A Day To Remember

With today marking the anniversary of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, I couldn’t help thinking back to where I was and what I was doing on that fateful day seven years ago. Big moments in history often make you reflective that way.

I was working in public relations at an advertising agency, and my client was set to do a press conference several hours away from our city. I was not going with him, but it had been my job to handle all the logistics, write my client’s remarks and coordinate all of the publicity. Going into that morning – September 11 – I had lined up at least one television station and several print reporters to cover the news conference, which I felt was fair since the topic of our announcement was not exactly breaking news.

Then the first plane hit in New York. I remember gathering with my co-workers in the conference room to watch the tragedy unfold on TV. But before we knew terrorists were behind the crash, I had met my client downstairs to give him the materials he would need for the press conference. I remember telling him as he drove off, “Now what’s happening in New York MIGHT impact our media coverage.” Understatement of the century, right? Giving away a computer to a contest winner would have only gotten press attention on a VERY slow news day – this, on the other hand, was the story of our lifetime. At least my client wasn’t upset with me for not producing better publicity results that day.

On September 11, 2001, I was also pregnant with my first baby. The horror of that day made many people say, “Who would want to bring a child into this kind of world?” – so it was an interesting time in history to be expecting. We had an ultrasound two days after 9/11 and found out we were going to have a girl. And ironically, we later discovered that the name we had picked pre-September 11 for our first-born daughter meant “one who loves peace.”

That discovery gave me a great deal of hope, even though we had chosen the name not knowing the meaning. It was the hope that our children would be of a generation who loved peace and therefore might handle things differently than those generations who had come before them. It was every parent’s dream: that their children’s lives would be characterized by happiness, health, peace and prosperity.

Our girls are still too young to really understand the significance of today. Someday, they’ll learn about it in history class and hear our personal reflections – the same way our parents talked of John F. Kennedy’s assassination being such a defining moment. In the meantime, I’m just going to hug my kids a little tighter and longer, and be thankful for the hope and promise I see in their eyes.