberty,

Frank Santarpia
Staten Island, NY