Riding the Waves of History: New Stories Emerge — No Time for Hate?

We counted the dead: 9/11/2001 miracles still being revealed?

The last known survivor to escape the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001, Ron DiFrancesco, thought “an angel” picked him up and guided him.

DiFrancesco reached Church Street just as the South Tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m. He started on the 84th floor when the second plane hit the 81st floor. He went down — then up, climbing as high as the 91st floor.

Blocked from the roof, he was guided downward through flames and smoke going from the 76th floor upward, finding the one safe route, one of four people who were above the 81st floor (where the plane hit) to escape alive.

“Somebody lifted me up… I was definitely led,” he explained.

Nearly two decades later, we honor the 2,977 people who died during the attacks on America, reading their names aloud every September 11. Far more were forever changed by that morning. More than 50,000 worked there. Even now new stories emerge of miracles and people saving people.

“A tap on my shoulder at some point telling me to go”

Our friend Patrick Anderson was between the main Towers, on the fifth floor of the Marriott Hotel inside World Trade Center Tower 3 when the first jet struck. The hotel loudspeakers told everyone to stay in their rooms.

The noise inside sounded “like a thousand china cabinets falling.” He could see bodies and debris, recalling he “felt this sense of doom.”

The “stay put” warning seemed logical. Where else would people in a hotel go? He explains, “I really felt like there was a tap on my shoulder at some point telling me to go.”

He took nothing but his wallet, leaving the laptop and Christmas presents behind. He wore just one shoe as he got out just in time. Was it an angel tapping him, getting him to go at that moment?

He fled to a high school, and a stranger, Emily Maroney, 28, approached: “You need a hug.”

Emily shared her lunch with him and they spent three hours together. They walked 2.5 miles, getting to safety. That journey, he remembers, was like “coming back from the dead.” Maroney left her job and New York City after that harrowing day. PBS would reunite them in 2018.

Combatting “Historical Amnesia”

“I am alive today and they are not. I don’t take that lightly,’’ recalls Anderson, who founded the Michigan Remembers 9/11 Fund to help make sure people know what actually happened that day.

I met Patrick in 2007, the same year he started Michigan Remembers 9/11, seeing memories were already getting “fuzzy.” Historical amnesia is now widespread, according to recent polls. This summer, rioters attacked statues, repeatedly demonstrating a lack of understanding of history.

How will future generations, who weren’t there, remember September 11? DiFrancesco woke up in the hospital with burns covering much of his body; his contact lenses had melted to his eyes. It took him years to recover.

The Mandella Effect vs. quantifying stories, history — significance

“If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree. ” ― Michael Crichton.

The Mandela Effect refers to large numbers of people who believe something incorrectly. Large numbers of Americans falsely believe the South African revolutionary died in prison in the 1980s but Mandella won his freedom in 1990. He became president of South Africa in 1994 and lived until 2013.

Similarly, millions of Americans say they remember watching the first plane hit the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, but in fact, there was no video of that first collision. Often, we misremember things because our false memories make for a simpler story that better fits our view of the world.

“If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.” ― Rudyard Kipling, The Collected Works

If no one adds up the score, how will you know who won?

Patrick Anderson’s gift is digging deep through data to show people stories and make cases for action. In 2006, the presidents of the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and Wayne State University decided to form an alliance. We came up with a name: the University Research Corridor.

I compared numbers, realizing Michigan’s University Research Corridor did more research than the three partners in North Carolina’s famous Research Triangle. That one statistic said much but we needed more.

In 2007, the URC asked Patrick Anderson to quantify the numbers independently. His firm has benchmarked the URC and other state research clusters ever since. Both public and private coalitions ask Anderson Economic Group to use their gifts to quantify and explain their cases.

The 9/11 fund he organized is similarly helping us make sense of a turning point in 21st-century history, an event that has shaped countless other events ever since.

“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?” ― Marcus Tullius Cicero.

Stanley Praimnath, another 9/11 survivor, saves “the shoes I wore to work that day. The soles are melted, and they’re caked in ash. I keep them in a shoebox with the word ‘deliverance’ written all around it. They’re kind of like my ark, a reminder of God’s presence and the life I owe to him.”

2=2=4: Truth must be shared

Ideology tends to become overriding in a mostly secular culture that tends to delete or ignore references to religion and absolute truths. So survivors worry that political agendas color the way people view history.

As Simon and Garfunkel sang, a man “sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest.” In short, we remember what we want to remember to support the narratives we follow while ignoring or deleting whatever doesn’t support that agenda.

Survivors counter that truth always, ultimately, trumps false narratives. The Polish people helped topple communism in the 1980s with a flyer that said “2+2=4.” The flyers filled store windows. Government officials wanted them removed but how do you ask for simple truth to be removed without feeling and looking totally stupid?

Backers knew it referred to George Orwell’s novel 1984, where the all-powerful government overlords said if the government tells you 2=2=5, it does.

The Poles countered with the flyers saying “2+2=4,” that numbers must add up, that truth is truth. The math equation is also a reminder of Patrick Anderson’s gift for making complex numbers understandable. His firm takes big questions and complex data, explaining it in a way most people can understand. Those answers help move people, making things happen

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”― George Orwell..

The musical, “Come From Away,” the so-called “9–11 musical,” movingly tells one of those “miracle” stories of stranded people coming together. It’s been a blockbuster hit, even playing in the same town as Anderson’s main office in East Lansing, Michigan.

His Michigan Remembers 9/11 Fund this year identified 23 victims of 9/11 with Michigan ties. Altogether, they’ve found 42 such stories. But the search continues.

The 9/11 victims with Michigan ties include Todd Beamer, the then 32-year-old 9/11 hero who recited the Lord’s Prayer and the 23rd Psalm before famously calling out, “Are you ready? OK. Let’s roll.”

Beamer and the rest of the 40 passengers then charged into the cockpit, fighting back terrorists aboard United Flight 93, bound for an attack on Washington, D.C. aimed at either the White House or U.S. Capitol. In the struggle, the flight crashed over a Pennsylvania field, saving others.

Few Michiganders are aware Beamer was a Flint, Michigan native, but the fund and other survivors are dedicating themselves to making sure people know and understand the true stories and history.

History, like the tides, rolls in waves, a greater whole with billions of interconnected components, each small puzzle piece part of a more meaningful picture. The challenge is getting people to learn it and ride history’s waves.

“If we learn nothing else from this tragedy, we learn that life is short and there is no time for hate,” — Sandy Dahl, widow of Flight 93 pilot Jason Dahl, which crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.