What's a father to do?

In the photograph, my two young sons and their friends squint and smile for the camera as they ride the ferry across the Hudson River to the Statue of Liberty. It is a beautiful October day and they are carefree and innocent. We have driven from our home in New Jersey and have parked in the shadow of the World Trade Center in order to catch the ferry to the most famous symbol of freedom in the world. Lady Liberty beckons, and the Twin Towers loom behind us.

Now they loom no more.

We have since moved away from the Greater New York area, but my boys recall that day. They remember the view of the Twin Towers from the Empire State Building. They remember the magnificent views from the observation deck. We joked that we could see our house in New Jersey, some 30 miles distant on that strikingly clear day. We marveled at the sight of the distant gleaming Twin Towers

Nevermore.

On the morning of the attack, I was talking with a client in Manhattan at about 8:10 a.m. (9:10 EDT) when she became distracted and began muttering, “Oh, my God. Oh, my GOD!” In the background I could hear her colleagues exclaiming in more colorful language from their 38th Street offices, just blocks from the Empire State Building. At her suggestion, I ran to turn on the television.

My boys were impatient to leave for the school bus stop, but I called them back, that they might witness the images I could not yet quite comprehend. Instinctively, I knew that they might one day recall this day, as I still recall the day, so long ago, when a small boy rushed to tell me, as I played in my backyard, that they’d shot the president. Although only four at the time, I’ve never forgotten that defining moment, etched by the intensity of the other boys’ emotion: President Kennedy had been shot, and was, perhaps, dead.

And I’ll never forget the sadness, an echo of which haunts me to this day, with which I witnessed the sight of young John John saluting his father’s coffin. He was almost my age. How could this be, I wondered? Aren’t fathers invincible? Aren’t mommies and daddies forever?

Evidently not. The assassination of November 1963 proved it. And September 11, 2001 proved it again for my sons’ generation. We may hold life sacred. But not everyone shares our beliefs. Mommies and daddies do die sometimes. Sometimes they are even murdered. What a horrible lesson to learn. And what I wouldn’t give to insulate my sons from it. But it’s too late now. Just as the incomprehensible news of Kennedy’s death could never have been kept from this formerly innocent child, my own sons cannot be protected from this horrible truth. There is evil in the world, and uncertainty.

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