About Project 2,996

I love participating in Project 2,996. I consider it a privilege.

It isn't about hating the people who did the damage.

It isn't about being sad.

It's about celebrating the lives of quite ordinary people, people just like us, who should not be forgotten.

They went to work, just like so many of us do, expecting good things to happen that day.

Their lives were snuffed out by a random act of violence.

It would be easy to hate a particular nation, or a certain religion, for all that violence. We could concentrate on that. It wouldn't do any good, though.

I have seen that not every person of "that" religion hates us, or wants to do us harm.

What I want to do is keep the memory of those victims alive for as long as possible. Not because of how they died, but because of how they lived. We can learn something from all of them.

And although it has nothing to do with September 11, 2001, I would also like to honor my son-in-law's brother Steve. He was a firefighter who was simply doing his job; in the course of doing that, he lost his life, leaving behind a family who loved him.

God bless our firefighters.