"I try not to make judgments," he said. "I only know I don't hear people talking about it very much. I wish they would. That there is a trust that things have returned to relative normalcy either means we're naive or we're confident because nothing major has happened."

Erickson said he continues to feel as patriotic as he did just after the attacks.

"I do believe — and I don't know who I might shock by saying this — being a Christian and being an American is not identical. My patriotism is certainly related to my faith but quite distinct from it. I love this country because it allows me to preach the gospel."

Noor Ul-Hasan, a 39-year-old homemaker from Rose Park on the panel, recently started wearing the head covering traditional to her Muslim faith. After years of blending into her adopted homeland, the hijab is a way of asserting her beliefs.

"I did not wear it because I thought I would be perceived as being a person who is forced to do something and is backward," she said. The events of 9/11, however, helped change her mind about embracing a visible sign of her religion.

"I was oblivious to a lot of things. I never discussed politics or religion with anybody before that. I used to be a banker. I thought that was something you just don't do," Ul-Hasan said. "I looked like everybody else."

The changes in her life began shortly after the terrorist attacks, when she decided to give up a high-powered career to stay home with her son, 10, and daughter, 12.

Ul-Hasan didn't start covering her long, dark hair in public until six months ago, after thinking about it for nearly that long. She said she was "afraid of the backlash that I thought may occur," especially while traveling with her children.

And there have been unwelcome stares, including some from students at her son's school. But there are also questions that are opportunities for her to help people better understand Islam. That's a responsibility that Ul-Hasan said she didn't recognize until two years ago.

"That's the difference with Sept. 11. I lost a lot of my life, living my life in the Western world," she said. "What little time, two years out of my soon-to-be 40 years, I've had to right a wrong impression about a whole race."

Melissa Dalley, also a panelist, worries that people are forgetting. "They just get back into their everyday lives and don't remember the effect that it had. When that happens, that's when some other dumb idiot out there gets an idea to do something."

Dalley, 24, recently lost her job due to the downturn in the economy and lives with her parents in West Jordan. She said at the check printing company where she was working, employees marked the first anniversary of the attacks with a memorial.