BREMERTON — Where were you the morning the earth stood still?
For Americans on the West Coast, the day was just starting, cheerful and sunny. First cups of coffee were being poured and people were trying to focus their eyes to read the morning paper of Sept. 11, 2001. Then telephones started jangling with the same panic-stricken question: “Have you see the TV?”
The world was transformed on that fateful day, and we feel it just as strongly today as 15 years ago. For a Navy town like Bremerton, it may have had something to do with another day of infamy many decades ago, out at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands. That day also reverberated in our hearts, and for those who serve, it always will.
Then as now, the Bremerton Patriot was a weekly paper. The next issue after 9/11 was dated Sept. 15 — four days after the attack. So it’s hard to gauge from news coverage the shock people on the Kitsap Peninsula felt on the day itself. The front page displayed a large, respectful photo of an American flag, billowing gently in the sunshine. A story accompanied the photo, describing ways people were trying to hang onto some semblance of normality in the face of a world coming unhinged.
And then, at the bottom right of the page, a simple story reminds us that the workaday world continues: “Student test scores improve.” In its sweet irrelevance in the face of historic tragedy, that short story reminds everyone that the world does, in fact, go on.
The Sept. 15, 2001, issue was filled with stories about churches calling the flock to prayer, where folks could help and senior centers and coffeehouses filled with old timers who reflected on where they were on Dec. 7, 1941 — the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and dragged the United States, kicking and screaming, into World War II. If there were similar fears in the days following Sept. 11, they were masked by the gradual return to humdrum routine. The Navy frigate USS Ford cruised Sinclair Inlet on safety patrols, its stately presence a reassuring reminder that the U.S. Navy was on the lookout on our behalf.
A popular weekly feature in the Patriot called “Street Talk” asked some regular folks the same simple question: “In the wake of East Coast terrorism, do you feel safe here?”
A marine designer named Larry Morris said he wasn’t fazed. “It could happen here, I suppose, but I feel safe wherever I am,” he said.
A medical billing clerk from Port Orchard, Jody Woolett, saw what she viewed as the inevitably of the big picture: “ ‘Do I feel safe?’” she repeated. “What with PSNS, Bangor, McChord, Fort Lewis … We’re pretty centrally located to a whole lot of military targets.”
And so it went: People expressed the gamut of emotions from resignation to blithe confidence.
Through it all, people found the time and energy for a little bit of life-affirming laughter. The same week of this tragic event, the paper carried an advance story on a comedy duo from Montreal called Circo Comedia, who would be appearing on Friday, Sept. 15, 2001, at the Admiral Theater, and promising fun for the whole family. Proving, once again, a fact burned into the DNA of American culture: We shall not be defeated.
Mark Briant is a reporter for the Bremerton Patriot and Central Kitsap Reporter and can be reached at mbriant@soundpublishing.com.
