After tragic moments in American history… we’ve always been asked to remember what happened.  In the 1800’s the battle cry was  Remember the Alamo!  In the 1900’s… Remember Pearl Harbor.  But we don’t say Remember 9/11.

We say Never Forget.  And there’s a difference.

Remember the Alamo… almost sounds like a request.  Through the lens of time we hear “Remember Pearl Harbor” and as the greatest generation fades away it seems less like a battle cry, and more like a plea that a dark moment and souls lost hold their page in the history books and they have as they should.

But the vast majority of Americans only remember Pearl Harbor — not as a visceral shock to the system … but as a story told by grandparents who struggle to share the raw emotion, and the fear, and the anger that spurred the country to great things.  The story can be retold but the raw emotions can’t be shared.

We remember Pearl Harbor.  But 9-11… we say… we demand Never Forget.  In New York the charity is the Never Forget Fund.  Even Clydsdale Commercials over the weekend said Never Forget.  A statement of defiance about a brief moment of desperation and pain.  And we won’t forget.   

But our grandchildren will never remember.  They can’t feel what we felt but I did find hope this weekend from - of all people - a teenage Canadian girl… who just came from nowhere and played in the finals of the US Open Tennis Championship and after the biggest moment in her young life… at Center Stage in New York City … Leyland Fernandez   had the presence of mind to literally grab the mic and say this… 

She is only 19.  There is some hope.

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