Years Later 10 By Kyle Smith A


S SOON AS JENNIFER TRAUL graduated from college, the Naples, Fla., native felt drawn by big city lights and moved to New York City. She arrived there the fi rst week of September, 2001. A few days later she went out for


drinks with a friend who was excited at landing a job at Cantor Fitzgerald, a fi nancial fi rm on fl oors 101 through 105 in the One World Trade Center tower in Lower Manhattan. On 9/11, Traul was shocked to learn that her friend was missing. She eventually heard that all 658 Cantor Fitzgerald employees who had been in the company offi ces when a jetliner crashed into the building a few fl oors down had died. Her friend’s second day on the job was his last day on earth.


Traul spent the next few years building a career as a chef and later in the wine business, but as wars raged in Afghanistan and Iraq, she realized something was missing. Although none of her family was in the military, and the notion of a military career had never crossed her


The shadow of terror and uncertainty is perhaps even more frightful to a young person.


“ —Nick Fandos | College Freshman ”


mind, “I just wanted to be more of a presence in things,” she says, “to do something that had an impact, some- thing bigger.”


She joined the Navy, obtain- ing a commission through Offi cer Candidate School. Her one request:


72 9|11: A DECADE LATER / NEWSMAX / SEPTEMBER 2011


to serve on the USS New York, which was built in part with steel from the World Trade Center’s wreckage. “It just felt like that was where I needed to be,” says Ensign Traul, now 32. For her and millions of other young Americans who came to age with the images and events of 9/11 seared into their minds and souls, the world will never be quite the same.


When news broke of Osama bin Laden’s death, these were the youthful throngs who poured into the streets of New York City and Washington, D.C., waving


American fl ags and chanting “USA! USA! USA!” Finally,


the terrorist


boogeyman who had so brutally hijacked their lives a decade earlier had been vanquished. Sociologists and political scien- tists are likely to spend decades try-


Plaque with names of those killed on Flight 93, placed in Shanksville, Pa.


[ LOSS & RENEWAL ] The Day That


“


I just wanted to to do something that had an impact, something bigger.


—Jennifer Traul | Ensign, Navy


ing to assess how the 9/11 generation was forever changed when America’s presumed invulnerability imploded before their eyes.


Young Americans rejected what many scholars viewed as the apa- thy of the generation that preceded them, and answered duty’s call. Some defi ned giving back as vol- unteering to become fi refi ghters or teachers or contributing to charities. Many others joined the military as a direct result of 9/11, and more than a few gave their lives.


Army Lt. Col Kurt Schlichter of Manhattan Beach, Calif., is a case in point. An infantryman who faced hostile fi re on many occasions, Schlichter served in Operation Desert Storm and Operation Enduring Freedom in Kosovo. “I’ve spent a great deal of my life trying to keep jagged metal objects from piercing my skin,” he says, but the young


”


PLAQUE/AP IMAGES / TRAUL/COURTESY OF THE NAVY / FANDOS/COURTESY OF SUSIE FANDOS


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