Thomas Kean, Former N.J. Governor, to Speak at Program
The University will present the program “9/11, A Ten Year Perspective” on Thursday, November 3 at 4:30 pm in Wilson Hall. With the passing of a decade, this event will allow people to gather at the University and reflect on their own perspectives of the terrorist attacks.
“It is surreal that it has been 10 years already,” said Rebecca Ryan, a senior, who was only 11yearsold on 9/11. “I can’t believe I lived through such a huge tragedy.”
Ryan said that she still recalls exactly where she was as that fateful day unfolded.
“I was in sixth grade English class. I remember my teacher coming into the classroom crying,” she said. “My school had students ranging from kindergarten to eighth grade. She was not allowed to tell us anything. We kept asking, ‘What’s wrong?,’ but she never said.”
Ryan said that her mother had picked her up from school, which struck her as unusual. When she asked her mom to tell her was going on, she explained what had happened to the World Trade Center. Ryan spent the rest of the day watching the smoking towers fall on every news station.
“9/11, A Ten Year Perspective” will have a variety of speakers including former New Jersey Governor Thomas H. Kean, who was chair of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks after 9/11.
Other speakers who will share their perspectives of 9/11 Eisenberg, former chairman of the Port Authority in both New York and New Jersey during the terrorist attacks, and Virginia S. Bauer, the current commissioner of the Port Authority.
Photography of the aftermath of 9/11 by award-winning photographer Joel Meyerowitz will also be shown during the event.
According to Meyerowitz’s website, only a few days after the attacks is when he “began to create an archive of the destruction and recovery at Ground Zero and the immediate neighborhood. The World Trade Center Archive consists of over 8,000 images [and] is an historic, photographic record of the immediate aftermath of the tragedy and the neighborhood as it evolved.” He has donated some of the original photographs to the University.
Many students at the University, including Ryan, said that the mental images still haunt their memories.
“You hear old people talk about Vietnam and all that crazy stuff,” Ryan said. “I can’t believe I have seen something just as big.”
The event is a part of the H.R. Young Lecture Series and the Stephen B. Siegel Lecture at the University. The program is open to students and the public, but a reservation is required.
About 400 guests are expected to attend, according to Theresa Lowy, the Associated Director for the Kislak Real Estate Institute at the University. To reserve a seat, contact her by phone at 7325714412 or email her at tlowy@monmouth.edu.
PHOTO COURTESY of blogspot.com
