Remembering 9/11 and How Hope Can Rise From Tragedy

As I write this column, I can’t help but reflect on the 25th anniversary of September 11.

So many people were directly impacted by the unimaginable loss that day, and all of us were changed by it in some way. I was somewhere in the middle. I thank God that I did not lose an immediate family member, but 9/11 remains deeply personal to me.

At the time, I lived just a few blocks from the World Trade Center. My firstborn son and his nanny were caught downtown and, for hours, we did not know where they were. My husband was searching for them as the second tower fell. I was pregnant with our twins.

At Chelsea Piers, our team was preparing the facilities to receive what we believed would be an enormous number of injured people, creating a makeshift hospital waiting for patients who, tragically, never came.

There are images from that day that will never leave me. I remember watching people walking north along the West Side Highway, ghostlike, covered in ash and debris. Among them, I saw my husband pushing our son in his stroller toward me. The trauma of everything surrounding us and the overwhelming relief of seeing my family safe existed in the very same moment.

A World Changed in Only Moments

September 10 had been an ordinary day. The early morning of September 11th was an unusually perfect and beautiful morning. By mid-morning we were experiencing horror, and by September 12, we were living in a different world. The hours in between and days immediately following remain burned into the minds and hearts of those who experienced them, almost like images captured on film.

I have my own 9/11 story, as so many people do. The larger story and the extraordinary stories of loss, courage, and sacrifice deserve far more space than I could ever give them in this column. But one thing I remember vividly about the days that followed was how people came together. Communities came together. Businesses came together. Our industry came together.

Twenty-five years later, that lesson about the importance of human connection still resonates deeply with me.

It is something I have been thinking about as we prepare to bring leaders from across our industry together for the HFA’s European Congress. The Congress is, of course, an opportunity to learn, exchange ideas, and discuss the issues shaping our businesses. But its greater value may be the relationships created and strengthened when leaders from different companies, markets, and countries spend meaningful time together.

That is increasingly important for HFA. If we are going to represent and advance a truly global health and fitness industry, we have to do more than conduct business around the world: We have to build relationships around the world.