Most of you know that I grew up in New York. It will always be my home. The old saying is so very true. You can take a girl out of The City, but you can never take The City out of the girl. My wonderfully privileged childhood allowed me so many opportunities. I took each and every one of them for granted. It was not until I was older that I appreciated the opportunities I had as a child. I lived on what is known as Museum Mile on Fifth Avenue. I had some of the world's most famous artwork at my disposal.
At a young age my father brought me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art quite frequently. It was one of his favorite places to go in the city. He would bring me over to the Impressionist wing and together we would look at, learn and talk about the great pieces by Monet, Manet, Degas, Seurat, Renoir and all the other masters. I tried to pose like the great bronzed Degas ballerina. My father would ask my to count all the dots in Seurat's paintings! Sometimes we would sit on the steps of the museum and watch all the passersby. I was a lover of people watching. There are so many different types in New York. I was keenly aware of this as a young child. It was never out of the ordinary to me. It just seemed like it ought to be. Like a great sauce simmering over the stove, many flavors and spices are needed to make it perfect.
My parents were both highly successful in their fields. My father worked in the world of finance and my mother deeply ensconced in the art world where she became master of Public Relations first at The Museum of Modern Art and later at The Whitney Museum. The arts were terribly important to us as a family.
As a child in New York I traveled up and down the city streets taking in every sight. Taking not one of them for granted. A tourist in my own home town I visited The Statue of Liberty, many museums, Rockefeller Center, rode on the Circle Line ferry around the city, rode double-decker buses along the great Fifth Avenue, attended sporting events at Shae Stadium, Yankee Stadium, Madison Square Garden.
I walked everywhere in Manhattan. Most New Yorkers do. Public Transportation, is usually a second choice. There was nothing like strolling the streets while peering into some world famous windows. How could they be famous, I wondered? They are just windows... little did I truly understand just how spectacular they were. A little girl, about my age, lived over there in the Plaza. I had her books. I wished I could live in a hotel. I had a friend who lived in a hotel. It was the Stanhope Hotel just across from the Metropolitan Museum. Her father was a musician.
I visited the zoos and parks and playgrounds. I ice skated and took sled rides in Central Park.
With my parents I ventured downtown. We would go to exotic places like Little Italy and SoHo and China Town and Wall Street and The South Street Seaport. While Manhattan is just a small island, it is so very vast. Each neighborhood has its own personality and feel to it. I was familiar and comfortable on the Upper East Side and in Midtown. I was completely lost downtown. The streets made no sense to me. It was as foreign to me as Japan was. With many more different languages being spoken.
In the twenty years I lived in New York I saw the World Trade Center just a handful of times.
I saw and appreciated the magnificent structures more when I moved to Greenwich, Connecticut. I would go for long walks on the beach at Todd's Point where on a clear day the Towers stood proudly and majestically, glistening, smiling at me across the small body of water that separated us. They defined the New York Skyline to me. They reminded me that I was not far from home.
One day before the terrible tragedy struck, my father and I were talking. He was telling me about meeting a client at Cantor Fitzgerald, years ago. The large financial company was located on the North Tower's 105th floor. It was a magnificent office, my father told me. Immediately he began to talk about the wonderful works of art in the office's gallery. This was proudly referred to as the "museum in the sky." It must have been a perfect place for my father to conduct business. B Gerald Cantor was one of the greatest private art collectors in the world. His love for the artist Rodin was well known and well documented.
On September 11th, a spectacular art collection, including sculptures and drawings by Rodin, had been destroyed. In addition to a spectacular piece of art history lost forever, the firm lost over 600 of it's 1,000 employees.
Lives in New York and surrounding communities, Connecticut and New Jersey were forever altered on that fateful day nine years ago. Wives lost husbands, children lost fathers, parents lost children, sisters lost brothers... Where I live, it seems, everyone was somehow touched by this tragedy. Our hearts grew deeper that day. We shed a lot of tears that day.
But New Yorkers are strong and resilient and eternally optimistic. They came together, stuck together and worked together and healed together.
In memory of all those we have loved and lost... in New York, Washington DC and Pennsylvania... you will always be remembered...