Dave Reardon: Whether it’s the pandemic or 9/11, fear shouldn’t stop us

The University of Hawaii football results from 2001 show a gap of 14 days between the first game, a 30-12 win against Montana and the next one, a 28-20 loss at Nevada. That was not how the schedule was planned.

Monday marks exactly 20 years since the UH team got on an airplane at what is now known as Daniel K. Inouye International Airport and headed for Reno. I left for the same event the night before.

Why is any of this remarkable? College football teams and sportswriters fly to games all the time, right? Even now, during a pandemic. Especially to-and-from here, as it’s the only way to get to road games from Hawaii and vice versa.

Well, in mid-September of 2001, the world was in shock. Nine days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks most of us were still in a daze. We were just starting to figure out how to deal with what to most of us had been unimaginable and what kind of horrors might await us. We didn’t use the words “new normal” and whatever that was going to be was a long way off. We felt lucky that college football was postponed just one week.

For those of us who weren’t alive yet on Dec. 7, 1941, it was the most emotionally and psychologically traumatic collective event we’d ever experienced — even though it happened half an ocean and a continent away. It was still a deadly, world-changing sneak attack on America. We were at war.

Hawaii was supposed to play at Nevada on Sept. 15. But all commercial aircraft were grounded for several days after the attacks, and unless you were a member of a military flight crew or a soldier headed for Afghanistan it was counter-intuitive to get on a plane for any reason; it was just a week after four commercial flights were hijacked and used as weapons to kill thousands of innocent civilians.

The airport was eerie the night of Sept. 19. It was very quiet, and it seemed like there were more National Guardsmen, in full combat gear, rifles at the ready, than everyone else combined — flight crews, other airline and airport employees, and we very few passengers. The soldiers’ presence was both reassuring and unsettling.

This was the first time checking in for a flight included inspection of all my luggage. Now that is routine and expected, even when we enter stadiums with work bags. Back then it was new, and within a few days, considered overly intrusive and a violation of civil rights by many citizens. Given the circumstances, I wasn’t bothered by it at all.

Then I left the terminal to get some air. You could still do that then without having to check in again. I met a friendly young man who happened to be the son of a retired sportswriting colleague, the legendary Ferd Borsch. I asked Tim where he was headed.

“New York, to visit friends,” he said with a nervous smile. “I’ve had this trip planned for a long time, and I decided I’m not going to cancel it. Please don’t tell my dad.”

I promised not to, but also told him I think his dad would’ve done the same thing and would be proud of him for being such a good friend. This was the first time that when I said “safe travels” to someone it wasn’t just an empty way to end a conversation.

When I got onboard, there were only about 20 of us on a plane that seats more than 100. Usually, that’s like winning the lottery, especially on a red-eye, because you have an entire row to use as a bed. This time it was just a reminder of what had happened the previous week; I know I wasn’t the only one eyeing everyone else, hoping to find someone who appeared to be an air marshal and not a person who fit our ideas of what a terrorist would look like.

During the captain’s post-takeoff speech, in a cheery voice he suggested that if we were attacked with a knife or box cutter we use our blankets to fend off the assault. Really? I still don’t know if he was serious or making a really bad attempt at humor.

At the time, I didn’t think I was afraid, it all just seemed like a strange adventure. Plus, this was my first road trip as the Star-Bulletin’s UH football beat writer. Maybe I’d write about it 20 years later.

About an hour after takeoff, my body reacted in a way that made me realize that yes, I was scared. Since the flight was nearly empty, I was able to use the restroom instead of the airsickness bag at my seat. I had only been airsick one other time in my life, when I was about 7 or 8. Our family was moving across the country, and I was stuck in a seat next to a stranger who chain-smoked the entire six hours. Yes, that was acceptable behavior during the old normal of the 1960s.

When we got to Reno, the casinos and hotels were nearly empty. The rest of the trip was all work and fun, with very little time spent consciously worrying or talking about 9/11. The blackjack dealers and Nevada running back Chance Kretschmer were terrorizing enough.

A couple of days before we left Hawaii, I interviewed Timmy Chang, who was UH’s starting quarterback. I loved talking with him because he was honest, maybe even to a fault, and had an interesting way of saying things — sometimes almost Yogi Berra-ish. He was what we’d describe these days as “transparent.”

He was ahead of the curve on concussions; in 2000 it was not considered brave to say you might not play because you’d “gotten your bell rung.” That’s exactly what he did, though, as a true freshman.

In 2002 he described opposing defensive linemen as “scary monsters.” It was unintentionally funny.

There was no humor this time, but Chang was honest as usual.

“I wish they were coming here. Anytime you step on an airplane you’ve got to think twice about what happened. You’re going to look at who’s coming on the plane and who your neighbor is sitting next to you. At least the charter will be much safer and there will be less hassles.”

There’s a four-letter word that starts with the letter “f,” and when used incorrectly is likely to offend people, and maybe even start some fights.

Yeah, that one.

Fear.

Timmy Chang acknowledged fear. So did Ferd Borsch’s son. But they faced it down.

Pretty much everyone had to and did in 2001 … even the servicemen and women who immediately began fighting back. Even the first responders on 9/11, going against all survival instincts to do their job.

“We were just as scared as anybody else,” said New York firefighter James Murphy, who went into the towers and helped rescue survivors that day. “We were just victims too. Basically the only difference between us and the victims is we had flashlights.”

Eventually, though, a lot of people said the government was using fear to manipulate us.

Sound familiar?

These days, some folks say things like, “I refuse to live my life in fear.”

Some mistakenly link fear to cowardice.

Fear is an inescapable part of life, maybe even for psychopaths; recent research indicates that people who lack empathy might experience fear. The world, sometimes even in places that seem very safe, is dangerous. And sometimes we might think we are fearless, but we’re really not: We fear not meeting expectations, our own and those of others.

Success in sports is very often about conquering fear … sometimes even embracing it. Some of us fear failure, some of us fear success. We fear fear itself.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt described “fear itself” as “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

That sounds straightforward, eloquent and strong. But it’s not that simple, and fighting fascists in the 1940s, terrorists in the 2000s and a virus now are three very different things. I’m trying to understand why we were more willing to sacrifice and come together for the first two so much more than for this pandemic.

For the past several years, I’ve always gotten a flu vaccination strictly out of fearing one thing more than another: the fear of being laid out sick for a week more than any possible side effects from the shot. It was similar for choosing to get my COVID-19 vaccine shots; for me, the benefits I perceived far outweighed the potential consequences.

If you won’t take a vaccine because you think there’s a microchip in it, isn’t that a fear? I’m going to go out on a limb and classify it as an irrational one.

If you’ve driven enough miles you’ve probably experienced this situation. It’s late at night and you come upon a red light.

After waiting a while, you realize something must be wrong mechanically and that light is not going to change to green.

How long do you wait before treating it like a stop sign — checking for traffic and then proceeding through the intersection?

When does your fear of technically breaking the law outweigh your fear of being inconvenienced, wasting time, and feeling stupid?

Here’s something else I experienced while driving, three years ago:

If not for the airbag in my car, I’d have been seriously injured or killed by a guy who ran a red light. I thought I might never drive again, because of fear it would happen again. It took a few months, but eventually, I overcame my irrational distrust of every one on the road ignoring red lights.

Now, in terms of the pandemic, how much longer must we all wait for this current red light to turn green, and how many of us will trust it?

As for airplanes, I think most of us fear flying at least subconsciously even under normal circumstances. Floating miles above the ground in a metal tube is just an unnatural thing to do under any conditions. But since that flight to Reno in September of 2001, I’ve flown about 100 times, with very little anxiety. No flights, though, since the pandemic started; for me, that light will probably stay red for a while; there are already too many chances to get into a fight over masks to get into an airplane and multiply them.