Thank you for the opportunity to be with you tonight. As we begin, I’d like to thank the Tallahassee Civic Chorale for providing this opportunity for reflection, for remembrance and for comfort on this auspicious day. Thanks also to the Goodwood Museum and Gardens for hosting this event, and thanks to all of you for turning out.

The 9/11 tragedy was a traumatic experience for all of us. I spent that day in the TMH emergency room, recovering from a horseback accident that morning. The attacks seemed unreal to me then, and do still, even to this day.

In the days that followed, it struck me that 9/11 was the most graphic and widely shared trauma in our history. It was the most shocking example of man’s inhumanity to man ever broadcast on live television. The real-time experience of it impacted us all, and, I think,
changed us forever.

My sense of it, then and today, is that we’ve still got some healing to do from 9/11, both in our nation, and in our hearts. What could be more comforting and consoling at such times than music...? It is the resonance of life, and is the universal language that transcends all of the petty things that tend to divide us.

Let us think of this night then, as we listen to the musical program that has been prepared for us, not just as a night of remembrance and healing. Let us think of it as an expression of our unity of spirit. It is the diversity of America that gives us our strength, and it is our strength which ensures our freedom.

Let us think of this day then, and every anniversary of this date, as call to freedom. Let us, each year on this date, rededicate ourselves, as Lincoln said, to the task which remains before us: that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the Earth.

Let the remembrance of this date represent to us a New Birth Of Freedom.

Tonight, through the music of the Tallahassee Civic Chorale, let freedom ring.

God bless you, God bless our community, and may God bless all the good people of the United States.