When President Kennedy was shot, I had yet to enter the world. As a matter of fact I wasn’t even a twinkle in my mother’s eye. Still, many Americans can pinpoint where they were when they heard the news of the president’s death in Dallas.

As a child of the Sixties, I have other events that stand out in my mind as unforgettable. Newspaper headlines of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal caught my eye as they lay on our kitchen table. The Iran Hostage Crisis and long gas lines were also part of my childhood, and yet there are few times in my life that one event stopped me in my tracks.

The Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster was one of those times. On January 27, 1986, I was glued to the television with my college dormmates, watching our dreams and NASA’s break apart in 73 seconds after take-off. We swore we would never forget that day, and then 9-11 happened. It’s at this time of year that we remember that clear September morning that changed our world forever and, like JFK’s assassination, we remember exactly what we were doing when the news broke.

The day before the Attack on America, I’d taken a morning flight out of Boston with my husband and 18-month old daughter. We’d flown to San Francisco to see my in-laws for our annual visit. Because of the time change, we were up early and sitting around the kitchen table when the first plane struck. It wasn’t until that afternoon that we realized we’d exposed our daughter to the news as well. We found her in the living room, stacking up towers of blocks, then knocking them down like the Twin Towers.

It is hard to believe it’s been 16 years since that dreadful day. This summer my family took a bus to New York City to visit the National September 11 Memorial and Museum. We wanted our teenage daughters to view this history through their own eyes. Together we spent time reading the names of those who died. We touched the water in the twin reflecting pools, and walked past the Survivors’ Stairs that led many to escape and back to life.

For the longest time I refused to pick up a book on 9-11. I read the news and watched television specials but I preferred to read stories from other periods of history, such as World War II or the Vikings. That changed recently. I found a book that peeked my interest called The Red Bandanna: A Life, A Choice, A Legacy by Tom Rinaldi. It’s the true account of a previously unkown American hero from September 11th. Certainly, heroes rise up out of tragedies in surprising ways. Welles Crowther is one of those heroes. For the longest time after the Twin Towers fell, Crowther’s family had no idea what happened to him. They knew he worked on the 104th floor of the South Tower and that he’d gone to work early as usual. After that, there was no word. Silence.

Eight months after the attack, Crowther’s mother was reading a news account that mentioned a mysterious stranger wearing a red bandanna who led many to safety. In the midst of the harrowing ordeal, this mysterious man kept turning around to rescue more. That’s when his mother knew. That single detail—the red bandanna—defined her son. When Crowther was a young boy his father gave him his red bandanna from his back pocket before church. From that day forward, Crowther had kept that signature bandanna in his possession. Ironically, Crowther had been considering a life-change right before 9-11. For years he’d wanted to pursue a lifelong dream—to become a firefighter for the FDNY. In any role he’d played, he’d gone above in beyond his duty. He cared about others, and his heroic actions on 9-11 were of no surprise to those who knew and loved him. In her poem The Summer Day, Mary Oliver asks the reader a question: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” The Red Bandanna answers this question for Welles Crowther—one man who made a difference with his life.

As it turns out another favorite book of mine, The Fall of Marigolds, by Susan Meissner demonstrates this resolve in the face of tragedy. While a work of fiction, Meissner’s novel weaves together the lives of two women through an embroidered scarf. For Clara Wood, it is the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire disaster that takes the life of the man she loves. For Taryn Michaels it’s her husband’s death in the World Trade Towers that turns her world upside down. Kirkus Review describes Taryn’s dilemma as follows: “A recently discovered photo from that day is published in a national magazine and now, 10 years after 9/11, Taryn is forced to relive the events and face the guilt she’s harbored because she acceded to a customer’s request and stopped by a hotel to pick up a marigold scarf, an action that delayed Taryn from joining her husband at Windows on the World for a celebration she’d planned.” Meissner reveals the heart of two survivors and the strength of character that often emerges from tragedy.

Sometimes as adults we forget we’re not the only ones who had to grapple with heartache after 9-11. Many children lost family and friends as well, and those children have grown up in the shadow of that fateful day. True, a variety of picture books have emerged on this topic for children, but I’m particularly impressed by Janet Nolan’s Seven and a Half Tons of Steel. While everyone should check out this book for Thomas Gonzalez’s illustrations alone (they are gorgeous), it is Nolan who uses a delicate hand to tell how the bow of the USS New York came to be fashioned from the remains of a World Trade Tower’s steel beam. How beautiful is that! Out of ashes comes renewed strength. I think I will cling to that hope this year on September 11th.

 Nancy Ling is the Outreach Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts.  Read Nancy’s column in the September 14th issue of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

On my eighth birthday, my mother gave me a butterfly party. My dress was pale pink polished cotton. The fabric was printed with the most beautiful winged creatures across the fitted bodice and full skirt. Mom created my cake using The Baker’s Cut-Up Cake Party Book. Colored shredded coconut and jelly beans made it the most yummy, lovely butterfly I’ve ever eaten. I remember the day as delicious and very, very special.

My mother was proud of the event. She always put her heart and soul into each excuse for a holiday and party. She spoke of that day for years afterward, but not so much my “butterfly birthday”. Instead, she referred to it as my United Nations birthday. Having recently moved from the Blackstone Valley of Massachusetts to the extremely liberal town of Berkeley, California, she was often pleasantly surprised how different, diverse and interesting our lives, and especially HER life, had become.

That university town across the bay from San Francisco was certainly the most diverse culture I have ever lived in – and it was a welcome change for my mother, the small-town girl who had broken away from a New England rural life.

That said, I was not a minority as a “white girl” in Berkeley. Many of my neighbors and peers were from all over the world – Indonesia, Belgian Congo, Pakistan, and Russia. Many others were from other heritages. My best friend’s parents were from Japan and I now suspect they were interned during World War II. The war against Japan had been won less than a decade before. Many other of my friends were first generation Hispanic, their parents having arrived from Mexico and Latin America. And many others were African Americans whose families had either lived in California for generations or had recently moved across the country from America’s southern states.

I grew up never realizing that I was white-privileged. My family was a liberal, welcoming household in what I considered a multicultural environment. Yet, that New England heritage and culture and upbringing and that middle-classed whiteness in California was the privilege that I’m just now beginning to understand.

As a young white woman, I never questioned my right to a college education. My white privilege includes a belief that everyone can overcome the barriers anyone faces. As a young wife, I took for granted that we could and would purchase a home in a safe neighborhood. My white privilege caused me to drive by the neighborhoods I was uncomfortable in. As a young mother, I entitled myself to sending my children to a good school system. My white privilege afforded me both the lifestyle and the expectation.

I am just beginning to understand this.

As a history major in college, that very own white privilege complicates my feelings behind the recent attempts to remove monuments to the Civil War.  Erase history, I thought? Why? The answer lies in my own poor attempts to confront my inherent privilege, my denied racism, and my simply ridiculous belief that life will become what I think as normal again. The events in Charlottesville, Virginia and the editorials, articles, and essays are opening raw wounds of antisemitism, racism and prejudice – wounds that I had denied existed in conservative AND liberal America.

I’ve made a commitment to myself to become more educated and aware and I’ve researched a list of books that I will begin with. I have yet to read any of them so I am relying on others’ recommendations and reviews. My hope is that I will become both enlightened and justice-minded through my reading.

Because the truth is so very hard to swallow, I’ll begin my journey with Ibram X. Kendi’s 2016 book Stamped from the Beginning – The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. Kendi explains and illustrates that racism is very alive and well in what we might have considered a post-racial America. We must begin to believe that there is a modern-day racism beyond the prejudices we know we all harbor. It’s “deeply entrenched in our nation’s history.”

In 2016, author Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote a letter to his son about his own survival and identity as a black man in America in Between the World and Me. I understand it is a “devastating and affecting read” and one I should have read a year ago when it was published.

Chokehold – Policing Black Me by Paul Butler was published just months ago. The 2016 award-winning documentary “13th” exemplified that incarceration of black men in the United States since the Civil War has been an extension of slavery. Criminal justice has been one-sided and the powerful story in Chokehold reveals the same.

There are a dozen more on my list that can help me with my own enlightenment. Tim Wise has written many books from the perspective of a white male and the benefits of white privilege that have shaped his life in so many ways — to the detriment of people of color. Michael Eric Dyson’s Tears We Cannot stop is a plea to Americans, and especially white Americans, to become uncomfortable enough to address their own racial biases. This September, the newest book to explode the myths about our racism is Gene Dattel’s Reckoning With Race. Now is the time to reserve it for your own reading list.

The bias of white privilege is much broader of course and prejudice has a far reach into Latino, Asian, Middle-Eastern and Native American ethnicity and identity in our country. Yellow – Race in America Beyond Black and White by Frank Wu (2002) explores the Asian-American experience and the stereotypes that have blocked racial progress.  When our grandson began university last year, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? was a required all-college read. In the book, Moustafa Bayoumi explains what it like to be a young Arab in American culture.  Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano presents the story of European and American influence on Latin America along with the issues of the Latino experience in the U.S. And included on my list is Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’ history of our own country’s displacement of the Native Americans in An Indigenous People’s History of the United States.

After the recent marches and demonstrations in cities around the country – especially those that espouse antisemitism and Nazism, we must all read The Devil That Never Dies which exposes the “rise and threat” of global antisemitism by Daniel Johan Goldhagen. Old stories are being retold in a new horrific narrative. It’s time to start listening, reading and understanding in order to change those old stories into a new one of acceptance, assimilation, and equality.

A complete reading list is available at here. See the display of titles in our new book area on the first floor.

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte’s column in the August 24, 2017 issue of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

A few years ago, when our grandson was still in high school, he worked at the local Dunkin’ Donuts in the center of Norwood. This work location was perfect because he could walk to work after school and he could walk to our Norwood home in the evening or on weekends if we weren’t around to give him a ride.

He was 16 when he got the job and one afternoon on one of his first trips home from work he found two twenty dollar bills folded up lying in the crosswalk. He picked the cash up but told us about it when he got home, asking what he should do with it.

My husband had had something similar happen a few months back when he found a twenty dollar bill on the floor right next to the milk coolers at the rear of Shaw’s.  He immediately brought it up to the service counter and announced that he didn’t want to take the money in case some elderly shopper or young parent had just lost his or her entire grocery money for the week. Shaw’s took the money to hold onto just in case someone came looking for it. The promised my husband that after a week or two, with no claim for the money lost that particular day, they would call and welcome him back to retrieve the twenty dollars.

In the end, no one came looking, Gerry got the call from the service desk and he was twenty dollars richer that day.

When we discussed the possible scenarios of how the money might have been lost – or who it belonged to – Colin understood that someone could have dropped the money on his or her way to shop. I called my favorite local police chief and it was decided that we would hold onto the money for one month, leaving time for someone to claim it.

No one came looking, and Colin was a richer teenager with forty dollars in his pocket after the thirty days.

Then one sunny summer afternoon in July of last year, as we exited our car near our Marion home in a busy Route 6 parking lot, Gerry found a one-hundred dollar bill, crisp and neatly folded in half on the ground. Knowing that it could have been lost by any customer visiting any number of small shops, we sat and discussed the question this posed. What was the right thing to do?

Of course, we had just taught our grandson the valuable lesson of giving the owner the option of reclaiming lost cash… Perhaps it was a careless tourist with money to burn who slipped a $100 bill in his or her pocket for a trip to the gourmet coffee shop. Or perhaps it was a local resident with a particular purchase to make who would discover the loss and report it to the police.

Here’s what Gerry did, after one of those “aww, do I have to?”  moments. Remembering his own advice, he knew he had to do the right thing. He brought it to the Marion police station where he was told it had to sit for one full year in the evidence room in case the owner came looking.

And it sat for one exact year until the detective in charge of evidence released it. No one had come looking, obviously, and Gerry was a richer man that day.

Public safety officers we’ve told this story to have told us that very, very few people bring money to the station and turn it in. Most of our friends, in fact, have laughed at the story and told us that they’d have pocketed it. And perhaps Gerry would have if he hadn’t just tried to teach a lesson in morality and ethics to our young grandson.

Juan Manuel Quiñones, or better known as John Quiñones, is an ABC news correspondent and host of What Would You Do?  This television series, originally known as Primetime: What Would You Do?, ran for about 8 seasons beginning in 2008 through 2015. Reruns can still be seen on other networks, evidence of the popularity of the ethical and moral questions that are proposed and the questions they raise.

In the reality show, actors portray scenes in public settings which are being recorded by hidden cameras. The What Would You Do moments happen when bystanders are either moved or not moved by the events happening within their eyesight or earshot. The scenarios usually involve a profound situation – teenagers bullying one another or a person of color or different ethnicity being treated unfairly in a public setting. The producers of the show are looking for people to do the right thing. And, happily, that is often the case.

Of course John Quiñones appears on the scene at just the right time. Bystanders are interviewed and witnesses questioned. Psychologists respond to the actions and reactions. I’m always intrigued by What Would You Do? when I come across it on television and, of course, I am always heartened to see that there are people all over the world who do the right thing.

In 2015 when the series ended, John Quiñones wrote the book What Would You Do? Doing the Right Thing Even When You Think No One’s Watching and it is full of both the real-life stories, and some made-up ones, that create discussion.  Quiñones wrote the book hoping to inspire others to speak up when they witness wrongdoing. (Quiñones’ first book written with Steven Williams, Heroes Among Us – Ordinary People, Extraordinary Choices, was published in 2008.)

Doing the right thing is not always the quick and easy answer. Gerry and I would like to believe that we helped teach our grandson to think beyond the free cash lying on the street. There might always be an owner who desperately needs it.

Our lives might be richer in the end, cash or not.

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte’s column in the August 10, 2017 issue of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.