Day One: Laurie Spencer

Today is the kickoff walk for Memorial Miles. This is a difficult day emotionally each year, as are the weeks preceding the 11th of September. This is the first year that I am back working Downtown, and I am grateful to be here. I believe strongly in the strength that the rebuilding will return to this city. It doesn’t mean that I will ever forget the World Trade Center; on the contrary, I can close my eyes and do a “walk through”, seeing the details of the interior almost as clearly as when it stood. The North Tower was my work home for 19 years. Right now outside my window, the bell is ringing to mark the moment that it fell to the ground. Sometimes it doesn’t feel as if it’s really gone—that the towers and the people we lost simply exist somewhere else now.

My thanks go to Clarelle Charles, Tom Grassi, and Paul Pietropaolo for organizing Memorial Miles. It’s something positive for the survivors of That Day and their friends to do to honor the memory of those taken from us too early and so suddenly. We who are left behind find strength in one another, and I would rather be with other survivors on this day than with anyone else.

I am fortunate to be close friends and continue to work with the person with whom I escaped Tower One, and she is a Memorial Miler, too. Today we’ll walk together instead of running for our lives, and I hope that this small thing we do will bring comfort to others, whether they are known or unknown to us. A place, a structure, can bring forth a sense of connection that goes beyond the steel and concrete and other materials from which it is created. If I can help someone else reach that connection, this walking will be worth every step.


Laurie E. Spencer
September 11, 2008