Remembering the Falling Man

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Today there were many memorial shows about 9-11 on television but none really showed much of the real impact of what happened that day. Most just had a short clip or two of the buildings burning. I was looking for the coverage that showed the buildings as the second tower was attacked and they both fell. I was looking for coverage of the Pentagon burning to remind myself of that day when I drove across the 14th Street Bridge leaving DC and looked over to see the building in flames. I think it is important to remember and reflect. While I was searching and watching videos on youTube I came across this documentary on the falling man. It tells the story of the controversy over the photograph of the falling man and one man’s journey to try to understand why WE didn’t want to see or talk about the people who jumped from the buildings that day and to find and tell the story of the person from the photograph.

Included here is the documentary. It is just over an hour long. I would encourage you to watch when you have the time to look at it and reflect. Ultimately he was never able to confirm definitively who the falling man was. But the falling man,for me,defines the tragedy of that day in a way no other photograph of the day can. It captures the human toll,the fear,the desperation and the lack of choices these people had. I watched the video with my son Jack,one was not even two years old on 9-11. He cringed as he watched it and we cried. He asked some questions but mostly just soaked in the horror of what happened. I wanted him to know,to try to understand what happened. In the closing of the documentary the narrator talks about this man as the “unknown soldier of 9-11″. So my tribute to him and to all those lost on that day was to watch the documentary and to remember fully this man and the others who chose a different fate than choking or burning in the inferno.

He is somewhere in the list of names on the memorial but we will never know which name is his. http://bit.ly/qSqy5T

falling man 9-11 documentary http://bit.ly/rtGHQs