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UB community gathers to heal and remember
By DONNA LONGENECKER
Reporter Assistant Editor
Members of the UB community gathered together yesterday to remember and honor those who lost their lives a year ago in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
During an interfaith service of "Remembrance and Healing" held in the Center for the Arts Mainstage theater, participants offered selections of music, prayers and personal reflections that spoke to the complexity of emotions and reactions shared worldwide—as well as in the U.S.—in the aftermath of the tragedy. Eleven UB alumni perished in the World Trade Center towers and several students lost parents and relatives.
Members of the UB Gospel Choir performed "I Almost Let Go" by Kurt Carr and "It's In Your Power" by Potter's House Mass Choir during the ceremony of "Remembrance and Healing." (Photo: Nancy J. Parisi)
The UB Gospel Choir's moving rendition of "I Almost Let Go," with lyrics expressing despair and grief, provided a poignant counterpoint to the scrolling of the names of the victims on a screen high above the stage, which continued throughout the service.
The Royal Pitches, UB's all-female a cappella group, sang a challenging refrain, repeated throughout the song "The Seasons of Love" (from the musical "Rent," that asked "525,600 minutes—how do you measure a year in the life of a woman or a man?"
With the opening prayer, Rabbi Avrohom Gurary of the Office of Campus Ministries, speaking in both Hebrew and English, focused on an America that offers shelter and peace to the downtrodden, a "country of kindness that has gathered in millions of the peoples of the world and stands as a beacon of light and justice..." He asked for comfort, strength and peace for the families and children of the victims.
Reflecting on the "main goal of Islamic law, the preservation of human life," Othman Shibly, clinical assistant professor of periodontics and endodontics, said that "these victims were killed for no reason; they were innocent men, women and children." He asked that "we not answer violence and hate with more violence and hate," noting that we had seen the very best and the very worst that people are capable of—including heroism and sacrifice.
Leaders from the Christian, Baha'I and Buddhist faiths also offered prayers, while Joe Beck of Campus Ministries provided a humanist perspective to the tragedy. He challenged the God-worshipping and God-less of the world to "unite in the promotion of social and economic justice for all of humanity."
And, he added, "let us unite under the values of democracy that protect us all," and encouraged everyone to embrace the values of passion, negotiation and compromise in their daily lives.
President William R. Greiner offered his reflections while the names of those killed on Sept. 11 scrolled on a screen high above the stage in the Mainstage. (Photo: Nancy J. Parisi)
Reading from selected works by renowned UB poets and professors Charles Bernstein, Robert Creeley and Susan Howe, President William R. Greiner, posed the question: "What else is art for, except to confront the unimaginable and inexplicable." He noted that he was following the lead provided by Bernstein, who posed similar questions in a series of essays, titled "Report from Liberty Street," that were written in response to the tragedy as it unfolded in the days and weeks following Sept. 11.
Bernstein, a professor of English and director of the Poetics Program, was in Manhattan when the towers were attacked.
Reflecting on Robert Creeley's poem "Echo," published in 1998 in the collection "Life and Death," Greiner noted that "we did indeed feel the events of Sept. 11 as an affliction, as a bitter series of events and attacks that literally struck us down—our brothers, sisters mothers, fathers—and wounded us horribly."
The impact on the UB community was profound, Greiner said, pointing out that just under 200 UB alumni had listed World Trade Center business addresses and that roughly 4,000 UB alumni lived or worked in the immediate vicinity of the towers. A total of 24,000 UB alumni reside within the New York metro area, and hundreds more live in the Washington, D.C., area.
"Roughly one third of our student population hails from the New York metro area. Many of our students lost loved ones, friends and family members," he said.
Greiner told the story of UB students, Devon Ferrelli and James Sullivan, who both lost their fathers the day of the attacks. Ferrelli's father, Joseph Ferrelli, was a fire battalion chief in New York City and was part of the first companies of firefighters on the scene. Howard Sullivan, James' father, worked in the South Tower. "He was always sure to be at work early in the morning, so that he would be able to spend time with his sons," Greiner said of Howard Sullivan.
"Sept. 11 always will remain in our consciousness as the day that time stood still, the day that forced an America awakening to some real-world complexities of the ideal of the global community," he said.
"Sept. 11 forced us to confront our own image, to examine the national face we present to the world," he continued, "and the ways in which it is beheld."
Moreover, he said, "We have to look at ourselves in the mirror and ask difficult questions: 'What do we stand for? How are our actions received? What is the cost of ignorance, of hubris? Were we as a nation guilty of these sins? Are we still?"
Greiner said these questions were important to the nation and the university, but UB held the strongest key to peace—to teach and enlighten its students and the country "to value human life in all its kaleidoscopian array of cultures."
Following the ceremony inside the Mainstage, Michael Cohen, professor and chair of the Faculty Senate, led a procession of international students bearing the flags of their native countries to the unveiling of a memorial stone dedicated to the members of the UB alumni who lost their lives. They are Luigi Calvi, '89; Pamela Chu, '94; David M. Graifman, '83; Michael D. McCarthy, 91; Thomas C. Moody, '78; Richard T. Myhre, '87; Michael P. O'Brien, '83; Michael E. Roberts, '94; David S. Silver, '89; Joseph M. Sisolak, '89, and Michael Warchola, '73.
Members of the Student Association handed out white carnations to those who wanted to pay their respects. Many of the several hundred who attended the service stood in almost absolute silence, some visibly moved and comforting one another as people passed by the stone, which had been placed just below the bronze buffalo outside the CFA.