9/11/1962 - 9/11/2012

1962 was the year Ray Stevens' novelty song "Ahab the Arab" was a top forty hit. As the song indicated, we didn't take the Middle East all that seriously then. That would change in a decade or so, with the first Arab oil embargo.  The worst took a while longer, but it finally came with a vengeance.

 

Eleven years ago, on the same day of the week, our country suffered the first attack on our soil by a foreign enemy since Pearl Harbor.  It was also the first enemy incursion on the U.S. mainland the raid on Columbus, New Mexico by Pancho Villa in 1916.  Before that one has to go back to 1814.

Fifty years ago on this morning, the Jesuit seniors were settling in their classes.  Like this present week, there was a respite from the summer heat, welcome in our un-airconditoned classrooms.  Most of us were oblivious to a threat from a different enemy.  Some were paying attention..

 

Dallas Morning News 9/11/1962, page 1

 

Communist Cuba is still with us, though it has mostly been merely a nuisance for most of the intervening years.  It turned out to be more than that for several days a month later.