It is with a heavy heart that I’m writing on this beautiful Saturday morning, September 10th, 2011. Mixed emotions are filling my heart and my eyes are starting to fill up with tears. Tomorrow we will mark the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Of course, at that time I was a young teenager in 10th grade at Kutztown High School. I will never forget, as well most of us, the moments and the days leading after September 11th. It is one of the moments that our parents and grandparents had when President Kennedy was shot – this is that moment for my and my parent’s generation. There were rumors around the high school of a bomb threat but also of a fire in New York City. It was not until I walked into my 4th period class in Mrs. Reighn’s computer lab that I would hear the news of a plane flying into a World Trade Center tower. I don’t think any of us exactly knew what were witnessing or how it would change our country and future. It is hard for me to think of that time as a 15 year old, thinking I knew everything but now looking back – I knew nothing and I still have a lot to learn 10 years later about life and the world.
Sitting as a country 10 years later, I think we need to go back to that moment in time, the weeks of unity we held as a country, as brothers and sisters in freedom following September 11th. We no longer are standing hand in hand saying “United We Stand.” We are a very broken country and are in the midst of “Dividing We Fall.” As we mark this anniversary and evaluate new terrorist threats may we come together again and evaluate what is important and once again stand together and help our brothers and sisters. Let’s not fight over health care, a splintered economy or a drowning real estate market. There are many ways to help across the country, even in your own background, on this anniversary. I am choosing to do public service in honor of those survivors, victims, and heroes that risked their lives in New York City, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania on that beautiful fall morning in September. I read an incredible article this week about a Cantor Fitzgerald employee who embraced the very major loss of their company into a conversational way to help the families of their killed employees which paved their way into the future – which is now an even more successful one.
This week as many channels were broadcasting 9/11 specials and NFL football games, I was watching the local ABC station, WNEP, out of Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. I was watching the city of Wilkes-Barre, the city I called home for 4 years during my education at Wilkes University, home. While I attended there from 2004-2008, there was always a shadow of this storm called Hurricane Agnes and how it drastically hurt the city’s economy in 1972. The city was slowly regaining its momentum and revitalizing downtown. I go back time to time to meet with my former professors and to see what changes done on Wilkes University’s campus as well as Wilkes-Barre because it is a beautiful area it just needed some extra TLC. It seemed like Wilkes-Barre was finally on the track to getting back where it once belonged. A major city with a country feel but still close enough to NYC to commute to work. Now, nearly 40 years later as Wilkes-Barre was getting back on track they are experiencing some devastating hard times again by a natural disaster. Tropical Storm Lee left its wrath from Eastern to Central Pennsylvania with rain for days and days on end which is causing historic record flood levels and the end is sight in a merely 48 hours. The levels were indeed higher than Northeastern and Central Pennsylvania experienced with Hurricane Agnes in 1972. Many of my readers across the country, ok so I am hoping for some of those, might not have heard about this – but it is a natural disaster in Pennsylvania and New York. While watching a press conference on WNEP’s website, Col. Dave Anderson Army Corp of Engineers said, “This is the worst I have seen with the exception of a poorly made man made structure I once responded to somewhere else (he is referencing New Orleans & Hurricane Katrina here).” So why hasn’t the media been more focused on it? Well they have but not enough, the anniversary of 9/11 is overshadowing. I am not saying this out of any disrespect but I think we should take this anniversary to focus on how our country can once again stand together. No story should out shine the other we experienced this a year ago when America’s Music City, Nashville, experienced a 100 year flood at the same time the Gulf Coast was experiencing the oil spill. Now, I was a communications major in college, so I understand how the media works and what is newsworthy but what I don’t understand is the constant need to show the same footage for hours and hours on end, why can’t you spilt on coverage on both news items ? That is probably am I not in the field.
Taking my personal feelings aside we should take this anniversary and embrace it. Show the rest of the world and the country how we can come together and help each other in a time of need. Putting our own worries, debts, needs and belongings aside to help those have encountered loss and now have nothing. It will be another 2 days before residents are able to return to their homes and see what they can salvage if anything at all. The American Red Cross, Salvation Army, Froggy 101 and 98.5 KRZ of NEPA are taking collections, donations and volunteers to give the survivors basic necessities as a start. And I have no doubt that a local non-profit organization called Sons of a Carpenter, which I am a proud member of, will help out in some way as well. I hope this message inspired you or brought attention to dire circumstances in Pennsylvania. But what I hope the most is that you begin to spread the “United We Stand” feeling we once had to your own neighborhood. That could be helping a neighbor carrying in the groceries or helping them cut up a tree that fell from a storm. Or it would be as simple as holding the door open for someone. It only takes a simple act of kindness to make someone’s day and spread some happiness and unity across a neighborhood.
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