Author: Alexa Damis-Wulff
A candlelight vigil was held in Upper Herrick on September 11, marking the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.
The event was organized by Pauley Hall staff members Rozell Hodges (senior), Liana Tobin (senior), Andreu Neri (sophomore), Jhenette Stranne (sophomore), Mike Adams (senior) and Mary Liz Van Ness (sophomore).
Approximately sixty members of the Occidental community attended the event, including College President Susan Prager, who spoke at the beginning of the service.
“September 11 reminds us that we don’t get to choose how long we live, but we do get to choose how we lead our lives and the kinds of differences we make in the lives of others,” Prager said in her opening remarks.
Small lights flickered on the semicircle stage as students came up to share their stories, interspersed with two musical interludes performed by Occidental students.
Many of the stories focused on the morning of September 11 as students and faculty alike recalled where they were when they heard the news.
Reverend Diana D. Akiyama, who was teaching a morning class at USC at the time, recalled the feelings that she and her students shared, citing the “powerlessness and inability to comprehend the enormity of what had happened.”
For some New Yorkers in close proximity to the tragedy, the horror was even more palpable. One student’s father went to work in the Twin Towers as usual that morning. Though he was among the fortunate to make it out safely, he lost some fellow colleagues.
Another student, who lived fifteen miles north of the city, described watching smoke envelop the area that morning from a nearby park. It is an image that she said she will never forget.
This student also related losing a close family friend in the plane that hit the Pentagon. She shared her story after a student from the Washington D.C. area shared her own story about her father helping to put out that fire.
One student likened the day and its imprint on the collective national memory to that of John F. Kennedy’s assassination experienced by an earlier generation.
This same feeling of anticipation and uncertainty was echoed in the stories of those who focused on the aftermath of the attacks, namely the war in Iraq. Students in attendance prayed for brothers, uncles, and husbands all fighting abroad-one student shared that out of her small town of 1,000, twenty men had been sent overseas to fight.
An e-mail sent out to the Occidental community on the morning of the event expressed the hopes of the Pauley staff that the “event lack a political agenda and stay supportive rather than judgmental of the political decisions concerning the war.”
After the event had concluded, Hodges felt that the goal had been reached and found the vigil “even more inspiring than I expected.” Brandon Oliva (junior) described the remembrance as “a good venting place,” and added that “hearing the stories made it more real.”
The organizers from Pauley plan to hold the vigil in future years and hope to build community on campus through such events in addition to creating a space for safe sharing.
This article has been archived, for more requests please contact us via the support system.
