Have You Forgotten?

Because I haven't.





Excerpt from the diary of Angela Marie Robinson, age 20.
Lumpkin Place Apartments
The University of Georgia
Athens, GA
September 11, 2001

The World Trade Center is gone. The Pentagon has been hit. Thousands upon thousands are dead. This day Hell as been brought to the United States. Our nation is shaken with the threat of terrorism. Terrorism, a gruesome word that will strike fear and outrage in the hearts of our people. I've watched other countries fight wars and be bombed and terrorized. Now the world is watching us.


I am very uneasy tonight. I look over my shoulder. I shudder. I cannot concentrate on school work. My little girl American ideas have been shattered. I feel unsafe. Not because I fear a terrorist attack at this moment and place, but because I live in a country that is vulnerable to such attacks. I've never before been afraid. I never hid under my desk in elementary school during a bomb drill, I never laid awake in bed at night and listened to a plane fly overhead wondering if it contained a nuclear bomb. I've never watched my loved ones be taken off to war and come back forever changed. These were the trials of older generations. Unlike our parents, we grew up in a golden age of America. The Cold War ended and the Berlin Wall came down.


For 20 years I've never been afraid. I've always believed nothing could ever penetrate our defense. Nothing could ever hurt us. Today my generation joins the ranks before us. Now we too will live in expectation of danger. We too are burned by the flames of terror. Our lives have changed forever. Innocence is lost. We are children no more.


We are disillusioned, shocked, and disgusted. But we are ready. We will fight this. We will bring to our children the same America we believed we had. They will not grow up in fear. We will not stand for it.

May Jesus have mercy on our souls.

Today, eight years later, there still exists an evil in this world that must be wiped out. Martin Luther King Jr. said that "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." We will persevere. We will not give up.

We will keep the faith.