In Memoriam, September 11, 2001                     home

Like millions of others, I have been to the World Trade Center. In fact, only a month ago, I took my wife and two children back to my hometown to visit the incomparable pride of New York City and, indeed, a living national monument. The World Trade Center was not a statue signifying a bygone age, but a thriving center of life that contained the worst, the best, the most maddening, and the most extraordinary in American life.

Until today, my father, a retired New York City police officer, worked at the World Trade Center as a Fire Safety Director. I thank God he was not scheduled to work on September 11. My family is lucky; thousands of others lying dead in New York, in Washington, D.C., and in the fields of western Pennsylvania, are not so fortunate. To those who have died, to those who were injured, to their families and loved ones, I offer my prayers, my condolences, and my tears.

Against all apparent evidence to the contrary, I have a faith in ultimate justice. I hold this faith despite the bewildering devastation that people cause and face. Despite the recognition that the evidence for justice in this world is often slim. And yet I have faith that there is justice.

One may object that such a faith is only a self-deception based on the need to believe. Others more generous might call it a commonsense, enabling assumption to remind one that life must, inevitably, go on. But I think it's simply a true instinct that we too often bury. There is justice, even if we cannot fathom it.

Meanwhile, I will remember our beautiful World Trade Center, not as it was today, but as it was for three decades -- as it was meant to be. As an shining testament to the human spirit. It will remind me, as I know it will remind others, of the continual necessity for life to face down death, and once again begin the process of recovery and growth.

Richard Dolan
Rochester, New York
September 11, 2001