Dear Lauren,

I never knew you, and you never knew me. But somehow over the course of the last few years of the nearly 3,000 people whose lives were so tragically taken from this earth on 9/11, your name keeps presenting itself to me.

The first time I learned of your story, I was volunteering at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanskville, PA.

September 11, 2001:
I remember. It was picture day at my high school. I was in the school’s auditorium waiting for our classmates to finish up so we could be dismissed. The initial whispers of what had occurred began here.  A few minutes later the hallway bell rang loud and we were scattered, heading into different directions to our next class. The memory that forever exists in my mind like an image that has been burned into a TV screen, was in those moments. I was walking past a fellow classroom and as I looked in I noticed the usually rowdy bunch of upperclassmen were still, all faces glued to a TV.  And, in my memory, I swear it was slow motion, I looked ahead and my Spanish Teacher, whose class I was heading to, came running from the classroom across the hall and into a fellow teacher’s room exclaiming, “Turn on the TV.”

I saw the World Trade Centers on fire.
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