My 9/11 story takes place on 9/10 and 9/12

My cousin Gene was officing with me in 2001. A Naval Reserve officer, Gene had command of a reserve squadron at Great Lakes, and all of the administrative headaches that were attendant thereto.

It may not have been September 10 exactly. It might have been a day or two before. Memory is a funny thing.

But I clearly recall walking into Gene's office as he was having a rather stern telephone discussion with a suburban police chief. It seems one of the police dispatchers was a Navy reservist, and she had not yet completed her mandatory two weeks of active duty. By September, all of the two-week duty slots had been used up, and the only way the dispatcher could fulfill her two-week requirement was by taking a six-week assignment.

The chief wanted to fire her.

When I walked in, Gene was patiently explaining, and apparently not for the first time, that the chief could find himself in a world of trouble if he fired the dispatcher. He might not have to pay her for her active duty time, but he had to let her come back to work when her obligation was fulfilled.

The chief was not happy. But he eventually subsided and Gene and I got on with our day.

No one was in the office on 9/11. I had to go to court in Joliet that morning -- and the judge, who'd been glued to the TV like I'd been glued to the radio heading down there, was late taking the bench. By the time I finished my business in court, I decided to go home instead of trying to go downtown. This proved a good thing, inasmuch as the Loop pretty much shut down.

But Gene and I were both back at work the next day.

And that's when the suburban police chief called back. Not only could his dispatcher go, he told Gene, but he -- the chief -- wanted to go, too!

The dominant emotion of that moment was not anger, or hatred, and certainly not (at least for the vast, overwhelming majority of us) anger or hatred against any particular group of people, but pride and patriotism. Pride for the heroism and sacrifice of the first responders who ran to the Twin Towers, and into them, even as they were collapsing. We were united by the tragedy and united in resolve to defend our nation, and avenge our losses, against those who would do us -- all of us -- harm.

The criminals who planned and executed the 9/11 attacks did not see us as divided by race, or ethnicity, or religion, or income level, or political persuasion. They saw us as Americans all; we were all equal targets accordingly. In the stunned aftermath of the September 11 attacks, if only for a moment, we recognized that we really are united, and that the things that unite us are more important than those things that divide us.

History will probably judge that our national resolve, in the aftermath of 9/11, was misdirected, perhaps cynically misdirected, perhaps only mistakenly. Our subsequent missteps -- and you may well have a different list than I would -- should not be the subject of today's remembrance. Rather, we should recall, and strive to recapture, that feeling of unity: And I want to go, too!