My family has been touched by terrorism.  My cousin, Scott Marsh Cory, died on Pan Am Flight 103–the Lockerbie flight–on December 21, 1988.  He was a Syracuse University student coming home from a semester abroad in England.  Every December 21, with Christmas and grading on my mind, I stop for a moment to remember him.  I think of him at various other times, too.  My son Scott is named after him.

The events of September 11, 2001 are irrevocably connected in my mind to all that.  I taught that morning after both World Trade Center towers had been hit.  I gave students permission to come and go in my class that day.  But I felt that I had to teach that class.  I vowed that I was not going to let terrorists have power over me and rule my life–which is, after all, what they want to do.  I did not teach my afternoon class.  I had learned after my morning class that my brother was scheduled to be down near the World Trade Center towers that morning–and we could not reach him.  I was too emotional to be able to teach, and almost everyone had cancelled their classes at that point.  Luckily, my brother and a colleague got stuck in the traffic trying to get into Manhattan from New Jersey that morning, and they were turned back after the bridges and tunnels were closed.

I paused at the beginning of both of my classes today to reflect on that day 16 years ago.  I gave my students permission to come and go, as I had that morning.  Some of them were quite young when the September 11 attacks occurred.  I cannot imagine what they remember of that day.  No doubt some remember little, if anything; but some may have been deeply affected by the violence of that day.

Today, many of us, each in our own way, stop to remember.  I wanted to take a minute to do that here, too.