Alice Greenwald: President & CEO of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum

For 16 years—starting when the site at Ground Zero was just a hole in the ground—Alice Greenwald has worked to make the 9/11 Memorial and Museum a place of remembrance, awe and inspiration. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
You go into our memorial exhibit and you look around
these walls and you're surrounded by two thousand, nine hundred
and seventy seven portraits of people Florida, sealing all four walls.
And they are two and a half years old to
eighty five years old. They are from every sector of
the economy, every ethnicity, imaginable, every faith tradition. They are us.

(00:28):
That's Alice Greenwald talking about the photos of the people
who died in the attacks of September eleven, two thousand
and one. The photos are part of the nine eleven
Memorial and Museum, where she is CEO and president, and
where visitors can pay tribute to lives lost, learn about

(00:49):
exceptional heroism, and find inspiration for the future. I'm the
land Ververe and this is senecas on women to hear.
We are bringing you one hundred of the world's most
inspiring and history making women. You need to hear. Alice
Greenwald has been with New York City's nine eleven Memorial

(01:11):
since two thousand and six, when the sixteen acre site
was still a seven story deep hole in the ground.
Turning it into a finished memorial was not easy. Greenwald
had to keep in mind the interests of everyone from
nine eleven families to historians to the general public. Today,

(01:33):
millions of people every year tour the tree lined plaza
and its two reflecting pools that stand on the footprint
of the Twin Towers, and they visit the accompanying museum
as well. Later this year, Alice Greenwald will be stepping
down from this important job. Listen and learn why Alice

(01:54):
Greenwald is one of Seneca's one hundred women to hear.
I'm speaking today with Alice Greenwald, who has been heading
the nine eleven Memorial and Museum. Alice was thrilled to
have you with us. Welcome, Thank you so much. I'm
really thrilled to be here. Well, I know you've headed

(02:16):
the nine eleven Memorial and Museum since ground zero was
still a construction site, and now you're leaving this incredible
job after sixteen years. So this coming nine eleven must
mean a great deal. Have you thought about that? Oh?
I think about it a lot. I think about the

(02:36):
fact that after twenty one years, we are keeping our
promise that we made to remember. Um, you know it's
now in three decades. Now, we're into the third decade
after the attacks, and the commitment to remember, the commitment
never to forget, is is as strong as it was.

(02:56):
But I'll tell you something, over the past couple of years,
I've been really struck by, um, how many of the
family members who read names? You know, the the commemoration
is a a names reading which, when you're you know,
including nearly three thousand people's names, the number of victims
for both nine eleven and the bombing of the World

(03:18):
Trade Center. UM that can take four to four and
a half hours. And so there's about a hundred and
forty people every year who are selected by lottery who
read the names of their loved ones and those of
others killed in these attacks. And over the past several years,
um uh, an increasing number of readers are young people

(03:39):
who never knew the people they are commemorating. They are
grandchildren of people who were killed, and and it is
a signal of, you know, the span of a generation,
a generation UM coming up, growing up in this post
nine eleven world, remembering people they never had the opportunity
to know personally. And to me, that becomes increasingly more

(04:01):
and more poignant, but also a kind of a call
to arms, if you will, is sort of like we
have a responsibility to make sure this next generation knows
what happened, who these people were, what a unprecedented experience.
It was the worst terrorist attack in our nation's history. UM.
And and also, um, you know how we responded twenty

(04:23):
one years ago as a nation and as a world community.
We came together, all too briefly. We came together. We
cared for one another. We demonstrated tremendous compassion. There was
selflessness and courage. There was a commitment to rebuild all
of these things that were rooted in empathy and a

(04:43):
sense of connectedness to one another, community and unity, and
and and hope. UM. And these are things that are
missing in the world these young people, UM are growing
up into and and I'm very conscious of how important, uh,
this commemoration is as a a moment for another generation
to understand and to take on the mantle of responsibility

(05:07):
of remembrance. But you know, the other answer to your
question is actually really personal, which is of course that
this is going to be the very last nine eleven
UM commemoration that I will attend in the role of
President and CEO of the nine eleven Memorial and Museum.
So it is, UM, you know, it's personally bittersweet. I
love this place, and I love the people I've been

(05:28):
privileged to work with and work for and the community
that I've gotten to know over um these now almost
seventeen years UM of affiliation. And it's going to be
UM a little bit of a heartbreak for me. Uh
to stand there those four and a half hours and

(05:49):
think that, you know, it will not be the same
next year. It will not be the same for me,
although the ceremony will continue, which gives me great a
great sense of comfort. The other thing, and I don't
mean to keep going on, but I can remember, you know,
you talked about when I first got here in two
thousand and six, and UM, what was at ground zero

(06:10):
at that point was literally an enormous sixteen acre, seven
story deep hole in the ground. There was a chain
link fence around it. There was actually the path train
was the tracks they were still going through at a
subterranean level, but there was nothing there. It was entirely
absent of everything. And UM, in those years, those first

(06:33):
several years that I was here, UM, we held the
commemoration on nine eleven at the base of the site,
so you were literally at what we call bedrock, and
you would walk down a ramp that was, or what
had been, the hall road used by the recovery workers
to bring the debris out of the site and up

(06:56):
from those seven stories down up to grade and then
transported over to fresh kills to be forensically reviewed for
personal property and and for human remains. But on those days,
that the day of the ceremony, we would walk down
this ramp almost in a processional. We would be given

(07:16):
roses at the top of the ramp and you would
carry your rose down to the bottom and there would
be a pool of water, just like a little pool
that we would put our roses into. And it was
a simple gesture but so incredibly powerful. And and I
look now when I'm standing on the plaza during the commemorations,

(07:37):
and here you are. You're standing in this burdened park.
You know, this this plaza with four hundred oak trees
and the two enormous memorial pools they're each an acre
in size, the footprints of the twin towers and um
and in this space of memory, you're you're now surrounded
by new office buildings and a fabulous transportation hub and

(08:02):
performing Arts center that's going to open in a year's time,
and it is a place that has come back to
life UM. And you know, I I think about that
trajectory from walking down around to a vacant hole in
the ground, you know, to place a rose in a
body of water too, UM, standing in the middle of

(08:22):
this amazingly beautiful, contemplative, reflective, sacred space that is also
a place of life, and it's it's been quite a journey,
and I think it is to the credit of our city, UM,
and our nation and the community of people affiliated with UM,
you know, with nine eleven commembrants, commemoration and remembrance that

(08:45):
that we have UM actually gone this journey and come
out UM to this place of renewal. It's really very powerful. Well,
just listening to you and and your memories and the
transition that's taken place over time and the fact that
it is this extraordinary place to reflect today. I know

(09:07):
it's it's bringing out a lot of emotions in me
and tapping into a lot of memories. And I'm sure
for our listeners as well. And I don't think there's
anyone who was alive on nine eleven who doesn't remember
where he or she was at that moment, and I
wonder where you were and what you remember about that?

(09:28):
Oh okay, so well, first of all, I think you're
absolutely correct. You know, nine eleven was witnessed by an
estimated UM it is two billion people on the day
of the attacks. Um, and at the time in two
thousand and one, that was a third of the world's population. So, UM,
you know, if you were alive twenty one years ago

(09:51):
on September eleven, you knew what happened. And of course, um,
everyone remember where they were, as you say, I in Washington,
d C. My family and I had just moved from
New Jersey. UM. My husband at the time had just
started a new job at the World Wildlife Fund. I
was taking on a bigger job at the US Holocaust

(10:14):
Memorial Museum, where I had been working in various capacities
for the previous fourteen years. And UM, I was at
home literally unpacking moving boxes. My husband was on his
way to New York with colleagues for a meeting, and UM,
I had did not turn the TV on. I was
waiting for a carpenter to come in and do some

(10:34):
work with the radiators that we needed covers for and
the gentleman had come and the phone rang and it's
my husband calling from the train to say something has happened,
and nobody is telling us what it is. They've stopped Amtrak.
You know, the train has stopped, um outside of Philadelphia.
It's been stuck for several minutes now and we're not

(10:57):
going forward. Nobody is telling us what's happened. Can you
turn on the TV? At which point I turned on
I believe it was the Today Show. I turned on
the news and this was just moments before the second
plane hit the South Tower, and um, so the first
plane had already struck. The image on TV was um unimaginable.

(11:19):
It looked like I was looking at, you know, a
Hollywood Harpor movie with this big gash in the side
of Tower one. And the carpenter who had come to
measure for these radiator covers is hearing the news in
the room next to me, and he comes in. This
is a man I didn't know that I did not

(11:41):
I had never met before. And he came in and,
like me, was totally riveted by what we were seeing.
I gave my husband the quick download of what we
were being told on the news come up and said
he would call me, you know, when they got to
the city. Of course, they never got to the city
that day. UM, and I didn't hear from him for
several hours, but we watched as the news unfolded, and

(12:08):
of course, when the first of the two towers, which
happened to have been the second one hit, the South Tower,
collapsed just a few minutes before ten o'clock. UM, this
stranger and I did what human beings do in these
kinds of moments. We simply grabbed for each other. We
hugged one another. And UM, it was the most natural

(12:29):
thing in the world that both of us looked at
this absolutely unimaginable moment of um, of profound human loss,
of unthinkable destruction, and we just needed to be with
another human being and and hug And you know, I
think about that often because UM that and another incident

(12:51):
that happened, which is often when I say, is my
real nine eleven story, which happened a month later. UM.
A month later, at the weekend of October. UM, my
husband and I were celebrating our twenty fifth wedding anniversary,
and we had made plans months before to go to

(13:11):
New York city, Uh and um stay at the plaza
where we had spent one night of our honeymoon in
nineteen seventy six, because in nineteen seventy six, one night
at the plaza was all we could afford. And twenty
five years later, guess what, one night at the plaza
was all we could afford. So we made a reservation

(13:32):
months earlier to stay at the plaza for our anniversary,
and we made a dinner reservation at very posh restaurant
that was a few blocks north of the plaza. And
you know, after nine eleven happened, we we talked a
lot about whether we would keep our plan, and you know,
we had lived outside of New York for almost twenty years.
It was home to us, and we just felt like

(13:55):
we needed to show our support for the city, and
we decided we would go. And this is exactly a
month after the attack. So we are driving up the
New Jersey turn fight and I can remember to this
day turning as we began to see the skyline of
Lower Manhattan across the Hudson and I knew, as everyone did.

(14:18):
I knew intellectually what had happened, but seeing that skyline
for the first time with my own eyes. Without the
towers dominating the skyline was like a punch to the gun.
I understood this now at a visceral level. I had
not processed before then. And then we get into the

(14:40):
Lincoln Tunnel and we come out the other side and
there are firefighters in uniform with boots in their hands,
and they are collecting from the cars coming out of
the tunnel for the widows and the children. Yeah, firefighters
who had been killed, first responders who had been killed,
so are welcome back to York. Was searing in so

(15:02):
many ways. And we drive up to the plaza and
the streets are empty as a ghost town. And we
get to the plaza and I will tell you the
doorman came to us and hugged both of us were coming.
There was no one else in the hotel. And we
get into our room, you know, we get dressed for dinner.

(15:22):
We walked the two blocks north to the restaurant, which
in any other time, and you've been to these restaurants,
you know what I mean. You would walk in the
door and everybody is sitting two inches from each other
at their tables, talking to the person at their table,
and not acknowledging the people on either side of them.
That would have been a typical, you know, highbrow restaurant

(15:44):
experience in New York. That evening, we opened the door
and it was boisterous and people were talking to one
another across the room. They were speaking to the bus
boy at the back from the table in the front.
There was this energy that I had not seen before.
We said we were rushing to our table. We sat

(16:05):
down and again, you know, we were two inches on
either side from the couples sitting next to us, and
within a second, one of the people next to us
at where are you from? Are you visiting New York?
You know who what brought you here? And conversations began
and there was this sense very unfamiliar to me, but

(16:25):
at the same time very real, that we were all
it was. It was a level playing ground. Everybody was
in this together. Everybody needed to be making contact with
other human beings. It was a different kind of New York.
And if you were in New York in those weeks
after nine eleven, people have told me about this, it

(16:48):
was very present. This sense of just caring for one another.
You know, I remember Justice Soto, Mayor or Supreme Court
Associate Justice Um speaking at the nine eleven Memorial Museum
a few years ago and telling her nine eleven story,
and it was just that kind of thing. She She's
a New Yorker, this was her city was very personal

(17:11):
to her, and she remembers walking down the street, not
on nine eleven, but in the days after nine eleven,
seeing a complete stranger across the street, weeping, walking across
the street to hug that stranger. That that sense of
connectedness was the post nine eleven experience in New York
in the days and weeks after the attacks. And I

(17:33):
will tell you that I didn't know in two thousand
and one October of two one that I would be
taking on this job, that I would be asked to
lead a group to build the nine eleven Memorial Museum.
I had no idea that this would be an experience
that would inform the work I would have to do.
But I would have to tell you now that I

(17:54):
believe it did. That. I think the experience of seeing
New York a month after nine eleven taught me something
profound about the way we responded to this unimaginable adversity
and the way we came together as a community, as
a nation, as a world committee. We really did come together,

(18:15):
and that is built in now, it's baked into the
messaging of this museum. Yeah, you know, just again listening
to all of this, I'm sure that those who are
listening with us as you speak are recalling their own experiences.
And I think we went through this collective trauma and
a deep, deep desire for human connection. Yes, as I

(18:39):
say that, I think about a quote of yours, as
you were talking at that moment about the reality of
the museum, the memorial that would be created, you said
this was a project of empathetic listening. What did you
mean by that? Well, we did a lot of listening
and a lot of listening to a lot of people.

(19:02):
You know. Um, when we started to work on the museum,
it was not even five years since the attack, so
emotions were still very raw. Um. There were so many
different constituents, meaning people with a stakeholders, with a vested
interest in what this museum was going to be, what

(19:24):
stories it would tell, um, what opportunities it would have,
And Um, there were a lot of opinions, I have
to say, And UM, we heard from family members of
victims and responders and rescuing recovery workers and people who
had evacuated and survived the attacks, and downtown residents and
downtown workers and Landmark reservation. I mean, the list goes

(19:46):
on and on and on. Of all these people who
were true stakeholders, I mean, they really did care deeply
about what this project would be. And um, there were
many points of view, and I have to say, while
all of the points of view were legitimate, they were
most often not compatible, and so we had a lot

(20:08):
of listening and negotiating among different points of view. So
one of the things that I felt we had to
do from the very beginning, in addition to making a
commitment to listen to everybody, which was challenging but essential, um,
was to remember that these people, so many of the

(20:31):
people who were stakeholders, were deeply, um personally filled with pain.
That their aspirations for this project, as divergent as they
might be from one another's, were, they all shared something
in common, and that is that they came from a

(20:51):
place of true loss, true pain, true desire to make
meaning out of something which honestly seemed at the time
so meaningless, you know, so unnecessary. The pain that they
were going through why this had to happen, and and
so we had to train ourselves to listen with empathy,
you know, that that people would say things to us.
And I remember one family member literally coming up to

(21:14):
me and the way she spoke to me, even though
this wasn't what she did, but it felt like she
had grabbed me by the lapels, you know, and was
shaking there. That it was so intense and and so
emphatic and so urgent. And you know, in other situations
you might say, I don't have to deal with that
kind of thing, you know, I'm just gonna walk away.
We couldn't look away these with the people we had

(21:37):
to we had to work with, and whatever we produced
had to feel authentic to their experience and and and
their memories and had to do justice to those memories
and pay tribute to their loved ones, and um, honor
the site and all of those things. So, um, we
had to listen with empathy. So I think that's when

(21:58):
I said that I was I was thinking king about
the process by which we, you know, encountered all of
the different moments of guidance and suggestions and demands from
people who were really truly um invested in what this
project would be well, and that loss and pain it

(22:20):
was incalculable in so many ways that you know, even
as as you recall feeling that vicariously, we could never
truly understand the depths of it if we didn't experience
it that directly. Seneca has one hundred women to hear
will be back after the short break. I would imagine

(22:53):
that as you were thinking about the experience you wanted
to convey with the memorial, with the museum to the
families of the nine eleven victims, you must have wanted
to make something for them that would be a fitting tribute,
And I wonder about that the reaction for them as

(23:15):
well as for ordinary visitors, and what you would have
liked and what you still like for them to take
away from this experience. It is such a good question,
you know. UM. We were very conscious from the beginning
of just imagining this museum and this project and how
it would integrate with the memorial that one of the

(23:36):
great challenges of the project that we was that we
were having to address both private grief in a public
space and the public need to grieve, even when if
they didn't lose any that there was both public and
private grief, and the needs were different. You know, we

(23:56):
were also conscious of the fact um, I think we're
increasingly more so that UM, there would be you know,
for a period of time, and it seemed at the
time indefinite where people would be coming in with their
own nine eleven memory. What in the museum business we
call the entry narrative, the visitors entry narrative, and that,

(24:18):
you know, this couldn't be a kind of conventional museum
where you've got the authority, the curator, the authority telling
you what you need to know about this historical moment
or this particular work of art or whatever. That in fact,
everyone coming into this museum for a period of time
was their own expert in it because they had experienced

(24:39):
it themselves in one way or another, and that changed
the way we thought about our delivery of the experience.
But then we also were aware that there would be
a time when people would come in without a memory
of nine eleven, and whatever we built needed to speak
to them too. So there are different answers to your question,

(25:02):
and there were different objectives that we were trying to meet.
So for the family members of victims, I would have
to say that our hope was that they would find
this to be a place of comfort, that it was
a place to contain their grief so that they could
go on with their lives, that they would know that

(25:23):
their loved ones would never ever be forgotten. And you know,
this was a goal compounded by a reality that continues
to this day, which is that about forty percent of
the families who lost loved ones at the World Trade
Center have never received remains of their loved ones. You know,

(25:43):
the circumstances, the physics of the collapses of the buildings
meant that um remains were not there or were so
damaged damage to the point where they were not identifiable.
And UM, they don't have a cemetery to go to.
These families, they don't have a place which contains their

(26:03):
grief that they can visit and then go back and
live their lives knowing that it's there, that there's permanence
to it. And the memorial and the museum had to
fulfill that need for those people. UM and and so UM.
You know, in many respects, I think we thought of
that part of our goal, our mission as UM reassuring

(26:25):
families of the permanence of remembrance, that their loved ones
UM would be remembered, that this place would be here
for them when they needed to come UM and commune
and and grieve. That that was a promise we were
going to keep, and UM knowing that it was there

(26:45):
then would allow people to go on with the rest
of their lives. So that was almost at therapeutic piece
of what we were trying to do, you know, for
ordinary visitors about that, I mean people without a direct
personal loss UM, but who witnessed this or um you know,
from afar or fear, whatever the case might be. UM.

(27:08):
For those who remember it as a lived memory, our
goal was that they whatever they experienced in the museum,
they had to see as authentic to their experience. You know,
and when you think about history, the way different people
experience the same historical event is not always the same.
There are many variations of what one goes through in

(27:31):
in these moments of um of traumatic history. But our
narrative and our presentation had in our minds to be authentic,
and it had people had to see themselves in the story,
so that even if the narrative that we were presenting
wasn't exactly their narrative, on the day of nine eleven.

(27:51):
It would they could see themselves in it, they could say, yes,
this is what happened. So that was critical to us.
It needed to resonate as true UM. And it also
needed to be not a traumatic reimmersion in nine eleven.
But this wasn't going to be a sort of and
I don't mean this in any negative way, but a

(28:12):
disnification of nine eleven. We didn't want people to feel
like they were in nine eleven land. We wanted them
to experience this with an understanding that they were coming
into contact with the human experience of a historical event,
and we were trying to build a bridge of empathy
and compassion um for those who did live through it

(28:34):
in a very direct way. UM. And so you re
encounter the history, but it is on a path towards hope,
and that was very important to us that we weren't
going to leave people in a place of darkness. It
was very important that we left people in a place
of hope. And then the final answer to your question

(28:57):
is for this generation that doesn't have a personal memory
of nine eleven, UM, and for them, we needed to
really make sure we were telling a story that could
give them that understanding of what it would have been
like to be alive on that day, to witness this event,

(29:17):
to understand, as I said before, the humanity, the human
experience of this. It isn't just the numbers and the
number of planes and the number of victims and the
you know, sequence of the day. Those are the building
blocks to understanding what happened. But what we want them
to walk away with is the humanity of the victims.

(29:39):
That these are people who should not be defined by
the circumstances of their death. There are people just like
you and May and um. You know. You go into
our memorial exhibit and you look around these walls and
you're surrounded by two thousand, nine and seventy seven portraits
of people Florida ceiling, all four walls, and they are
two and a half years old to eighty five years old.

(30:01):
They are literally and you can tell this just by
reading their names. They are from over ninety nations. They
are from every sector of the economy, every ethnicity imaginable,
every faith tradition. They are us. And you begin to
understand that these tragedies and something that happened to somebody else,

(30:21):
the unacceptability of indiscriminate mass murder is real. It's unacceptable,
and as a world community, it has to be something
we say we will not tolerate because these people are us.
And so we tried very hard to give people access
to the humanity of the victims. And you know, when

(30:43):
you're in the memorial exhibit, there's a section, there's an
interior space where we invited people who knew them, not
the curator, not me, not somebody who didn't know these people,
people who love them. Um. You know, family members, friends, neighbors,
colleagues to record remembrances of them. And we play snippets
of these remembrances in this inner chamber of the memorial exhibit.

(31:07):
And you know, so many of these remembrances are funny
and you laugh and they are poignant, um, and you smile.
You know, they are the stories that we all tell
one another family gatherings. Remember when Uncle leg you dun
get Thanksgiving and tripped over the couch and everybody cracks up. Right.
The things we remember about the people we love are

(31:29):
not the way they died. It is the lives they lived,
and we very much focused on that as a way
into the story. Um. So we hope that people come
in now who don't have a memory of this event,
recognize the historical import of it in terms of the
ongoing consequences of nine eleven on the world we live in,

(31:52):
but that they go away with an understanding of the
humanity of the people who were killed. They're not abstractions,
They're not just numbers of people, and that we all
have a responsibility not just to remember them, but to
try to build a world where compassion wins overhead. Well,
that's just also beautifully said and truly profound. I I've

(32:17):
been thinking, as you've been speaking about a sense of
satisfaction you must have in many ways after these sixteen
years associated in such an intimate way with the memorial
and the museum, of knowing that it's really achieved its
goal and will continue to achieve the goal in the
sense that you just described before we have to take leave.

(32:41):
Time is always an issue when it comes to these conversations.
I wonder, given all that's gone on in these last
twenty one years since nine eleven, what continues to make
you optimistic or or gives you hope Because you've come
across as such a hopeful person in all that you've
been talking about despite the terror of what nine eleven represented. Oh,

(33:08):
that's a tough question because I have to say, UM,
often these days, I struggle to be hopeful, you know.
I mean, it just feels like everything is um is
going in in the wrong direction, if you will, you know,
it's been a rough it's been a rough twenty one
year since nine eleven. UM. I believe personally nine eleven

(33:28):
was one of those ruptures in history that will be
looked back upon as a moment of profound um shift
in the world, certainly in our nation. UM. People said
that Ground Zero, where we're located here, UM, in New
York is where the twenty one century began. UM. And

(33:50):
you know, at least for the past two decades, it
feels like it's been a century of dysfunction. Increasingly so UM.
And I think you know what was unthinkable in two
thousand and one that terror would come to our shores
in America. I mean, we lived in this sense of
invulnerability that it would happen elsewhere, but it couldn't happen here.

(34:13):
Right well, twenty one years later, I hate to say it,
but you know, extreme violence is more than norm than
the exception in the world we live in. I mean,
places that we thought were safe were no longer safe. Schools,
grocery stores, you know, church and synagogues. I mean, we
have gone down a very dark road. And I'm not
suggesting that all of this is directly connected to nine eleven,

(34:36):
but I do believe that there was a level of
fear generated by this attack. That and fear is a
very bad emotion. You know, people moved from fear to
sometimes bad decisions. And I believe that fear has infected um,
not only our nation, but I believe the world as

(34:57):
a whole, and that it worries me. Worries me from
my grand children who are growing up in a country fractured,
you know, by burulent partisanship. And we can't seem to
make our way to finding solutions to problems that that
that are very real and that we all share their
common problems. I mean, you know, we have an overheating planet.
That's a big problem for all of us, and we

(35:19):
can't seem to get to the place where we can
be constructive and smart about what we're going to do together. Um,
So it's hard to find the hope. But I believe
that one of the reasons memorial museums like the nine
eleven Memorial and Museum are so critically essential in our

(35:43):
world is that they are the places where we are
reminded about the worst of human behavior and actually the
best of human behavior, and we are given stories that
tell us that in the worst imaginable moments, people will
do the most incredibly generous, selfless, courageous things on behalf

(36:05):
of others. We saw it time and again on the
day of nine eleven, the first responders who ran into
danger knowing what they were going into, knowing they wouldn't
come out um and doing their jobs, their duty. We
had civilians who had never planned to be in such
a moment, people who chose to stay by the side

(36:26):
of a colleague they had known for years who happened
to be disabled in a wheelchair and said, I'm not
leaving if you're not leaving. You know, we we see
stories of immense UM. I don't know our our capacity
for generosity and compassion and empathy um. And we have

(36:47):
a museum filled with those stories. So what gives me hope,
even though it's hard to see at the moment, um
is knowing that in other times human beings have lived
through dark times, and we've lived through terrible things, and
somehow we've mustered the courage to rebuild, to renew, to

(37:09):
begin again, and hopefully hopefully to advance um in terms
of our humanity. So that gives me hope. And that's
what I want this place to teach my gradul well,
and that's the perfect conclusion on which to end this
extraordinary conversation. We were all changed in some way by

(37:30):
nine eleven. Our lives have changed clearly, but let us
rekindle the best in human behavior to address what is
happening in our world today. Thank you so much, Alice
Greenwald for what you have done all these years helming
the nine eleven Memorial and museum. UH and all the

(37:54):
best to you as you close this extraordinary chapter in
your own life. Thank you, Thank you so much, ambassador,
appreciate it. What an eloquent testimony from Alice Greenwald. There
are three things I took from that conversation. First, Alice

(38:14):
reminds us that we as Americans and as human beings,
have an obligation to never forget, and we have a
responsibility to ensure that younger generations know what happened during
the worst terrorist attack in our nation's history. Second, Alice
says that we should not define those who perished on

(38:37):
nine eleven by the circumstances of their deaths. Instead, we
should see them in all their humanity, as people just
like us. Finally, the nine eleven Memorial and Museum reminds
us about the worst of human behavior and the best
during terrible, tragic moments. She says, people will do the

(39:00):
most incredibly generous, selfless, courageous things on behalf of others,
and knowing that during dark times can give us hope
for the future. Tune in next time to hear about
our next featured woman and discover why she's one of
Seneca's one Women to Year. Seneca's one hundred Women to

(39:25):
Hear is a collaboration between the Seneca Women Podcast Network
and I Heart Radio, with support from founding partner PNG.
Have a Great Day.