Guest column by Allie Cohen | How social media shaped my 9/11 story

By Allie Cohen 09/10/14 9:48pm

We all have our own 9/11 stories—where we were when we heard, what our parents or teachers told us and how our young minds interpreted what was a collective loss of innocence.

Growing up a New Yorker, I have always felt particularly connected and affected by this moment in my life story. However, thirteen years later and a city removed, my 9/11 story is still being shaped.

Last semester I took “Communication and the Presidency," taught by David Eisenhower  in the Annenberg School. A hidden gem of Penn, the course provided a stipend to fly to any Presidential Library to do research for the course’s assignment of a 30-page paper. I flew to Dallas, Texas, where I studied George W. Bush’s epideictic rhetoric in his three major post-9/11 speeches.

A major theme throughout his rhetoric in these speeches was the re-framing of those who died not as victims of destruction but as truly exemplary of heroism, who cannot be undermined by the event that took their lives. He ended one such speech with this anecdote of sacrifice: “And I will carry this. It is the police shield of a man named George Howard, who died at the World Trade Center trying to save others. It was given to me by his mom, Arlene, as a proud memorial to her son. It is my reminder of lives that ended and a task that does not end," followed by a roaring standing ovation. One of the more memorable moments in his speeches, I immersed myself in these anecdotes and names all semester long.

One day after finals, I was aimlessly scrolling through my Facebook Newsfeed when I came across a Humans of New York post. It was not long after the 9/11 memorial had opened in New York. The post featured a man, seemingly in his late 20s, who had visited before work in memory of his father, a fireman who was on his day off that day but came in to help people anyway. In the comments, the man in the photo thanked people for their kind words and suggested to Google “Police Officer George Howard” if anyone wanted to learn more about his father.

The name struck me immediately. I knew that name. I had studied that name. Could this be the son of the same man I studied so much? 

I frantically scrolled through the comments and saw that no one realized that the world had heard this man’s name before. My comment asking if George Howard was the same George Howard from the 9/20 speech got lost in a sea of comments. I wanted to know, and there was a link to the man in the photo’s Facebook page right in front of me. On his page, I messaged him saying, “Hi Rob! I saw the post you were featured in HONY. I was just wondering if your father was the George Howard whose police shield President Bush kept with him from his speech on September 20th, 2001? The picture was beautiful, by the way."

I did not expect him to answer, but sure enough, the next morning I got a response:

“Yes, that is my dad, Allie. President Bush has become a close friend of the family as a result of that encounter and that speech and he still keeps my dad's badge, now in his library in Texas. I'll never forget the phone call to our house by a staff member the afternoon of September 20th, asking if it was ok he use my dad's badge in his speech that night. Or the chills that ran down my spine and the water that welled in my eyes when he held it up for the world to see and spoke those beautiful words.

Thank you for your kind words. Be well.”

I had read about and studied the quote in which his father is referenced for hours. I saw his father’s badge in the exhibit in Dallas with my own eyes. But even more so than the thousand-dollar stipend Penn provided to fly me thousands of miles to do research, no primary source can beat this incredible interaction. I am grateful for the unique opportunity my education provided me to immerse myself in this topic that I knew it so well I had the skills to notice its subtleties reveal itself in unexpected places in my life, such as my Facebook Newsfeed. It is incredible how social media connects people. George Howard became much more than just a quote of evidence to support my claim in a paper. Social media allowed him to become someone’s father, whose son's page I could scroll through and whom I could connect with online  . Thirteen years later and my 9/11 story is still evolving.

Allie Cohen is a College junior studying communications. Her email address is allcohen@sas.upenn.edu.

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