NEW YORK CITY, N.Y. — It’s been Alice Greenwald’s job over the past five years to guide the 9/11 Museum and Memorial In New York. But she looks back two decades to remember their mission.
“When we built this museum and memorial, part of what we intended was to imagine the kind of world we want our children and grandchildren to inherit. And it needs to be a world where the values and the attitudes of compassion and unity and hope and resilience are in the forefront,” said Greenwald.
She doesn’t want the museum to only mark September 11, 2001. She and her staff want to make sure that awful day never fades from our national memory. But the museum's mission is to focus on September 12, 2001 and beyond and how a nation responded.
September 11 Anniversary Photo Gallery
“People everywhere asked what can I do to help? And people did they volunteered they rushed to the various sites, they wanted to do what they could for others,” said Greenwald. “Charities were created for the families of the victims for the children of the firefighters. It was a moment when service was elevated, service to the nation, service to fellow Americans, service to the community."
Greenwald has been with the museum and memorial for 16 years, the last five as CEO.
She said the mission of the organization is to promote what was the silver lining around the dark cloud that was Sept. 11, 2001 - especially for students and others too young to remember it.
"Remembering how we responded to 9/11 will teach this generation that when those things happen, we can meet adversity with compassion, we can meet adversity with unity, and we will be resilient as a result of that."
Those lessons seem to have been forgotten in the 20 years since, with the political climate so pugnacious and the country may be more divided than ever before.
This is why Gruenwald says the mission of the museum is also more important today than ever.
"I do think we are resilient as human beings, and this sounds a little corny, but in the end, it's love that wins. It's hope that wins," she said.
FOX61 Archive video from 2001
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