Remembering 9/11

In the slideshow above, look back at how students reacted. Photos by Vernon Doucette, Albert L’Etoile, and Kalman Zabarsky

We remember.

Ten Septembers ago, an unnaturally clear day is forever clouded in memory, both locally and around the country. Boston University lost 34 alumni when planes hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists slammed the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and crashed in a small field outside of Shanksville, Pa. BU observes the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks Sunday with a noon service on Marsh Plaza, one of several commemorations put together by BU groups.

BU President Robert A. Brown and Robert Pinsky, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of English and former three-time U.S. poet laureate, will speak at the event. The names of the BU victims, whose biographies the University highlights on a special website, will be read as a bell tolls, and the Marsh Chapel Choir will sing. (The Catholic Center will still be on its summer schedule, so there will be no 12:30 p.m. Mass conflicting with the event.)

“This is meant to be open for religious and nonreligious people of all expressions,” says Marsh Chapel Dean Robert Allan Hill, who will lead the one-hour service with the seven University chaplains. “It’s meant as a discreet, reverent, broad moment of observance to recognize the events and losses of 10 years ago.” Hill spoke by phone recently with survivors of some of the alumni victims to invite them to the ceremony, and says they were “very grateful for the contact. They’re not easy calls to make. I expressed ongoing condolences on behalf of the University community. There was a lot of quiet, a lot of silence, a lot of gratitude.”

Remembrance boards, on which faculty, students, and staff may write reflections and memories, will be erected on the plaza and in the chapel basement. Similar boards were created in the immediate aftermath of the attacks.

Remembering the attacks has been an annual national ritual for a decade; Marsh Chapel spearheaded a ceremony similar to this one on the fifth anniversary—but 2011’s remembrance will carry special meaning for students, coming months after the killing of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden by Navy SEALs. “Those who are entering as freshmen were all of eight years old” in 2001, says Hill, and for many of them, bin Laden was a figure of evil incarnate; young people at BU and elsewhere publicly celebrated his death last spring.

Others at the University plan commemorative anniversary events as well. A sampling:

Coffee and Conversation

Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore will devote his weekly Coffee and Conversation with students today, Friday, September 9, to a discussion of 9/11. The chat runs from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Howard Thurman Center, in the GSU, 775 Comm Ave.

Previewing the discussion on his blog earlier this week, Elmore (SED’87) shared his own questions and sentiments on this anniversary: “Was this the ultimate challenge to American existence? What has become of the issues that just like to nudge: terrorism; immigration; international security; freeness to speak; the role of religion in our lives; whether participation matters; and straight-up war?…We allowed justifications to rule: for torture; to drop the presumption of innocence; for intolerance; and to permit government peeking and intrusions on its own.”

Voices of 9/11

College of Fine Arts School of Theatre students will read poems, essays, and letters from survivors and friends of 9/11 victims, which have been collected on a national website. The reading, Voices of 9/11, runs from 2 to 3 p.m. on Sunday, September 11, on Marsh Plaza (rain location is the Tsai Performance Center).

School of Theology Requiem Concert

School of Theology students in the Master of Sacred Music program will lead a requiem concert, with music from the Renaissance composer Orlande de Lassus, on Sunday, September 11, at 4 p.m. in Marsh Chapel.

WBUR

WBUR, the University’s National Public Radio Station, during August solicited listeners’ memories of the day of the attacks—where they were, how they were affected, whether it changed their lives. More than 40 people contributed, and 10 were recorded and have been airing this week, WBUR news director Martha Little says. Other listeners’ videos, photos, letters, and tapes will be posted on a special web page.

“One of the most poignant memories was of a Canton, Mass., man, Mike Molway, who drove into Manhattan on the evening of September 11 with a portable generator to help in the rescue effort,” Little says. At one point, he noticed the street strewn with shoes and asked a policeman about them. The cop explained that when the twin towers fell, “these people were running for their lives, and they ran right out of their shoes.”