Posted on: Monday, September 17, 2001

Island Voices
The day we lost airport innocence

By Sven Robinson

My son asked me to help him with his homework. He had an assignment to write about the changes in society during the last 20 years. He had a list of topics, ranging from technology, genetic sciences and space exploration. When he became stuck, he asked me for my input. I looked over his half-finished papers and suggested something more simplistic than his chosen topics. I went back the 20 years to the year 2001.

I related my memories of a mundane thing that has vanished into history; flying in an airplane. There was a time — some of you may be old enough to remember this — when flying was just like boarding a passenger train. You could be driven to the terminal, have your bags dropped off at the curb, and men who worked for the airlines would actually let you check in your baggage (without opening them up and digging through them), and would take them to the designated plane.

There was a time when friends or family members could see you off; they could actually enter the building with you. Check-ins used to take an hour, if it was a very busy day like a holiday. There were security people, armed only with a badge, lazily walking the corridors. Not like the guards scrutinizing today's passengers, armed with automatic Uzis.

Once seated, a lot of people used to sleep on flights. They didn't keep an eye on the unknown people seated next to them. The only people of authority flying with you were the flight attendants and the captain and co-pilot. Unbelievable to us today, this used to seem security enough. There never was an armed air marshal, his seat facing the passengers, watching you in your seat, or placing his hand on his holster every time someone got up to use the bathroom.

People had feared a recession, but like war bonds in the 1940s, citizens showed patriotism by buying stocks and bonds. I showed my son pictures of New York from that time, back when the Empire State Building wasn't the tallest building in Manhattan. He studied the photo with the same expression that I must have when I look at World War II photos of ration books. Seeing two giant towers dominating the skyline was foreign, unfamiliar.

Things we take for granted, or put up with, were born on that day. A unity of nations, a slowdown of activity regarding transportation, cameras forever following us, checks and rechecks of ourselves and our belongings.

What was the saddest thing that changed on Sept. 11? It was a small lessening of freedom, for freedom's defense.