By Linda Stamato
I had just started my deanship at Rutgers University’s Douglass College, and before even taking a deep breath it seemed a promising year sat suspended in time as I witnessed the unimaginable: Not far away, planes were hitting the Twin Towers and they were falling.
I knew students were on their way, or already had arrived, at their internships in the World Trade Center. Others had parents working there, and I learned that the mother of one of my students was a flight attendant on Flight 93, the hijacked plane that went down in a Pennsylvania field.
What to do? Where to turn? Chaos, fear and worry was paralyzing the campus. We needed to act, to move, I thought, but how, do what?
On that day a required “Shaping a Life” course was scheduled, I decided not to cancel it, but to open it for the entire campus community. We turned it into an examination of what was taking place and what we could do.
The young women matured on that day and throughout the evening, helping one another, staying together in the student center, on the lawns, in the houses, supporting one another.
I opened my home to any who wished to stay, commuters mostly, who didn’t want to leave the campus. And I visited students in as many of the places where they stayed and talked with and listened to them.
Some parents urged their daughters to return home but they remained, staying close to one another. The experience was creating a bond we never could have predicted. In that bonding, they found strength and capacity—together—to face the next day and the next. We began months of activities to reflect on the day and on our days ahead.
The memory of that day is like cement in my consciousness. Yet there is also a bright light, a sense of resolute conviction manifest in these young, impressionable women to press on, to feel love for their country, to see a promising future ahead, despite the horror visited upon their nation, as they created deep, lasting and tender connections with their new- found friends.
In this community, their college, they would thrive. And together, they did.
Where were you on 9/11? What do you remember from that day? Share you reflections in the comments.
WATCH LINDA STAMATO ON NJ PBS ‘STATE OF AFFAIRS’
Linda Stamato is a trustee of the Morristown and Morris Township Library Foundation, and a member of the nonprofit Corporation for New Jersey Local Media. At Rutgers, where she is a Faculty Fellow, she is co-director of the Center for Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. She also is a former commissioner on the Morristown Parking Authority.
Opinions expressed in commentaries are the authors’. In this instance, they do reflect those of this publication.
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Thanks, Ken. Less than a month in office and, what you say, projecting a calming presence, I may have summoned that from somewhere but I felt I was coming apart inside. Worried about the students and they, worried about their parents and friends, all the while trying to absorb what had happened. Fortunately, there were a few good happenings to absorb at the same time. For example, the train many of the students took to get to their internships at the Twin Towers was delayed, one of those precious details that rarely surface but, wow, how consequential.
You were in a pivotal place that day and the Douglass students who were on campus must still remember your calming presence.