Published: Tuesday, September 12, 2006
People must remember to treat one another with kindness every day, Lynch said.
People must remember to treat one another with kindness every day, Lynch said.
By HAROLD GWIN
YOUNGSTOWN — Jackie Lynch says that she won't forgive the terrorists who killed her husband in the Sept. 11, 2001, airplane attack on the Pentagon but that she doesn't hate the people in the countries from which the terrorists came.
Those people are living in daily terror themselves, she said, urging more kindness and understanding among people.
"We were all shocked and saddened" by the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center and the hijacked flight that crashed in Pennsylvania, Lynch said.
But something else came out of that day that seems to have been forgotten, she said.
The attacks brought out the best in all of us and it brought out kindness, and that's something that should be remembered and practiced every day, she said.
Her hope is that we can end the current conflicts and learn to understand other people and their cultures. People should be kind to one another and take care of one another, she urged.
Lynch was a speaker at two ceremonies at Youngstown State University today marking the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Husband was YSU grad
Her husband, Terry Lynch, graduated from YSU with a bachelor's degree in history in 1976 and a master's in history in 1978.
He was employed by Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting company, and was in a meeting at the Pentagon when a hijacked Boeing 757 slammed into the building around 9:40 a.m.
Terry was a very proud graduate of YSU, Lynch said, and, since his death, she has become very close to some of the faculty and staff on campus.
"I have found true friends among you," she told those attending today's ceremonies.
She has moved back to the Mahoning Valley from Virginia and has launched a number of local positive projects in Terry's name, including the Terry Lynch Foundation, which supports children with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and related diseases.
Lynch and the couple's two daughters, Tiffany Marie, 27, of Virginia, and Ashley Nicole, 22, of Albuquerque, N.M., have also created a YSU scholarship to aid history majors and now sponsor the annual Mahoning County Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities special-needs prom.
Terry drove a bus for MRDD while attending YSU.
The family also sponsors children to an annual Space Camp, a program in which Terry was involved.
They've sent 60 children so far and plan to continue the project, Lynch said.
Lessons
There are a number of lessons that should be learned form the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, said Dr. Cynthia Anderson, YSU vice president of student affairs, who also spoke at the ceremonies.
We should have learned that life is a gift and time a precious commodity, Anderson said. We also should have learned how important our freedom is, how Americans can come together as one people and how important it is to learn about different people and their cultures, she said.
The Rev. Kathryn Adams, director of YSU Protestant Ministries, said she visited ground zero at the site of the World Trade Center attack in New York City about two months after the attacks.
She found it to be not only a place of death, "but also a place of hope."
Fences erected around a nearby church were covered with messages of support and prayer from around the world, and there was a prayer center on every street corner with volunteers available to pray with those who realized they could do nothing more, the Rev. Mrs. Adams recalled.
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