[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 15]
[Senate]
[Pages 20670-20671]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     MASSACHUSETTS MEMORIAL SERVICE

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I am honored to join all of you, the 
families of loved ones from across our Commonwealth who lost their 
lives last September 11.
  We come to this birthplace of liberty to remember, to give honor, and 
to express our resolve.
  All around us in this historic place are the images of famous leaders 
who brought life and nationhood to the ideals that were attacked a year 
ago, on a day whose dawn had seemed almost uniquely American in its 
sunny optimism.
  Etched on the wall around this stage are the names of heroes who gave 
their lives for our country on September 11, 2001. The list is 
heartbreaking, and it goes on and on. These heroes were famous in a 
different way, famous to their friends for their fabled jumpshot in a 
neighborhood park, or prized in their firms for a brilliance tempered 
by laughter, or celebrated by their young children as super-heroes, 
able to launch them into the air with an easy toss, and always there to 
catch them. They expected to pass the ball again, to make another trade 
or tell another joke, to come home that night and read a bedtime story.
  Then they were gone, in the darkness at mid-morning which succeeded 
that sunny dawn. We mourn them for the years that were too few and the 
hopes that were unfulfilled. We praise them for the way they lived, and 
in so many cases for the bravery in the way they

[[Page 20671]]

died. And we as a country, as a community, as friends and neighbors and 
family, hold them in our hearts.
  I spoke with a member of almost every family in Massachusetts who 
lost a loved one on the planes, or at Ground Zero in New York, or at 
the Pentagon. To those left behind, I say on this sad day: I know 
something of what you feel. To lose someone you love, and to lose them 
so suddenly, so unexpectedly, so terribly, to see them torn out of the 
fabric of life, is almost more than one can bear.
  And then, although we know the passage of a year cannot heal that 
memory, we move on, because we have to, because they would want us to, 
and because there is still light left in the world, including the love 
they left us.
  In a different time of grief, my brother Robert Kennedy quoted the 
ancient poet Aeschylus: ``In our sleep, pain, which cannot forget, 
falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against 
our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.''
  May God, this year and every year and every day, grant that grace to 
you the families.
  And for all of us, there is something else that comes from last 
September 11. From the pain that day have come both wisdom and will.
  We have learned anew the wisdom that as Americans, we are many, but 
we are also one.
  On Flight 93, there was a unity of purpose and a fierce pride. 
Passengers who had never met before became a band of brothers and 
sisters, sacrificing their lives so that others might live. Many other 
individual acts of courage saved more lives than we can know or count 
at Ground Zero and the Pentagon.
  People all across the country and of all ages asked what they could 
do, from giving their blood, to clearing rubble at the World Trade 
Center, to giving their dollars, to lending a shoulder to their 
neighbor to cry on. In countless ways, we came together, and founded a 
new American spirit of service to others.
  The terrorists taught us a lesson different from the one they 
expected. They acted with hate, but we reached out to comfort and 
support one another with love. No one asked whether the rescuer leading 
them down the packed stairwell of the World Trade Center was rich or 
poor, Anglo or African-American or Hispanic, gay or straight. We gained 
a new determination as Americans to reject discrimination in all its 
hateful forms.
  Out of the pain that day, Americans understood more powerfully than 
perhaps ever before the pledge of ``liberty and justice for all.''

     To help those in need;
     To give hope;
     To share what we have;
     To see suffering and try to heal it--

  That is our lesson from this tragedy, and it is wisdom that must 
guide us over time. The new American spirit of service can and must 
become a new era of commitment to the ideals of compassion, equality, 
opportunity, and concern for one another. We as a society seek to save 
a life when a terrorist strikes, and we as a society must do as much 
when the terror or a dread disease strikes, or the terror of poverty 
steals opportunity.
  May that legacy of 9/11, that legacy of love and compassion and 
caring, become our enduring tribute to all those who were lost.
  Out of that day also came a new sense of national resolve and will. 
We are at war today, with a terrorism that has plagued too many places 
for too many years, and that has finally struck at the heart of 
America.
  This is a conflict we did not seek, but must win, not alone for 
ourselves, but for the cause of freedom, tolerance and human rights 
around the world.
  The ideas and ideals created long ago in this great hall have shaped 
the dreams of countless millions yearning to be free.
  Now, as the greatest power on earth, we have a responsibility. Our 
gifts of strength and wealth and values can decide that the future will 
belong to the forces of hope and onto of hate.
  This brighter future depends on victory against terrorism. It demands 
that we then continue in a long, tireless endeavor to make the world 
not only safer for us, but better for all. In our determination to 
defeat those who have attacked our people and our principles, we truly 
are ``one nation under God, indivisible.''
  How true that was, how deeply we felt it, a year ago today. Together 
that day, we hurt and feared and hoped and prayed. And together now, we 
will prevail.
  God bless all who were lost and all who lost them. God give us 
strength, and the wisdom to use it well. God bless America.

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