National News

The legacy of 9/11 moved far beyond the tidal wave of fear and anger that swept across the United States and set in motion changes in everyday life that are as diverse as Americans themselves.

Across Michigan, those changes are as stunning as a huge memorial flag for a fallen soldier that young swimmers see before diving into the Grand Ledge High School pool. They're as indelible as the agonizing delays the 2001 attacks caused a family from Lake Isabella in northern Michigan when they were trying to adopt an infant from India.

The legacy is as vivid as the new banner-draped Peace Center at a Southfield church and as solemn as a black-and-bronze tombstone in Delta Township that has become a shrine for people honoring the first Michigander to fall in a post-Sept. 11 war.

“A lot of people expected that 9/11's legacy would be that concerns about terrorism would forever be a major part of our lives, but that's not really what Americans are telling us,” Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, said last week.

“In fact, the percentage of Americans who say that terrorism is our biggest problem dropped to just 3 percent in June, before news about terrorists in London and all the recent talk about terrorism in our political campaigns,” Newport said. “Now it's up to 10 percent.

“But what this shows overall is that terrorism had been dropping from the forefront of people's minds for a long time, closer to what it was before 9/11.”

Before the 2001 attacks, Americans virtually never mentioned terrorism when Gallup pollsters asked them to name the most important problems facing the country. But it zoomed to the top of the list a month after Sept. 11, when nearly half of all Americans called terrorism the nation's leading problem.

Now, the top worries Americans voice in the Gallup Poll are Iraq, at 26 percent, and fuel prices, at 15 percent.

Wayne Baker, a University of Michigan sociologist who studies American attitudes about the world, said, “What we're finding is that the impact of 9/11 is so much bigger than that one event in 2001. What makes 9/11 so personal for American families is all that followed because of that day, including the wars.

“We will see a lasting impact on the generation that came of age during 9/11, but it's difficult to identify the long-term effects because we're still discovering all of the grassroots influences that are moving through our families.”

The death of 21-year-old Jason Plite on March 23, 2003, the first fatality of a Michigan man in the wars after Sept. 11, still reverberates through Grand Ledge High School and nearby Delta Township, where he lived.

The tragedy of his helicopter crashing into a mountain as his six-man Air Force unit rushed to save a group of injured Afghan children is among thousands of heroic war stories echoing through small towns across the United States.

Although it happened more than three years ago, responses to Plite's heroism remain as fresh as a tiny oval stone that his mother, Dawn Peterson, discovered near his tombstone on Tuesday. Painstakingly painted on the stone were two words: “Thank you!”

But Peterson isn't trapped by her memories in a maudlin way. Like millions of other Americans stunned by tragedy after Sept. 11, she looked for innovative ways to transform her loss into ways her family could contribute to their community.

“That day we got the news about Jason, I did lose it. I screamed and was shaking violently,” Peterson said. “And for months after that, I was pretty worthless.”

Then, a year after her son's death, Peterson decided that she should give up her old life as a stay-at-home mom. Jason's sisters Alissa, now 16, and Shaynah, now 14, were away at school all day. Sitting home alone with memories of Jason left Peterson feeling isolated and depressed. So, she took a job as an aide at Grand Ledge High School. “What I also realized was: Jason was such a giving person himself that I had to carry on as a giving person, too,” she said.

One gift that the Petersons gave to the high school that their son graduated from is an annual college scholarship program that gives $1,000 to a graduating artist and $1,000 to a graduating swimmer. Plaques honoring the winners hang in a school hallway near a mural of jazz musicians that Plite painted in 1999, the year he graduated.

“Each year now, we have a fund-raising dinner and present the awards to the students at the Grand Ledge Opera House,” Peterson said. “We try to do it ... around Jason's birthday” on April 13.

There's also the 10-by-16-foot flag that hangs over the school's swimming pool. The Petersons helped to dedicate the flag two years ago as a reminder of their son's service. The flag hangs near big boards displaying swimming records, including the day in 1997 when Jason and three friends posted the school's 200-yard freestyle-relay record.

Such dramas are the legacy of 9/11 in high schools and living rooms across America.

“I didn't really expect it would have such an impact on me,” Larry Jose, the head football coach at Chippewa Hills High School in Remus, Mich., said on Wednesday. “But then it did.”

Jose is a Marine Corps veteran who is sought out now by football players or students in his health and computer classes who are thinking about enlisting in the military.

“This spring it was Ryan Cutler who came to see me. He was a captain on our team two years ago, a big guy, and he went into the Marines, too,” Jose said. “He had leave to come home after boot camp and stopped to see me in my office. I'm always happy to talk to kids, but there was something different this time.

“That was the moment it hit me: In less than a month, this kid who I coached was going to be over there with bullets flying around him, right in the heart of it. And here's what hit me: There was a chance I might never see Ryan again.

“That's when the reality of what's going on in the world right now came crashing into my little office.”

Ever since Sept. 11, partly to rebuke terrorist claims about religion, more and more Americans have gotten involved in programs that highlight religion's peaceful goals.

That's the mission of Barbara Talley, a longtime local civil rights activist who opened a Peace Center last year at the 5,000-member Hope United Methodist Church in Southfield, Mich. The large room, where she organizes community -wide programs, is decked with banners representing many faiths.

“The legacy of 9/11 is what you make of it,” Talley said. “And, while it was a tragedy, it also is an opportunity for all of us to really look at ourselves, both individually and collectively, in our communities. And, if we do that, I think we'll see that we can work step-by-step to shake off a lot of this hatred.”

A year ago, a dozen curious teenagers from the church strolled into her center and asked Talley what she could teach them about peace. Talley soon convinced the teens to meet with her one Saturday each month for a study of peace in cultures around the world.

By December, the kids had dubbed themselves Minds of Wisdom, elected officers and written and published 4-by-6-inch cards spelling out their “Peace Pledge.” In part, the cards say, “I believe I can make a difference in developing a global vision and blueprint for peace.”