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May 5, 2011

The news of Osama bin Laden's death Sunday May 1, 2011, brought a wave of relief across America, as the leader of Al-Qaeda was finally stopped a decade after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

When Bin Laden's death was announced, a noticeable amount of young people flocked to the White House to support the United States, chanting "USA, USA" and celebrating with joy, reports ABS-CBN News.

."For members of our generation, 9/11 has served to epitomize the 'where-were-you-when?' moment," recalled Ryan Eshoff of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

"The death of bin Laden created an immediate stir unlike few things I've ever seen," added the 20-year-old, writing in the UCLA's student newspaper the Daily Bruin.

Bin Laden, America's most wanted man since the attacks on 9/11, was shot and killed in a town near the Pakistani capital Islamabad.

After bin Laden was tracked to a compound in Abbottabad, a team of highly skilled US Navy SEALs staged the raid to end the 10-year-long search.

Shawn Summers, a 20-year-old student at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., said that bin Laden's death laid to rest a "specter that’s haunted our lives as far back as we can remember."

"9/11 cast a cloud over us, certainly... For a few brief hours on Sunday night, it was, at least to me, like the SEALs had shot all our stagnant national self-doubts to death with him," the young man of the 9/11 generation told AFP.

"Bin Laden's death was a clear victory, which has been sorely lacking in an age of counterinsurgency and irregular warfare and terrorism and an economy no one knows how to fix," added the 20-year-old.

In New York City, President Barack Obama visited a firehouse, which is known as "the Pride of Midtown," before paying his respects at ground zero, reports The Wall Street Journal.

The firehouse lost 15 men on 9/11 - more than any other in New York.

For one mother, who lost her firefighter son on September 11, she has felt alone in her sorrow for the past ten years, reports Fox News. However, when people came to ground zero in New York and gathered in Washington D.C. to celebrate the news of bin Laden's death, the renewed patriotism was heartwarming for families of the victims who did not survive the attacks on 9/11.

This September to mark the official ten-year anniversary of the attacks, names will be unveiled at the National September 11th Memorial in New York City.

"This memorial, that we are opening on the 10th anniversary," Joe Daniels, President of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum said to Fox News, "is designed in a way that’s different than any other memorial that’s ever been built in the world."

"What underpins the design is the notion that relationships between the victims are reflected on the memorial itself."

"We took one extra step and went to every next of kin, of each of the victims, and asked them if there was a request, if they wanted their loved one’s name to be next to somebody else on the memorial," Daniels said.

This "meaningful adjacency" to the names gives even more poignant meaning to the memorial by highlighting the human relationships between the victims.

Osama bin Laden's death can begin to put to rest some pain 9/11 Survivors and America has felt for more than a decade.

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