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A Personal Reflection on September 11, 2001

Patricia De Stacy Harrison
Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs
United States Department of State
September 11, 2004

As appeared in the Italian National Daily Newspaper Il Gazzettino (September 12, 2004)
Venice, Italy

As an American of Italian heritage it means so much to me personally to be in Venice on September 11, 2004. Among my activities today, Veneto Region President Galan and I, in the company of renowned architect Daniel Libeskind, will visit the model of a memorial that commemorates the victims of the terrorist acts that took place in my country three years ago today. This memorial, when constructed, will symbolize Italian-American unity in rejecting terrorism and keeping alive the memory of its victims.

On September 11, 2001, I was in Washington, DC, preparing to enter the Department of State - where I was preparing for my new role as Assistant Secretary for Educational and Cultural Affairs. The day that began so beautifully - the sun shining, the sky clear - ended in horror and sadness.

My good friend Barbara Olson was on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. In my hometown, Brooklyn, New York, so many of the sons and daughters of my friends were in the World Trade Center Towers on that day. Among the three thousand people who were murdered that day in those three barbarous attacks were citizens from ninety countries, including Italy.

Through rituals that included everything from church services to a New York Yankees baseball game, we began to pray for, remember and honor those who died that day. We began to understand that we had had heroes among us all the time - we just never recognized them appropriately - the firefighters, the police, the emergency workers, our great Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who is also a son of Brooklyn, our teachers, our community leaders, chief among them.

Our First Lady Laura Bush said that everywhere she went people had just one concern: How can I help? How can I serve?

And I think each of us has asked those questions of ourselves from that day until today. When we looked up from our grief we could see that the U.S. Embassy lawn in Rome was covered in flowers brought by the Italian people. President Ciampi and Prime Minister Berlusconi were there to provide sympathy and support.

Now, three years later, the generosity of the Italian people is still evident in the annual scholarship drive by Il Vero Cuore di Venezia for the children of the New York firefighters who perished on this date three years ago. The firefighters who did survive will not soon forget the outpouring of affection and assistance offered by the Italian people.

At the State Department we received thousand of e-mails from Italian men and women who had come to America on Fulbright or International Visitor exchanges, or had studied in the United States. They all contained the same questions: Is the family I stayed with OK? How can I help? How can I serve?

Daniel Libeskind asked the same questions of himself and the result is to be seen in his winning design for the new World Trade Center, and again, in the model being unveiled today in Venice.

In his model for a September 11, 2001 memorial in Padua, Daniel Libeskind has taken two great symbols of challenge and hope - a beam from the World Trade Center and the book held by Lady Liberty - and woven them into a monument that reminds us all of the values that unite us and the responsibilities that we bear for assuring a future in which all people can live together sharing peace, prosperity, democracy and human dignity.

My grandfather, Nunziato di Stacio, was born in Venice. When he left Italy for the United States, like so many generations of Italians, he sailed past the Great Lady in New York harbor, the Statue of Liberty, on the way to his new home. Lady Liberty infused my grandfather with the dream that, building on his Italian roots and traditions, and with the hope offered by the United States, he could play a part in constructing a great new world.

Today, many years after my grandfather said goodbye to Venice, I am honored to be back in this lovely city once again. I am here to commemorate September 11 among so many friends and in the shadow of Daniel Libeskind's model for the Padua 9/11 memorial. I am here to advocate for that shared future that unites us, even as we pray for those who gave their lives on this date three years ago.

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