Remembering that horrible day

The Semper Fi Sisters are a reminder.

A reminder that 9/11 is hardly over.

The Semper Fi Sisters return next month to the postcard paradise we call home to relax, gab and generally forget, at least for a few days, the heightened potential for one of the women to get that knock on the door that anyone would dread telling them a loved one is not coming home.

Actually, this group has become much more than the Semper Fi Sisters. Over the past three years, their annual gathering in Gulf County, called the Beach Blast, has broadened from a dozen or so Marine moms to wives, girlfriends, sisters, aunts and grandmothers of enlisted men of all branches.

The Marine moms have opened their arms just as the community opened its arms to them, welcoming those with loved ones in the Army, Air Force and Navy.

But at this time when the country is reminded 24/7 on stations around the television dial that 10 years ago America suffered the worst attack on native soil in history, these moms, aunts, wives, sisters and grandmothers can relate that story far more personally than the talking heads.

They will remind that 10 years after America lost nearly 4,000 lives that number has tripled in the wars that followed 9/11, leaving aside a count of the wounded and maimed.

They can remind that 10 years after the country was deeply scarred at its symbolic core, downtown Manhattan, the country’s business district, and the Pentagon, the country’s defense headquarters, men and women still come home with scars borne of battle with no promise of healing in 10 years, 20 years.

They are a reminder that while no one with memory of that fall day when sunshine turned to ash, dust and blood will ever forget, this circle of life and death that has been the cost of the freedoms on which this country was founded and which we enjoy today is a bill paid in blood.

For many of a certain generation, all that really separates 9/11 from Pearl Harbor of seven decades ago is the technology of media.

In 1941 the country could not tune in as Katie Couric, Ann Curry and Matt Lauer tried to explain to viewers what was happening as planes bombed and laid waste to the country’s largest naval installation.

Pearl Harbor, in fact, was located in some exotic locale that would not become a part of a state until nearly 20 years would go by.

But the iconic black and white photograph of the U.S.S. Arizona engulfed in flames and smoke as thousands were buried in a watery grave, the grainy newsreel images of that carnage is, for many of a certain generation, just as stark and real a reminder of what a dangerous world it can be in which to hold on to those freedoms.

And Gulf County has lived this legacy, a legacy of which a chapter, a jarring and reality-shaking chapter indeed, is being recognized this week.

As the monuments at the county courthouse and Port St. Joe city hall attest, the county has sent its young off to fight and die since wars and Gulf County were first linked together in the 20^th Century.

Clifford Sims Parkway, that section of U.S. Highway 98 that threads through the Port St. Joe city limits, memorializes the actions of an African-American all but lost and forgotten in his hometown while living but revered in death for throwing his life onto a grenade to save others.

On Sunday, by coincidence, Capt. Dave Maddox, who served in the Navy and the Coast Guard, patrolling local waters for a time, will turn 90 years young, one of the remaining of the Greatest Generation.

A local resident served with valor and distinction at one of the most horrendous battles of Vietnam War and two county residents were on the last helicopter out of South Vietnam when it fell after 50,000 American lives were expended in attempting to preserve it.

A local high school coach and teacher, a reservist no less, is now entering at least his fourth deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not that any of these folks readily speak about their experiences; for them and their families there is no need for television specials or limited edition commemorative volumes about the anniversary of that dark day 10 years ago because the swirling emotions of lives cut short in an instant, of family upheaval that will span far beyond a decade, is part of life.

It is an ongoing saga.

In his book “Where Men Win Glory” author Jon Krakauer describes the journey of Pat Tillman from millionaire NFL star to Army Ranger killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan.

While in the end it is a book that angers in telling how the military hid the truth of Tillman’s death from his family and the country, it is also a book that exhilarates in the thoughts, as reflected through his journals, that roiled Tillman in the days after 9/11 as he pondered leaving behind his glory days before fans to more glorious days for his country.

He had not earned his charmed life, he wrote; he owed something.

The Semper Fi Sisters will arrive next month as a reminder of how that debt is being paid, every day, by so many brave men and women whose courage only those who have experienced battle can fully appreciate.

And a reminder that the legacy of 9/11, the image of 9/11 that ought to be remembered as much this week as images of burning buildings and ash-covered streets is that of the everyday men and women in uniform who sacrifice so much each and every day, and have for 10 long years.