JUDGE'S COMMENTS: "Amid many clichéd responses to 9/11, this editorial was -- to use a cliché -- a breath of fresh air! Read almost a year later, (it) perfectly captures the heightened emotions, fears and confusions of 9/11 with fresh, personal writing. (It) should be kept, like a photograph, as capturing a piece of history. Bravo!"

(The following was first published Wednesday, September 19, 2001 on the editorial page of the Brown County Democrat weekly newspaper in Nashville, Indiana. It is Copyright © 2001 by Heartland Communications, Incorporated. All rights are reserved.)

THE BOTTOM LINES
Wherein, the staff of this newspaper gets the last word.

A father's concern for his children
brings new light to terror

Until Tuesday of last week (September 11, 2001), it had been more than four decades since the word "epicenter" meant much to me.

As a college freshman in 1959, I heard a geology professor marvel at epicenters as the focal points of such violent eruptions as volcanoes and earthquakes.

Fast-forward 42 years.

Last Tuesday morning, I heard television reporters and pundits begin describing the twin tallest of man's creations in New York City as a deadly new epicenter.

Fire and trembling were again at hand. And fear would follow.

Beyond numbing images on a glass tube, my vision and focus changed quickly. I became personally involved.

Certainly, I shared with millions and millions the horror provoked by the scenes at the World Trade Center.

The early call was that as many as 50,000 to 60,000 people were dying before my and your eyes.

Four times the population of Brown County, I calculated.

Still, as sympathetically-correct as this good, well-meaning, 21st Century American citizen is, I was safely removed.

The Big Apple's a long way from my comfortable bedroom in what the pioneers called "Peaceful Valley."

But travel down the East Coast from New York to Washington, D. C. and you get right next-door to my heart and soul.

My two married kids live there.

Yes, those little urchins who roamed the streets of Nashville with their unleashed mongrels more than a quarter century ago are married and now live and work in and around the nation's Capitol.

"Brown County has invaded The District," I have joked to friends.

Tuesday's third airborne terror followed them.

That epicenter, a shattered and blazing wall at The Pentagon, suddenly became dear to my heart. It stood precariously at my son's elbow and within my daughter's line of sight.

That little read-haired boy is seriously balding and works for the government.

His miniature sister (known in her Brown County childhood as "The Bug") has much gray in her hair and works 10 blocks from the White House.

My son's job sometimes takes him to The Pentagon, where the third hijacked hell-on-wings hit.

Being hundreds of miles away from them suddenly became a father's worst handicap.

There was nothing I could do but wait and, if I would allow myself to admit the danger, hope.

The Pentagon has one more side than each of the World Trade Center towers but not nearly as many floors.

One Pentagon wing was burning out of control. A television reporter described the offices it housed.

Nope, not that office, I thought. Nope, not that one. Not that one either.

Relief. I/we were spared.

Then, said the reporter, there was also a new office, recently established and devoted to a special kind of work.

A feeling beyond sinking -- complete deflation -- instantly drained me.

There, but only for a grace far beyond mine, would have been my 35-year-old little boy.

My mind raced and next created a fantastic personal nightmare: Suppose the terrorists had been steering the plane toward the White House instead of the Pentagon and fallen short of the President's home on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue. It would (not "could" or "might") have hit my daughter's office building.

Woe were we because I and my family could only lose. We were the terrorists' real target.

The phone rang. It was my daughter. She was okay.

Following a bomb threat, the building in which she worked had been evacuated. She was free to go home, but could not, since all roads there passed the Pentagon and had been closed to all but emergency traffic.

She had not heard from or about her brother, but would get back in touch with the first word she heard.

Back on television, a reporter was talking about a fourth hijacked plane's going down in rural Pennsylvania.

Speculation was that terrorists had been steering that airliner on a collision course with Camp David, the Maryland presidential retreat, or, perhaps, with the White House.

My whole afternoon went by in a quietly-hysterical fantasy. The first break came in another phone call.

My daughter had spoken with my son's wife. She had talked with people who used to work with him, and they believed he would not have been anywhere in the sprawling Pentagon at the time of the attack.

Did I believe this good news? Not really.

I wanted to hear the sound of his voice, the way I'd heard his sister's.

This parent wanted and needed irrefutable proof. Only that could bring me back from whatever distant and desperate place my heart and soul were visiting.

I never heard his voice.

But, a harrowing 24 hours after the first plane bashed the first tower, I read an Information Age equivalent in the following piece of overnight electronic mail:

"Feelin' fine."

And then came the keyboard rendition of a sideways smiling face:

" :-} "

That was all, but that was my son. I knew he, too, was okay. Other confirming e-mails would follow.

In them, he recounted he had been at the Pentagon in a relatively-safe location, had felt the rocking impact of the death plane, was otherwise unassaulted and had, with thousands of others, been evacuated.

He has been working day and night since, and, as this is written, nearly a week later, I still haven't heard the sound of his voice.

Is he the same?

I guarantee he is not. He, his sister and their family will never be the same.

In that respect, we'll be just like you and the rest of the world.
___________________________________________
Greg Temple, former longtime editor of The Democrat, is this newspaper's publisher and president of its parent company, Heartland Communications, Incorporated. Until last Tuesday, he had not felt real terror.

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