Etched in memory 70 years later

Certain moments in history are so laden with emotional impact that not only the event itself, but also my circumstances and my exact location, remain etched in memory like an ancient insect preserved in amber. In retrospect, these all have to do with loss and fear.

September, 11, 2001. The twin World Trade Center towers were destroyed by terrorists flying airplanes into them. I was in my office waiting to see my first patient of the day, when I received an urgent and terrified call from home, telling me what was happening. It became imperative to get home and gather my family together for protection against the unknown enemy.

January 28, 1986. The Challenger Space Shuttle exploded 73 seconds after lift-off, killing the entire crew. I was standing on the 17th floor of my office building at Colony Square waiting for the elevator to go down to lunch when someone told me about it. Our mighty space program had flaws -- and suddenly we knew just how fragile human life is.

November 23, 1963. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. I was a second year psychiatry resident at Emory, sitting in a conference room in class with other residents, when the secretary interrupted to tell us that the president had been shot. A dream was shattered.

April 12, 1945. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died from a brain hemorrhage. A large pecan tree had fallen in our backyard and was yet to be removed. It's wonderful leafy canopy, now horizontal, made the perfect "jungle" for the imaginative play of a 12 year old boy. I was there in my private jungle when I heard the news. In the South, FDR was credited not only with getting us out of the Depression but with almost god-like leadership through the fears and anguish of World War II. "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." And now had had brought us within sight of victory, it seemed. His death revived all the fear we had experienced in those preceding years of war and worry, of loss and shared sacrifice on the part of everyone. Could we still win? Would we still be safe, without him? Was Truman up to the job?

December 7, 1941. A week before my 9th birthday. It was a Sunday afternoon, and I was visiting my cousins who lived out in the country eight miles from town. We were walking back toward their house along a sandy road, barefoot. That seems improbable in December, but I distinctly remember squishing my toes in the soft, warm sand. Or maybe I'm conflating a memory of another time, in summer. But we were definitely on that road when someone came running from the house, shouting what they had just heard on the radio: "The Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor." What that meant wasn't immediately clear to a young boy -- but the urgent terror in that voice was etched in my memory and has lasted for 70 years . . . and counting.

Ralph