By Gretchen Millich, WKAR News
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkar/local-wkar-985014.mp3
East Lansing, MI –
Patrick Anderson's life changed on 9/11. Did the course of YOUR life change on that day? PBS NewsHour asked that question across the country. You can see the video responses -- or upload your OWN answer -- at Video Quilt - America Remembers 9/11.
This is the third story in a five-part series looking at the impact the September 11th attacks have had in Michigan 10 years later. "9/11: Mid-Michigan Remembers" focuses on personal accounts from that day, our sense of security and the partnerships that have grown in mid-Michigan since then.
Patrick Anderson is CEO of Anderson Economic Group in East Lansing. On September 11, 2001, Anderson was at a conference of economists at the Marriott Hotel at the World Trade Center. He and a coworker escaped before the hotel collapsed under the falling towers.
In 2006, Anderson set up the Michigan Remembers 9/11 Fund to record the stories and experiences of Michiganians who survived the attacks or lost loved ones.
Anderson told WKAR's Gretchen Millich that even now, 10 years later, he thinks about 9/11 every day. | SKIP down to article
PATRICK ANDERSON: I remember vividly 9/11 every day. It's something that you carry with you the rest of your life, especially if you're someone like me and feels also the loss of people, including people that helped me get out and helped my coworker and other people get out. You never forget that, and I remember it every day.
GRETCHEN MILLICH: I remember it was a few years ago, I remember you saying that even with something as tragic as 9/11, over time we do tend to forget, and that's when you started a fund for Michigan Remembers. What have you done with that for the past few years?
ANDERSON: This fund has been raising a little bit of money with the sole purpose of remembering people from Michigan and folks that helped them. Our main goals are to establish a website where we maintain a profile of the Michigan victims, which is at MichiganRemembers.org, and then also to maintain a physical memorial that list the name of every victim.
And so we've been able to build up a little bit of a website, and I hope people visit it, with some stories of people here.
We've been supporting some efforts to make sure we have every name inscribed in the memorial we have in Wentworth Park here in Lansing right along the river. In the future, we may actually try to raise some money to build more of a memorial. We haven't really gone out to the public and asked for money yet. It's not mostly about building something physical. We really want to maintain the memories to make sure that the meaning isn't lost.
MILLICH: You talk about Michigan Remembers as an on-going project. Have you had to update it as the years have gone by?
ANDERSON: One of the motivations for the Michigan Remembers Fund was to make sure that we remembered every Michigan victim, and after a few years had passed by, it started to really bother me that we didn't even know who from Michigan died, or I had a memory of who from Michigan that I saw was there who escaped.
And so we started to systematically collect information on people from Michigan from multiple sources.
And a lot of people who died were just listed as being from New Jersey or New York because that's where they happened to be staying at the time. And so we continue.
Even as late as last year we found two more people that were from Michigan that were temporarily in New Jersey, or were staying in New York or someplace, who had died, and we hadn't remembered them. But we found them and now we have a profile up on our website about them and their lives.
So, it is an on-going project, because we want anyone who grew up here, whose family is here, who consider themselves to be from Michigan, who died on that day to be remembered.
MILLICH: There are lots of memorials and event that are scheduled all around Michigan leading up to the tenth anniversary of 9/11. What will you be doing on that day?
ANDERSON: I have, since that time, spent the day with my wife and kids. I promised my wife I wouldn't be going out of town on September 11th again if I could help it. And thus far I've been able to every year.
So, this year I'm starting off in the morning with the Towers to Tunnel Run on Belle Isle, which we're helping to sponsor, and that's going to help send two firefighters, or sheriffs or policemen from Michigan to New York for their Towers to Tunnel Run.
I'm going to go to the Call to Prayer here at the Capitol in the afternoon. There's also the event we're having with Patriot Week at Fort Wayne. The rest of the time I'm going to spend with my family.
Patrick Anderson's life changed on 9/11. Did the course of YOUR life change on that day? PBS NewsHour asked that question across the country. You can see the video responses -- or upload your OWN answer -- at Video Quilt - America Remembers 9/11.