Maxwell Anderson and Kurt Weill’s “September Song” (“Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December / But the days grow short / When you reach September”) is a song I’ve heard all my life. In fact, I’m sure I first heard it while I was in my mother’s womb.
September is such a huge transitional month, filled with nostalgia, new beginnings and powerful remembrance. It brings back days from my childhood, like jumping on huge hills of just-raked leaves and raking them back up again.
I remember the rush to enjoy the last days of summer, the huge family picnics on Labor Day and attending the Labor Day parade in Detroit. Detroit is a huge union city, and in my youth, it seemed like at least half the state showed up for this gala event.
I remember my mother dragging my brother Jeff and me from store to store to complete our back-to-school shopping. For my mother, it also meant packing away all her summer whites, for it was a cardinal sin to wear white after Labor Day back then.
September was a month that seemed like a beautiful picture made of shades of gold, orange, tan, sienna and brown. Michigan has very humid summers—so bad that our clothes stuck to us, and we all took numerous cold showers to get some relief.
My mother had to make many pitchers of cherry Kool-Aid and iced tea to keep us hydrated enough to head back out and play. But September brought with it cooling temperatures and earlier dark skies at night.
My mother referred to September as the prelude to the trifecta of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and the biggie of all biggies, Christmas. Indeed, September means many things, some of which are immense remembrances in our country’s history.
Looking at a calendar, you would see that the autumnal equinox welcomes fall on Sept. 22. Cooler weather and shorter days appear, and on the 22nd, the day and night share equal billing.
Labor Day will be on Sept. 2 this year. It honors the huge force of Americans who keep our country growing and going through their efforts. Labor Day also honors the labor movement and its works, contributions and achievements.
My grandfather was the founding treasurer of the Ford Motor Company, and he later served as auditor. My family has a strong connection with the American worker.
When my husband Ron and I later opened our low-voltage electrical construction company, we were a union shop, and our employees were like family. Interdependent, we are all parts of a whole in America. Oregon became the first state to make Labor Day an official holiday in 1887.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “Labor Day symbolizes our determination to achieve an economic freedom for the average man which will give his political freedom reality.” I will only say that there is no “average man” because we are all unique.
Sept. 2 is also V-J Day, a remembrance of the Japanese surrender to the American forces during World War II. Japan surprised and shocked the world with its attack on Pearl Harbor, the first attack by a foreign country on American land that brought America into the war with new vigor.
I remember my mother telling me about hearing the breaking news on her radio and feeling utter disbelief. Sept. 2, 1945, was the formal signing of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender on the battleship USS Missouri.
The events that led to this historic day changed the world as we entered the atomic age. This change—living in a world with a weapon capable of such devastation as to erase our existence—caused a weapons race that continues to this day.
The decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war, but it has also opened a door that can never be closed. This year’s Oscar-winning movie “Oppenheimer” tells us the true story of how those momentous days led to an act that changed the future.
I guess the September event that most affected me is yours as well. Sept. 11, 2001, had us all paralyzed as we watched in real-time an act so heinous, so monstrous that we couldn’t believe it.
It has been impossible to regain that sense of safety we once enjoyed. No war had come to our shores for so long. We felt impregnable, but it took just a few Islamic terrorists to kill 2,977 people.
I heard the first announcement on the radio that told of a plane hitting a World Trade Center building. It was vague. Perhaps, the announcer said, it was a plane that had gone off its route. It sounded bad but not horrific.
We know now it was a passenger plane hijacked by followers of al-Qaeda on their murder-suicide mission.
Within seconds, members of the New York Police Department and the New York Fire Department were dispatched and ran to evacuate people from the North Tower, where people on and above the 91st floor were trapped.
Many of those poor victims, who were there just doing a day’s work, leaped to their deaths after making painful farewell phone calls to loved ones. Millions later watched in shock as yet another plane hit the World Trade Center’s South Tower.
Americans couldn’t believe the horror as the unbelievable became real. Rescue workers bravely rushed in to get survivors out.
However, too many of these heroic people didn’t make it out and became victims. The smoke rising from the towers filled the New York City sky, filling the air with dangerous particles and fumes.
People from nearby businesses ran onto the street, joining in the panic that only intensified as the Twin Towers unbelievably began their death descent to the ground, creating a tsunami of danger.
A year later, my daughter Leslie and I traveled to NYC and slowly walked to the site where the towers had once stood. We could see the destruction surrounding buildings had suffered, although an old church had been miraculously spared.
But it was the huge fenced area in the center of the square that pulled us. In the fence’s wire were flowers and pictures of lost ones that asked, “Have you seen?”
This made it all seem even more real to us. You could still almost hear the screams, feel the panic and smell the air that later was to cause so many illnesses.
It wasn’t just the towers that suffered after planes hijacked by murder-suicide terrorists crashed into them that day. Our Pentagon, the center of the safety of the United States, was also hit.
In my youth, I had been there visiting my uncle, who was a general there. I remember walking the halls.
More senseless death and destruction. I believe it may be easier (or harder) to imagine the thoughts of those passengers toward Washington.
Loved ones called the passengers, who told them of the other hijackings. They knew the fate coming and that they had to somehow break into the cockpit and gain control of the steering wheel.
My mind almost freezes in fear at imagining the horror, panic and bravery of those passengers who decided to fight back, saying, “Let’s roll!” Their bravery was not in vain.
While all aboard perished, they prevented a larger tragedy by forcing the plane to land in an empty Pennsylvania field.
America did not let this tragedy go without responding. The organization al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden, became terms we all learned. President George W. Bush responded with his War on Terror, starting in Afghanistan.
Eventually, we captured bin Laden, but the shroud of terrorism lingers, and I know I haven’t slept as soundly as I did on Sept. 10, 2001, when all of this had seemed impossible.
On a happier note, Sept. 5 is my amazing, brilliant and beautiful granddaughter’s birthday. What a wonderful day it was when Amanda MacMillan Gonzales was born.
I was privileged to be in the delivery room when she entered the outside world. Amanda is my first grandchild, and there is no doubt she changed my world for the better.
Let us all remember September, especially this new season, relishing every single second as the miracle it is.
