Rotary Club International

Special Sept. 11 Memorial Meeting, Sept. 10, 2002

Photos from the meeting

A large crowd turned out at the Sierra Madre Firehouse Tuesday morning for a special commemorative meeting held by the Sierra Madre Rotarians.  The meeting opened with patriotic songs, including the national anthem, performed by members of the LaSalle High School marching band. Speakers Dan Alle, Tammy Gates, Rob Stockly, Fire Chief Roger Lowe, and Police Chief Wayne Bailey all got up and shared their thoughts about the tragedies in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania a year ago.  Fire Marshall Rich Snyder gave a particularly moving talk about his reaction to the tragedies.  Edda Hutson, widow of recently passed Rotarian Ron Hutson, spoke briefly, sharing briefly about Ron's truck that Rotarians have used for their events for years, and which they had wanted to sell for some time, but were never able to because there was always a Rotary event coming up that would require its use by Rotary.  Edda announced that the truck had been sold, and that the proceeds from the sale of the truck were being donated to Rotary's Polio Plus program, so that Ron and his truck could continue to contribute to Rotary's fight against polio, even after their departure.  While all the speakers spoke eloquently of their thoughts and reactions in the wake of the tragedy, there is one quote from Rob Stockly that I would like to share.  He said that "Wisdom leads to inner strength.  I think the great lesson of the American reaction to the terrorist attacks was found in the simple, brave acts of ordinary people, reaching out to others to save lives, comfort the grief stricken, and rebuild hope."  Well said Rob.

The featured speaker was Rotarian Kevin Danni, who was on the 61st floor of the second tower to be hit by the commercial jetliners that were turned into weapons by the terrorists.  He spoke of seeing the results of the crash for the first time, and thinking that he was seeing confetti flying through the sky, similar to that he had seen at a NY parade just a couple days earlier, only to discover it was the paper from the offices falling down to earth after the impact.  He spoke of the amazing reaction that the people of the building, and the infectious desire to help, as he observed the other people in the stairwells, all reaching out to help those who had fallen, or were overwhelmed, instead of the mass hysteria one might expect in that situation.  He spoke of the kindness of a New Yorker, who upon seeing him running toward the phone booth she was using, asked if he had been in the Tower, and when he said yes, and that he needed to call his mom, how she reacted by hanging up without a thought, and asking him his number and assisting him with dialing the number.  And he spoke of his memory of the firefighters, who were running up the stairs to their eventual doom, all shouting words of encouragement to those on their way down, each exhorting the evacuees to "Keep going, you'll be all right, your doing great, keep it up".  Here are some photos and a couple videos from the event.  For some reason, we had a higher volume of unusable photos than usual today.  Our apologies to those speakers whose pics didn't get posted.  They were taken, they just weren't usable.  And the videos are only 1 floppy disk long, so some get cut off, including the last few notes of the National Anthem, video 1.  Videos 2 and 3 are of speaker Kevin Danni.

Video 1            Video 2            Video 3

Pictures

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