I know that as you read this, many of you will be joining me in remembering those who lost their lives on 9/11, ten years ago.
We are going up to the Scottish Festival in Estes Park tomorrow, where they will have a special remembrance for 9/11.
I normally don't watch TV in the morning, but for some reason that day I got up early and switched on the news in time to hear Guiliani announcing that a 2nd plane had just hit the 2nd tower. We all remember where we were when we heard the news. I held 4 year old Sam very tightly as I watched the news, and wondered how many of my friends in New York were in harm's way.
There were many people in our industry who were affected by the day's events. I can think of 3 friends' stories off the top of my head. One friend who I knew from my days living in the East Village, is an artist now designing fabric. Her daughter was trapped in a train under the towers as they burned. The firemen came in and rescued them after an hour, got them up to the surface and told them to run for their lives, then the firemen went back in and the tower collapsed on top of them.
Another designer friend of mine, knew that her husband was in the tower at the time of the plane crash, and she had no way of knowing if he had survived until he walked in the door of their home in New Jersey – at 10:30 pm that night. (He had walked all the way home over the bridge)
Another friend whose company is in lower Manhattan, had a loss when her daughter's father-in-law (a firefighter) died in the tower collapse.
eQuilter customers donated over 3000 quilts which were distributed to survivors and family members who had lost someone on 9/11. With the help of Mission of Love and a pastor friend in NYC, we made sure each quilt was personally placed into the hands of a grieving relative, or a survivor.
This week at Photoshop World, we were lucky to have Joe McNally as a speaker. You may have seen his work in Time Magazine or the Washington Post recently, featuring his giant life-size Polaroid photo portraits of 9/11 survivors. It was very moving to see his images and hear him speak about the project. The images are meant to eventually reside at the memorial museum at Ground Zero.
Our business was only 2 years old at the time, and the generosity just blew me away. Since then we've coordinated comfort quilt projects with Mission of Love in Haiti, post-Katrina, and recently in Japan. (Yes we are STILL waiting for photos from the July 13 ceremony – you can read the details on our Quilts for Japan page.)
This weekend Tom will have arrived at the Somalian refugee camp on the border of Kenya, and will be distributing the donated scissors, needles and thread. On Sunday Mission of Love is donating a group of sewing machines in Pine Ridge, SD, along with the sewing notions and fabric we shipped up there last week.
Sunday I will be praying for peace, and thinking about the tremendous outpouring of quilts we received from our customers, post 9/11. I hope to be quietly hand-stitching Sunday night, reflecting on what has passed in the last 10 years.
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My 9/11 was just as strange as anyone else’s. I learned a heart breaking experience that day. I slept through my alarm, which I never did. I had to be at work at 6AM at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Jail in Castaic, CA. I got to work 30 minutes late, and found everyone in the nurse’s station completely quiet staring at the computers. I was an RN at that time for one of the largests jails in the country. Our Dr. on duty, was Middle Eastern. She always was quiet and professional and wore a head covering everyday. The events were just unfolding in NY time at our time @ 6:30AM. Suddenly, our doctor, I can’t for the life of me, remember her name, started screaming and wailing. I have never heard anything so horrible and sad. She was screaming, “We’re not like that!!! We’re not like that!!!” Everyone was stunned, so I ran over to her and wrapped her in my arms and started rocking her back and forth in my arms, telling her, “I know, I know”, Somebody else came and gave her some water. We had a lot of Filipino nurses, too, and we all joined in holding her and comforting her. I realized that she was scared for her life. She actually thought that we were going to turn on her and get physical!! And I suddenly realized that I would feel the same way. We all told her to call her husband, and make sure he was safe, and not to go to work. I told her that she should go home and be with her family, we weren’t going to get much work done that day, anyway. It was so shocking because she thought that the others that she worked with everyday, could turn on her and kill her for her beliefs. That day I wondered if the Muslims would become the “New Jews” from Nazi Germany. And I have never forgotten any of the horrible pictures coming through, and my underlying distrust of our government, when I heard that they new this was going to happen.