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A Seemingly Quiet Day Like Any Other
By Josef Palmersheim
 Josef Palmersheim -- Reader´s Advocate
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September 11 came and went yet again, and it seemed that no one really noticed. Sure, we had our ceremony at Ground Zero (which the President was too busy to attend-cute!) and our coverage on the news, but that's it. There was no noticeable difference between this and any other day. No candle-light vigil, no wreath, nothing.
I guess I'm biased on the subject. My cousin, Robert Mattson, was killed in Tower Two, and there wasn't even a body to bury. We got fragments. Later, the best that we could figure was that he was killed when the second plane hit, because he was by the elevators on the 78th floor with his secretary (who was on a cell phone at the time), and the plane hit at around the 75th floor or so. My family held out hope for a few days, but I think we all knew that he wasn't getting out of there alive. In 1993, Bob had been airlifted off the roof after the truck bomb had exploded in the underground garage, so I guess we all expected him to just kind of walk out and brush the dust off of his suit, and that would be it.
My first newspaper assignment ever was to write about September 11. The funny thing is that I joined the paper staff on September 10. Talk about timing, huh? My first article for the Chronicle was about the vigil that took place on the Atwood Mall to commemorate the dead. So in a way, there is always a connection between those events and my life.
In a way I'm glad that there was no real difference in Thursday's proceedings. That shows that other people, unlike me, have gotten over that day. I haven't. It's a scar, and it will always be there. I guess I will just have to live vicariously through those who have forgotten- because I never will.
Josef Palmersheim can be reached at [email protected].
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