The Sacred Pin
After the September 11th attacks, U.S. Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, gave every person working in the Pentagon... a pin.... with the incription, September 11, 2001... UNITED IN MEMORY.
When I finished If We Can Fly to the Moon, my friend Michael Levy, bought several copies of the CD to share with his friends in different parts of the country. One of those friends works in the Pentagon, and was there on September 11th, just two hallways away from the plane's impact. After listening to the song, and the story of how it came to be, he took off his pin, and said, "I want you to give this to Anita".
When I wrote to thank him, he told me that it is a sacred pin in the Pentagon, and everyone wears it, every day. I felt so incredibly honored to have it, and to know that one of the original intentions of the song; to find a way to send out some kind of comfort to those who have lost so much, was somehow felt by someone who was there. I told him that I wanted to tell the story of the sacred pin, and he told me that he didn't feel he had done enough to help the people in the building that day. When I told my husband this, he immediately responded by saying, "We all feel that very feeling... we all felt and continue to feel that we wish there were something we could do to help, and whatever we do, can never be enough."
In some way, and on some level, we are all survivors, and feel an incredible longing to do something to ease the pain of what has happened. Certainly everyone connected with this project wanted to do something...and this is what we could do.
On March 11, the night of the six month anniversary, as the light memorial was being turned on where the World Trade Centers once stood, and as Jesse Norman sang, I received an email saying that the new website to share the song, ifwecanflytothemoon.com, was now up. The very moment I opened the site for the first time, a knock on the door brought Michael Levy, delivering the pin from the Pentagon. I had no idea he was coming over.
I know in my heart that I wrote this song out of my own personal need to do something, and I always thought of it as a gift....first a gift to myself to ease my own pain, and find some light in the darkness, then a gift to those who were directly impacted, and ultimately.... a gift to the world. I know now, without a doubt, that gifts give back in ways that can never be imagined....and I am also convinced that we are all connected, somehow.
For me, this very sacred pin will forever be a reminder that we are truly all connected in our memory of September 11, 2001.
Anita Kruse
March 19, 2002
