Kilb: Growing up in shadow of 9/11
Revelers, including many students, gather at the White House on May 1, chanting "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" and singing the Star Spangled Banner, while President Barack Obama announces the death of Osama Bin Laden. Credit: Getty/Chip Somodevilla
Sam Kilb, an intern for Newsday Opinion, is a junior at Stony Brook University.
People danced and the alcohol flowed, but it wasn't quite like any other college party.
The crowds on campuses across the nation Sunday night -- as well as the students who joined gatherings outside the White House and in New York City -- were a manifestation of the enormous weight taken off the collective shoulders of a generation that has spent half of its existence chasing one man.
Watching the towers fall was our generation's first moment of vulnerability. The Cold War, and everything that came with it, was a chapter in a textbook. Duck and cover was an amusingly naive video clip. But this? This was real.
Osama bin Laden was our villain, the modern face of evil, constant even as we learned of politics and took sides.
Bin Laden was the reason we saw our brothers and sisters and classmates of all races and religions dedicate their lives to military service. Some of them didn't come home. This victory, symbolic or otherwise, is the one they went to win.
The tactical gains of bin Laden's death remain to be counted, but for the people who came of age with the war on terror, the impact is huge. His life may have marked our first vulnerability, but with his defeat we witnessed our country's first great triumph of our lifetime, together.
That's why it's not just a party, it's not as simple as jingoism, and it's not just joy at a bad man's death -- not for us. It's a celebration of the first time our generation was knocked down and got back up to finish the fight.
