Dear Friends and Virginians:

For those of us who lived through September 11, 2001, the first memory will always be the brilliant blue sky that day.

Just an absolutely perfect September day.

For those of us who woke up in the USA that day (and soon we will be a minority of America’s population), it was a perfectly normal day. Kids back in school, NFL season finally underway. Then our lives would be split in two. We woke up as kids; then finished the day as men and women.

Looking back, the United States was a different nation. A decade removed from the Cold War, we still clung to its principles: a strong military, an impartial legal system, a belief in our nation’s destiny.

Political extremism was an affectation, not a path to public office.

I was a young lawyer and Fairfax City Councilman, with a 30-year old wife and 2-year old daughter, running as a Democratic challenger for a House seat that had been Republican since 1972. I spent all summer knocking on doors. We had a great team of volunteers and thought we had a chance.

Then, as of 9 am on September 11th, none of it mattered. Life stopped. Planes stopped flying. People stayed in place. My wife’s Canadian friend who had come for the weekend ended up staying for a month.

Painfully, life began back again. Our nation entered the War in Afghanistan, then started a new one a year later in Iraq. A bipartisan bill created the Department of Homeland Security. The entire airline industry shifted on a dime. (Do you remember when you used to greet travelers at the gate when they arrived?)

For a while, it was cool to be patriotic. Then a generation later, the vibe had changed. It became cool not to be patriotic.

Maybe it’s because the notion of “9/11” itself became politicized. But it shouldn’t be.

Because that day proved a fundamental fact:  Americans have courage. They fight back. They look out for each other. They live the precept of John 15:13 (“greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for a friend”). I won’t articulate all the examples from 9/11. You know them.

Until the day I die, I will remember driving to INOVA Fairfax to give blood on 9/11 and seeing cars take up every possible space in the employee parking lot and along Gallows Road. Everybody showed up that day, because our country had been attacked.

Sadly, there were very few living people to treat that day, even from the Pentagon attack. But everyone responded.

America on Sept 11, 2001 was not a perfect country. But it was a damn good one.

They tried to divide us, but it only made us stronger.  

Peace to all,

Chap