VOLUME 6 ISSUE 28 | WWW.NSJONLINE.COM | WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2021
AP PHOTOS
Former President George W. Bush stands with firefighter Bob Beckwith on a burnt fire truck in front of the World Trade Center during a tour of the devastation of the World Trade Center, Friday, Sept. 14, 2001. Right, in this Sept. 11, 2001 file photo, a shell of what was once part of the facade of one of the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center rises above the rubble that remains after both towers were destroyed in the terrorist attacks.
9/11: As the decades pass, the quiet act of remembering evolves
Manchin seeks ‘strategic pause’ on Biden bill, opposes $3.5T
By Ted Anthony The Associated Press
Washington, D.C. U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin said Congress should take a “strategic pause” on more spending, warning that he does not support President Joe Biden’s plans for a sweeping $3.5 trillion effort to rebuild and reshape the economy. The West Virginia Democrat’s pointed opposition was stronger than his past statements and taps into a grab-bag of arguments over inflation, national security and other concerns on the emerging package. The timing of his comments comes as lawmakers are laboring behind the scenes to draft the legislation ahead of this month’s deadlines. “Instead of rushing to spend trillions on new government programs and additional stimulus funding, Congress should hit a strategic pause on the budget-reconciliation legislation,” Manchin wrote in an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Taliban says they took Panjshir, last holdout Afghan province Kabul, Afghanistan The Taliban said they seized the last province not in their control after their blitz through Afghanistan last month, overrunning forces who had opposed their takeover. Thousands of Taliban fighters charged into eight districts of Panjshir province, according to witnesses from the area who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared for their safety. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed that the province, which is north of the capital, was now held by their fighters. “We tried our best to solve the problem through negotiations, and they rejected talks and then we had to send our forces to fight,” Mujahid said late Monday. The resisting forces were led by the former vice president, Amrullah Saleh, and son of the iconic anti-Taliban fighter Ahmad Shah Massoud. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
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SHANKSVILLE, Pa. — Across the vast field where the plane fell out of the sky so many years ago, all is quiet. The hills around Shanksville seem to swallow sound. The plateau that Americans by the millions ascend to visit the Flight 93 National Memorial, to think of those who died in this southwestern Pennsylvania expanse, sits just above much of the landscape, creating a pocket of quiet precisely where quiet needs to be. It is a place that encourages the act of remembering. Twenty years have passed since
PHOTO COURTESY OF BRITT HARRIS
Spc. Christopher Harris (right) of the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne is pictured here with his wife, Britt, before his deployment to Kandahar, Afghanistan, in July 2017, where he and a comrade were killed a month later.
Gold Star widow reflects on husband’s sacrifice in Afghanistan Harris learned of pregnancy 3 weeks into husband’s deployment, 1 week before he is killed By David Larson North State Journal
Britt recalled. “We weren’t trying to get pregnant. I was actually very against it. As soon as we got married, he said, ‘Let’s have a baby,’ but I was like, ‘No, not if you’re deploying; that’s not happening.’” Britt was already reeling from the death of her grandfather a couple months earlier, who had raised her, when, on the first day of Chris’ deployment, her best friend died due to pregnancy complications. Britt spent much of that week grieving and attending services. Then two weeks later, she found out she was pregnant herself. “I was pretty nervous; I was panicking; I was upset. I was like, ‘I told you I didn’t want to do this. I told you I didn’t want to be alone. God forbid something happens and you don’t come home and I have to raise the baby by myself.’ I was always the worrier of our relationship.” She told Chris over FaceTime, and they talked every day for the next week — his last week of life — about their plans, about names and all the other details of starting a family. Britt said, while she was worried about the pregnancy, Chris was ecstatic. “Chris has always wanted to be a dad. He loved kids and kids loved him and ran to him. So he was just head-in-the clouds, happy, excited to be a dad, already picking out names. I was trying to crunch numbers and figure out what we were going to do.”
RALEIGH — Britt Harris still vividly remembers the first moment she saw her now-deceased husband, Spc. Chris Harris, a U.S. Army paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne. “Chris and I met in Southern Pines, where we both are from, through some mutual friends,” she told NSJ in a Sept. 1 interview. “It was like one of those scenes from a movie — and I know that sounds so cheesy — where someone walks into a room and everything else kind of fades into the background, and everyone else gets really blurry and the focus is on that one person.” That spark from their first meeting in January of 2016 quickly led to an engagement and then marriage in October of the same year. But their time together after the wedding would be short, with Chris’s unit deploying to Afghanistan in July of 2017. Britt says Chris was excited for his mission. He was largely raised by his uncle Bruce in Florida, who had served in the military and was a father-figure to him, and Chris was inspired to follow in his footsteps. “I actually didn’t know I was pregnant until three weeks into the deployment. I had no idea,” See GOLD STAR, page A2
United Flight 93 made its final descent, chaos unfolding aboard as buildings burned 300 miles to the east. Nearly one-fifth of the country is too young to remember firsthand the day that changed everything. At the edge of the memorial’s overlook, a burly man in a leather Harley Davidson vest talks to two companions. He points toward the patch where the plane hit. It is an intimate conversation, and it is hard to hear what he’s saying. But his first two words are clear: “I remember …” Remembering is not merely a See REMEMBERING, page A2
Few school districts remain mask optional, one is pushing back Yancey County School Board chair pushes back against Cooper’s ‘intimidating,’ ‘coercive’ letter By A.P. Dillon North State Journal RALEIGH — Only a handful of the 64 North Carolina school districts that originally voted to make masks optional for K-12 students for the upcoming year are still following that policy. As of Sept. 6, the school districts continuing mask-optional policies are Avery, Camden, Onslow, Polk Union and Yancey counties, as well as Newton-Conover City Schools. There are a total of 115 school districts in the state. Most of the reversals came after a letter was sent urging mask-optional districts to reverse course despite updates to the StrongSchoolsNC Toolkit giving districts the choice of making masks optional. The letter was issued and signed by Gov. Roy Cooper, N.C. Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) Secretary Mandy Cohen and State Health Director Dr. Betty Tilson. Cooper’s letter urges districts to “fully implement” the toolkit and to employ masks despite being a “recommended” option and the final decision left to each district. “Because children under 12 cannot yet get the vaccine and the percent of children 12-18 years old who are vaccinated is low, all students, teachers and staff in grades K-12 should wear a mask,” Cooper’s letter reads. Cooper said the urgency is due to “rapidly increasing spread” attributed to the Delta variant and “increasing rates of infection in children.”
Yancey County Schools is one of the few remaining districts that is mask optional, and the board’s chairman, Edwin Fortner, penned a letter rebuking Cooper’s letter. Fortner noted the small numSee MASKS, page A2