In Honor of 9-11, Two post from myself and a friend

What I was moved to write after 9-11-2001
Thank you, for all of you that made sacrifices to help after 9-11-2001

September 11, 2001; A Wake up Call
By Martin Brossman

After the initial shock of the terrorist attack, I was thinking how deeply isolated, lost, and full of hate a man would have to be to justify committing or organizing such terrorist events as we have seen.

I was talking to strangers [shortly after the event] about their views on what happened. Most were just shocked, but one man said that this showed us how you cannot feel safe anywhere anymore. I noted to him that this is perhaps a wake-up call to embrace the preciousness and fragileness of life. A wake-up call that we cannot take for granted even a moment. A wake-up call for the importance of enjoying the beauty and gifts of life, for it could be taken away in a flash or explosion. A wake-up call for us to stand up, speak up, and be more active for what we know needs to be changed in the world. A wake-up call that we can live our lives as though we make a difference. For to diminish our own lives, gives the terrorists exactly what they want.

I think the best way to disrupt the false belief that I, as one man, cannot actually make a difference in the world is by speaking, acting, and living as though I do. Many years ago I realized that I was never going to collect enough evidence that I could make a difference in the world. However, I decided that, independent of evidence, I was going to live my life as though I can make a difference. You cannot imagine how many things I have accomplished in the 10 years since I made that decision.

In this latest tragedy I am praying for the dead, the wounded, the families, and the souls that are obviously so lost that they could actually carry out such a terrible act as this. I hope we all will be moved to support our country in taking the most compassionate, thoughtful, and effective actions in response to this tragedy.

A friend told me her experience and I asked her to share it, this is what she wrote:


Unintended Longing Carolyn A. Rumpf

I saw the terror and the pain and the fear, my heart heaved and I became.........jealous. Jealous!

Jealous of people who ran into burning buildings to save others. Out of goodness. Out of duty. Out of a true and measurable commitment to others, and to God. Facing certain death, firefighters ran into a hell that the rest of the world watched on television. Everywhere people silently thanked God to be living and breathing far away from this pit of death. And yet, I felt empty and wished I could change places with them.

I never wanted to fight fires. I thought those people were crazy. I let firemen go ahead of me in line at the grocery store, where they shop in Manhattan in groups (always buying dozens of onions, never figured out why), and offered to pay for their groceries. I thought it was a nice thing to do, and good insurance. Should I have a fire in my apartment, I want all the extra help I can get. I thought these guys were brave, but pathetically clueless. Why would anyone pass up a safe office job and instead choose to face down the horrors the rest of us hope never to see? I work for lawyers. Some might argue that it is a dangerous living, but last I checked, we weren't dragging hoses around to cool down testy lawyers. I rationalized that they were less afraid of fire than most people. They had training, and understood the laws of its nature. I was wrong.

The thing that these guys had over me all along was that they had accepted the challenge to live life, and learned not to be afraid of fire and passion and the general fear and messiness in life, and instead, had learned to embrace it.

Embracing the fire, dancing with it, hugging it means, fundamentally, being committed. Committed to others. To something beyond the safety of their own worlds. They made the decision to live life with the highest purpose: to serve others. To love others as much as or more than themselves. The beauty of these men's lives was evidenced even more clearly by the stories told by their families. Picture after picture flashed on my television screen, men younger than me........their lives filled with wives and kids and mortgages and leaky pipes and never knowing when they could be off for the weekend..........all one massive commitment to loving someone outside of themselves. Again, I felt jealous. I have yet to meet my soul mate, and to think I have not committed myself to anyone or anything with the highest purpose left me bereft.

Unintended longing. For a life lived at its highest purpose. For the men who left the planet, and can no longer share with me the secrets of living a committed life. Unintended longing to love and be loved. Unintended longing to be closer to God in a way I am not sure I fully comprehend. Unintended longing for answers to questions great and small. And as silly as it sounds, unintended longing for an answer as to what those damn onions were all about.

Elizabeth C. Ely is no longer walking on this earth today

written on 8/24/2009

Elizabeth Ely passed on yesterday. A person who was key in my life. The longtime principal of The Field School, the high school I graduated from.

I went to The Field School 10th through 12th grade. I spent freshman year in another school that didn’t work well for me, and due to my dyslexic reading challenges and the growing problems in DC public schools, my parents did not want to send me back.

The original Field school was in a large house in Washington, DC. When we arrived there, I told my parents I wanted to meet the principal on my own. I went in and sat down to talk to Elizabeth, and though I don’t remember what we talked about, I remember how she was truly interested in me and why I wanted to go The Field School. I remember asking a lot of questions since I wanted to be at the right place--like an adult two-way interview. I came out and told my mother, “I discussed it with Elizabeth and we decided that I am going to school here.” I still had challenges reading but I also had to compete and do my homework. If it required reading many books, I had to come up with some approved equivalent work.

Those three years at the Field School were my most productive school years, thanks to Elizabeth. She created a space for me to freely explore and create. I started the first yearbook that the school ever had (The Falcon), won a photo contest and participated in a formal debate on global warming and what the rising level of CO2 meant. Our debate team won the debate that Global Warming was real and a future concern in 1978.

With Elizabeth’s prompting, I submitted myself to a National Science Foundation scholarship and won, going to Ball State University for a program to learn about digital electronics, acoustics and holography. I came back and wrote a 115-page book on holography over the summer and was allowed to teach a class on how to make holograms, and we made real holograms. I remember falling in love with Geometry as Elizabeth taught it, sharing the concept of the golden triangle and unique history of Pythagoras. I did advanced reports and a presentation on Einstein, and how Japanese Americans lost everything in WWII in concentration camps, a talk which included bringing in a woman who had been in such a camp to share her story.

Not sure about college due to low SAT scores (lots of reading), I considered the military. Elizabeth’s daughter (Sharaine Ely), who was a teacher, locked me in a room and said we were gong to talk until she was sure that I was not just choosing the Army because of my fear of higher education with my reading challenges. She was right, and I chose to go on to college.

My friendship with Elizabeth continued long beyond graduation. We would meet every few years or so and check in. She celebrated my graduation from college and my completing my first 395-page book. She would come to me for advice and I did the same with her. The last 7 years I felt more and more strongly that she needed to write her own book. I remember many conversations about it. She cared so deeply about the effect the book would have on other people in the best of ways. I remember a heated debate (which we loved) where I insisted that it did not have to be perfect, that people even needed to see the errors and her perceived mistakes. She told me that my own self-revealing quality in my book got her to understand more my point. Over the years she would share more and more what it was like for her during her years in education: her determination, fears that she hadn’t made the best decision, how she learned from her mistakes, but not always, and the process of making decisions.

Clearly Elizabeth was academically smarter than the average person. That had little to do with her greatness. To me, the extraordinariness of Elizabeth Ely was how she truly had not more or less then the rest of us. She fought to overcome regrets and mistakes like many of us. Her greatness was how courageously she lived her life, determined to keep her mind open to possibility but her feet grounded in the realities of life’s challenges. She was neither reckless nor overly protective. Like the father who lets his child climb the tree but stops them when he knows they would break more than just an arm if they fell. It is that edge that let me take on things I may not have otherwise taken on and I give Elizabeth great credit for inspiring this in me. There are thousands of us out here whose lives would not be as great without Elizabeth, and I am one of them. It is my belief that the greatest way to honor and appreciate Elizabeth Ely’s life is to live our own lives to the fullest.

Elizabeth, it truly hurts that you are gone. The last time we talked months ago was not enough. Thank you for the life you lived because it gave so much to my life. I know you are no longer walking on this earth today, but I know you are still with us.

Martin Brossman
The Field School Graduate
Class of 1978

See Washington Post Obituary about Elizabeth C. Ely.

and

In Memory of Elizabeth C. Ely comments at The Field School website.

A few photos from the first Yearbook refereed to in the post:

Drawing from the first yearbook The Falcon of The Field School 1976

The Falcon - The Field School's first Yearbook - The Falcon


The Falcon ( Yearbook ) Staff - 1976
Sharaine Ely take in 1976 at The Field School from the yearbook

My Holography Class

Another picture of Elizabeth from ~1977/78