I was in class my sophomore year of college when planes crashed into the World Trade Centers, a field in Pennsylvania and the Pentagon. No close friends died that day.  Yet over the last 10 years I’ve lived and worked with many people who lost loved ones or served at Ground Zero in the intervening days, weeks and months.

September 11, 2011 is a day I’ll never forget.  However for the children I work for it’s a day they don’t understand.  It is just another date in history much like D-day during WWII or The signing of the Declaration of Independence is to me.

It wasn’t their tragedy to live through, it is their day-to-day reality. They don’t know life without terrorist threat levels, extreme airport security and the twin towers as something they only see in old pictures and movies.

As we remember today…because we do…let’s celebrate. Celebrate who they were, the lives they lived, and the hope the next generation gives. We need not live in fear…we just need to live.