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Over the past 25 years, the Williamsport Sun-Gazette has sought to convey how tragic the losses that families, communities and our nation as a whole suffered on this date.
"Our nation was indelibly changed," The Sun-Gazette wrote on the tenth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, "by a masterminded plan to kill thousands of Americans - a tragedy most of us never imagined happening on our soil."
"The clouds of fiery smoke finally cleared days later from the horrific plane crashes that brought down the Twin Towers of New York City, but in a larger sense they never really cleared," that editorial said. "Thousands of people died there, while still more perished at the Pentagon and in Shanksville. They won't be coming back and our hearts bleed every day from that realization. … We carry those sobering realities with us each day."
We believe it is important to reflect on the severity of these losses. It is important to remember and honor the sacrifices the loved ones of those lives lost have made. It is important to understand how the pain of this day shaped decades and generations to come.
As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence, it is necessary, we believe, to be mindful that those 250 years often required our nation, our society and our people to confront evil and the pain and sacrifice it inflicts. The story of how our nation and society were built is a story about overcoming and rejecting evil -- at Ground Zero on Sept. 11, at Pearl Harbor and on the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific, in ways great and small and in every neighborhood and corner of our history. It is a story about dedication to principles -- that every man and women is granted liberty and worth by God -- that are resilient in the face of evils great and small.
It is also important to remember, however, how resolute the American public was. How the kindness and selflessness of first responders helped ease the extent of the tragedies. How people from coast to coast and in some cases well beyond our borders sought to help America and Americans. Because while today must be a story, in part, of pain and sacrifice, it is also a story of a nation and its cherished ideals persevering.