By: Natalie Gordon, Sam Levy, and Simona Vishnevsky

On September 11th, 2001, fourteen years ago, a tragedy struck that changed America and the lives of Americans forever. While many in the student population do not remember this day clearly, the faculty do, America does, and the stories that have been shared will always be remembered.

 During Friday’s town hall meeting, our community took an emotional journey back to the past to recall a day of life changing pain and suffering. Ms. Boehm’s story was not one of close family or friends, but rather about the people whom we see so often. In everyday life a person may pass by thousands of strangers who he or she will never see again. We are helped by so many people who we often take for granted – in Ms. Boehm’s case, an elevator operator and a waiter in a restaraunt. The people we meet throughout the course of our lifetime may have an impact on our lives in more ways than visible at the time. Rabbi Lev, however, told a different story, one about a woman who lost not only a colleague, but a lifelong friend. When hit with the unbelievable pain and guilt of knowing that her best friend was at work the day of the attacks covering her shift, she decided to turn her hurt into charity to help. It is important that we as a nation do not take the pain we feel from 9/11 as fuel for hatred, but rather a reason to create more good in the world.  Like the woman in Rabbi Lev’s story, we must learn to take a tragic situation and do the best to turn it into something inspirational that others can learn from.

How do we recover after a loss as painful as this? As stated in Cheryl Sawyer’s poem “One,” the solution is community. These horrific attacks left thousands heartbroken, and, as Sawyer wrote, America became “one color, one class, one generation, one gender, one faith, one language, one body, one family, one soul, one people.” Community is such a strong and beautiful value, it is something we can lean on when all is lost. I think that’s why we emphasize the importance of community so much in our everyday lives at dTHS, and that is why we must continue to stress the value of community as Americans. We must never forget the attacks that made America what it is today, we must never forget September 11, and we must never forget to value each other.