Remembering…
By Michelle Legare


It is hard to believe that this was twenty years ago, as yesterday the memories came to me as if they did indeed happen yesterday. My mother used to have a children’s clothing store, which she ran for about nine years in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. She became sick the last five years so I ended up running the store after school, on weekends and the occasional weekday. When the new season came we would go to New York for a buying trip. These were fun and interesting times, as I would mosey through the business section until we reached our destination, the Twin Towers.

Most of the twin towers were small suites for people from all over the world and country to show their wares for the next year. Both small and large businesses and designers would offer up materials for sale. We would spend hours going from one suite to another, ordering children’s clothing for the next six months.

I can still remember the size of the place, imagine if you will, buildings so large that you could fill it with over 25,000 people and it feels empty. This was just one of the buildings, to look out a window to see the other, shows you just how awesome these buildings are. I remember seeing the suites, about the size of two regular hotel rooms. Sometimes the doors were open and sometimes closed but the signs on the doors showed businesses from cities, states, countries… small and large alike merged within the halls to give a feeling of a small town community, to know that quiet morning after waking and meeting your neighbors with a smile. Yes, a place of business but also of courtesy, friendship and curiosity.

When the towers fell yesterday morning, the memory of this community filled me heart and mind and I saw so many faces from the past that may or may not have been there, fall to the ground.

I am lucky in that all the people I know, family and friends, were not hurt or near New York that day. Any other day though, any other whim or celebration, any other day to make buying purchases and it could have been different.

Sixty-seven countries lost people upon this day, the most devastating is that even one should be gone but still, the numbers are staggering. The United States (over 4,000), Pakistan (over 600), Canada (over 300), England (over 300) and Mexico (over 200) were the hardest hit. The world lost many who wished to see humanity be a people instead of a collection of strangers.

It is a small world we live in and in many ways the Twin Towers incorporated this feeling, as it was not the buildings themselves but the spirit of those who worked within them. The people who are and always will be more than a symbol of a nation, they are you, they are me, they are part of the spirit all humanity hold dear.

-Michelle Legare


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