Moving Past 9/11 with the Help of Children

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Ground Zero by Shannon Hurst Lane

I remember, as a kid, listening as my parents’ friends sometimes talked about where they were when JFK was assassinated. I didn’t understand then what I know now: Horrible, terrifying events in our country’s history can make people feel alone, and we seek connection and togetherness as a way to relate to and get through tragedy. Maybe every generation has this experience. Certainly, for anyone old enough to read this, the collective and terrible event of our age is 9/11/01. And today, on the 7th anniversary of that day, we’ll ask that question as well. Where were you when the World Trade Center towers fell?

FDNY Wall of Remembrance by Shannon Hurst LaneI was in New York City. One of my best friends worked in Building 7, and she’s fine. My father-in-law was down at Wall Street, and he somehow got on the last working subway train out of there. No one that I personally know was killed that day, but every firefighter from the fire station around the corner from our building perished when the towers fell. It was the sirens from their trucks, as they raced downtown that morning, that first alerted me to something being wrong. A lot of our crying that week was for those young men and their families: These same men let my then-2-year old and other neighborhood children play with the station dog and ding the firetruck bell. And it was the young children in our neighborhood on the west side of Manhattan that unknowingly helped many of us young parents get through the week – after all, they needed the collective group of adults to take care of them. We did – all these disparate New Yorkers came together, playing tag with the toddlers and young children, taking care of babies, trying to preserve what innocence was left in the city.

Say what you will about FEMA – obviously the agency was completely unprepared for Katrina – but the FEMA website has a really valuable tool for children. This page connects kids and offers pictures that children drew after national disasters (both natural, like tornadoes, and man-made, like 9/11). It’s called the Disaster Connection Kids to Kids: This is a webpage that allows users to look through drawings and notes that children from school across the country have drawn and written to firefighters, in reaction to events, and to other children who suffered losses. Some of the cards also thank rescue workers. While these pictures and letters were sent to their intended recipients, they are also easy to peruse. Take a look; the longer I clicked from drawing to drawing, the more impressed I became with our country’s children.

Seven years ago, the act of taking care of little children in my neighborhood helped me, and other parents, cope with a devastating, shocking time. Today, it’s interesting to look through the collection of drawing and notes from kids all over the United States. Seven years after 9/11/01, it’s easy to smile, and be touched by the resilience and hopefulness of our nation’s children.

Crescent Road Elementary in Griffin GeorgiaPS 154 NYC

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September 11, 2008 | Filed Under Destinations, The Cookie Jar, Travel News 

Comments

4 Responses to “Moving Past 9/11 with the Help of Children”

  1. Aurae Beidler says:
    September 11, 2008 at

    Thanks Jen. Well put and beautifully described. Thanks for sharing.

  2. Marilyn Pennell says:
    September 11, 2008 at

    Thanks for this eloquent tribute, Jen. These young firefighters and their families are the true heroes among us.

  3. jamie says:
    September 11, 2008 at

    The children’s pictures made me feel so hopeful. After 9/11 it felt like our collective innocence was gone forever, but maybe not.

  4. Ric Garrido says:
    September 29, 2008 at

    I arrived at school in Gilroy, California on the morning of 9/11 with the intent of impressing on the children that the day was historic.

    The school administration wanted us to pretend nothing had happened and go through the day just like any normal day. My thought was to impress upon the 5th grade students in my class to look around and think about the school, and gather memories of what you are doing today, and remember this day and the people around you.

    20 and 40 years from now your kids and grandkids will want to know what you were doing on 9/11. Remember how sunny and beautiful and peaceful our school was that day.

    I remember two major events as a kid.

    1968 my mother crying one morning as we were checking out of some roadside motel in some southwestern state on our way to Los Angeles. She had just learned that Bobby Kennedy was shot. I was 8.

    I was traveling from San Francisco to Los Angeles on I-5 when my dad pulled the car over and took me into some bar to watch Neil Armstrong make his historic moon walk.
    I was 9.

    I wish I had been able to impress on their 9 and 10 year old minds the memories of a day with beautiful advancement for science and determination rather than a tragedy.

    We share the life we experience.

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