Katy Soulas addresses students at Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School on Sept. 11. Her husband died in the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001.
Photos by Johanna Ginsberg
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After her address, Soulas spoke informally with students, some of whom offered hugs of support.
September 16, 2009
When Katy Soulas spoke in the auditorium at Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School on Sept. 11, over 200 students hung on her every word.
Soulas, 43, a resident of Basking Ridge, told the students in Livingston that she was pregnant with her sixth child on Sept. 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center fell, and her husband, Tim, was among the victims.
Many high school students today don’t have clear recollections of the terror attacks of eight years ago. Some, like Yael Hausdorff, 15, of West Orange, remember generalized chaos at school and an early dismissal, but not much else.
“I knew of it; I mean, I’ve seen pictures. But just hearing a story with the picture, I never really put it together like that,” she said.
Educators at some area day schools say this has led to an evolving curriculum focusing on 9/11 as a history lesson.
“As our student population born prior to the terrorist attacks grows each year, their recollection of the tragedy has greatly diminished,” said Dr. Cheryl Bahar, dean of general studies at the Bohrer-Kaufman Hebrew Academy of Morris County in Randolph, with students from pre-K through eighth grade. “For the most part, their collective perception of the events has shifted from a shared memory to a history lesson.”
Lacking the immediacy of personal memory, one might expect students to be disaffected, or even uninterested.
But at the Kushner school, students were visibly moved by Soulas and her experience. After her talk, many rushed forward to offer her hugs. Yael Hausdorff described the talk as “very emotional.”
Soulas spoke at a podium draped with a quilt that a stranger had made as a receiving blanket for Daniel, the baby born after her husband’s death; it was decorated with photographs of Tim with the other Soulas children. Behind her was a screen with an image of the World Trade Center, smoke billowing out of the towers.
She described the family’s last happy weekend together, washing the cars, playing sports, selling Cub Scout popcorn, and praying in church. She described the Tuesday morning that her husband left for work at Cantor Fitzgerald and how he had “kissed my tummy goodbye,” Soulas said.
She went on to describe a friend’s coming to her house and telling her to turn on the TV. She told the students of her pain as a wife and mother who realized she would not see her husband again, that she would be left to raise six children on her own.
“It was clear to me from the impact and that dark billowing smoke that chances of surviving were pretty slim,” she told the youngsters. “I knew I had just seen thousands of people die. I was petrified for my children’s safety. I was petrified Tim might not come home.”
‘Outpouring of strength’
She described her decision to watch, together with her family, images of the Twin Towers falling on TV. At the time, her children ranged in age from 15 months to 11 years.
“I knew this would be an event that would be part of history,” she said. It would be “in their text books, in their college experiences, part of their entire lives.
“So we watched all together that night.”
But they also watched newscasts, and her then nine-year-old son, Andrew, was upset by reports of children in Afghanistan dancing at the news of the attacks. “Why are they so happy?” she recalled him asking. “I described quietly there are people who grow up not with love and affection, without parents who work hard to give them an education, activities, sports, and music. They do not have books or any of that, and they are jealous.”
She described in loving detail receiving an “outpouring of strength from strangers.” She told about the local sports teams offering support and about “an 11-year-sold boy from my hometown who sold apples from his driveway. He sent me the $11 he earned that day,’ Soulas said. “People from all over the country poured their talent into handiwork for us,” she said, pointing out the quilt, “so Daniel could see how alive and vibrant his father was.”
In the end, however, it is her ability to see beyond her own pain that makes her such an effective speaker, to find something larger, better, from the experience.
Since 9/11, Soulas has continued to speak about the tragedy, she said, but rarely at schools or to teenagers. She has spoken only at her own high school, her children’s school, and Kushner. She said she usually speaks with women confronting loss, particularly mothers’ groups.
“They identify with being a mother and raising children alone, having faced loss, talking about loss, and moving on and knowing loss is making them stronger,” she said.
Apparently, she still gains support from strangers. About the rush of students after her talk, she said, “I loved all the kids hugging me.”
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