American reaction to the horrifying events of Sept. 11, 2001, knew no gender, age, racial or socio-economic bounds. All Americans, of every demographic, were stunned, grieved and angered by what happened that day.
But there is one aspect of the last two weeks that only my Baby Boomer generation can fully appreciate, and that is the wave of unabashed patriotism that has washed over America.
That kind of patriotism is nothing new to our parents. I grew up with my parents telling stories about where they were when they heard about Pearl Harbor, my mother telling of the neighborhood boy killed on the USS Arizona.
Baby Boomers have all heard their parents talk of the unity and patriotism that kept Americans going during World War II. So much so that some have now labeled them “The Greatest Generation.”
My own children, part of so-called Generation X and Generation Y, grew up relatively untouched by war. The Cold War ended while they were still children and The Persian Gulf War was so short, we didn’t have time to raise a flag before it was over. They are part of a generation to whom patriotism has been neither good nor bad.
But for those of us in our 40s and 50s, the unity and patriotism of the moment is mind-boggling, because we grew up in perhaps the ugliest age of American history since the Civil War.
Our childhood memories include The Cuban Missile Crisis and other world events that robbed us of our 1950s innocence very quickly. We watched panicky adults, whom we trusted to protect us, building bomb shelters and telling us to hide under our school desks in case of a nuclear attack. Some schools even put dog tags on children so that their bodies could be identified in case of a nuclear war.
While we were still fearing nuclear holocaust, we watched as our nation was torn apart by racial strife, the Vietnam War and political assassinations. We were the first TV generation, and along with the idealized images of The Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet and Father Knows Best, we watched with our families as desperate Germans were shot trying to escape over the Berlin Wall and as police dogs attacked peaceful civil rights demonstrators in our own country.
We saw the TV images of Jackie Kennedy in her blood-stained pink suit and, later, little John John Kennedy saluting his daddy’s coffin.
We saw college students burning U.S. flags and ROTC buildings to protest Vietnam and some of them being gunned down at Kent State by National Guardsmen.
We watched as American gold medalists raised fists of defiance instead of putting their hands over their hearts at the playing of our national anthem.
We heard the news from our parents or at school of boys from our hometown being killed in Vietnam.
My classmates and I were decorating the community house for the Junior-Senior Banquet when we heard that Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot to death on a motel balcony a few miles away in Memphis.
“The Summer of Love” was a cruel misnomer. There was sex that summer, but no love. The generation gap had never been so great.
There were cries of “Don’t trust anybody over 30.” Our youth was one of the worst periods of national hate in U.S. history.
I didn’t even know what patriotism was then. I loved my country. I didn’t want to protest in the streets.
But did patriotism mean I had to believe it was okay for our young men to die in the jungles of Vietnam for a cause we didn’t fully understand or embrace?
In the last two weeks, people have said this terrorist attack is hard because we don’t know who who the enemy is. But I say that in the 60s it was much worse, because we knew who the enemy was, but we didn’t know why they were the enemy.
In recent days, who and why haven’t mattered as much as that our own people, mostly civilians, were murdered on our own soil. That has made patriotism come easy, even to those who have never known it before.
Maybe that’s why this period of unity and patriotism is so euphoric to me and my generation. It won’t last — I know that.
Soon we’ll be back to arguing in Congress and all the other conflicts that are inherent and necessary in a functioning democracy.
We’ll eventually go back to critical self-examination of our country, and we should. But for this moment, unity and patriotism feel glorious to this child of the 60s.
I’m sorry it took the bloodiest day in American history to do it, but I’m glad that once in my life, I’ve experienced the sheer joy of hanging a 9-foot American flag across the front of my house — the same flag that once draped the coffin of my father-in-law, a World War II veteran.
And I’m glad I could hang that flag without fear of it being burned, with nobody telling me I’m a nationalistic sap for flying the stars and stripes and getting tears in my eyes when I hear “The Star Spangled Banner.”
And my heart swelled with pride as I watched all of Congress — Republicans and Democrats united — singing “God Bless America” on the Capitol steps on Sept. 11.
One of those singers on the steps was my college boyfriend, who is now U.S. Congressman Roger Wicker.
And just knowing a friend of my youth is there in Washington, helping to lead our country through this national crisis, has made some of the horrible, hateful images of the 1960s fade for me.
