UNH and Durham Commemorate September 11
Ann Weaver Hart
Remarks
September 11, 2002
September 11th is a day we will always have in common. With few exceptions, the students here today were not yet born the day John Kennedy was assassinated; and our first-year students were young toddlers when the Challenger space shuttle exploded. While these tragedies were on such a grand scale we could barely grasp them - the death of a U.S. president, the death of a New Hampshire school teacher and her astronaut colleagues - probably nothing compares in our memory to the scale of human destruction in our nation on September 11, 2001. None of us will ever forget it. We will always remember where we were, and what we were doing.
My husband, Randy, and I were in Missoula, Montana to see Elise, our first grandchild, who had been born just two weeks before. We were at our motel getting ready to catch a plane for home. As I often do in the morning when away from home, I turned on the television to check the news and found myself staring at the smoking North Tower just after the first impact, and then watched, in horror, as the second jetliner struck the South Tower. And then the Pentagon. And then a field in Pennsylvania.
We spent the next four days stranded in Missoula, clinging to a newborn infant for comfort.
Many of our friends and colleagues were at the wrong place at the wrong time that day:
Beloved geography professor emeritus Bob LeBlanc, UNH Class of '59, on his way to a professional conference in California, on Flight 175, which hurtled into one of the twin towers at the World Trade Center.
Judd Cavalier, Class of '98, in his 104th-floor office in Tower Two.
Jennifer Fialko, Class of '94, sociology major, cancer survivor, at work in the South Tower on the 92nd floor. She called a friend in Chicago. She said she had seen the first plane hit. She said she saw people jumping from the windows. She said she had to get out. She never did.
Timothy Stout, Class of '93, outstanding team member for UNH crew, in his office on the 103rd floor of the North Tower when the first plane hit. He had stepped out of the elevator only five minutes before.
Stephen Siller, uncle and best buddy to Greg Siller, a UNH student athlete. Greg has a picture of his uncle in his football locker at the Field House. Stephen Siller was a firefighter who got off duty at 8 a.m. and was heading off to play golf when he heard a plane had hit the World Trade Center. He went there instead.
We all have a connection to Sept. 11th and the horrific tragedies in New York City, in Pennsylvania, and in Washington D.C. Firefighters and police officers; computer programmers and bond sales representatives; mothers and fathers; wives, husbands, and partners; sisters, brothers, sons, daughters, friends, colleagues. Alums. A professor.
All of us responded. Whether you participated in an on-campus forum, or organized one; whether you gave blood at a local Red Cross blood drive or donated money for rescue work; you responded.
Today's event is in memory of all who died, but it also is in honor of the spirit of American citizens. It is often said that terrible tragedies bring people together. What happened a year ago, aboard the passenger jets, in the Pennsylvania field, at the Pentagon, in the Twin Towers is a national tragedy on so many levels, and beyond any scale we can comprehend, that it would have been understandable if we had remained numb to the after effects this past year. But we have not. We have created new and important dialogues whether it has been among families, or our peers and colleagues. Dialogues in school classrooms, university lecture halls, town halls, and places of worship. This dialogue will continue today, during this afternoon's teach-in, and for months and years to come. Let us never forget.
Thank you.
