What Is Project 2996 Doing for the 13th Annivesary?

Legacy: What Project 2996 Is Doing for the 13th Anniversary of September 11th from Darryl Heron

For the 13^th Anniversary, we have a three-pronged approach planned. First and foremost, we have our core desire to make sure that every single victim is remembered via an online tribute that is accessible for the world to read. Secondly, our Group Pinboard at Pinterest continues is its quest to have a “pin” for all of the victims. Lastly, we have a new project, which I’ll tell you about shortly.

The more time passes, the more other things and life crowd out the memory that we have of the victims and their families. This is only natural, but it is a force that is working against us and we need to be aware of. I don’t believe that any of us want to see the victims and their families relegated to some 30 second spot in news outlets everywhere, buried behind some news filler that nobody cares about anyways. We want to make something positive out of that terribly tragic day.

I was talking to my wife about wedding anniversaries and I got to thinking that we (as a society) tend to remember the first ten or twelve anniversaries of events (wedding anniversaries, high school reunions, etc.) but after that then we tend make a celebration less and less frequently, going to increments of five (or farther away). Again this is a natural tendency of people in general.

I was working on putting up some pins for the Project 2996 Group Pinboard and I realized that a lot has been done to preserve the memory of the various victims and to turn the tragic event into something that will help people while keeping the victims memories alive. I also read “Just a Few Sleeps Away”, by Mike Nichols who tells the story of a family of one of the victims and how they dealt with their loss. This got me thinking about legacy and how there is so much out there for so many of the victims. I thought that it would be great to do another group pinboard focusing on what has been done to keep the memory alive of the victims via scholarships, foundations, charities, buildings, parks, streets, schools, anything has been dedicated to the victims and anything that keeps their memory alive. The focus of this group pinboard will be on the legacy of the victims.

Dale and I have learned a few lessons from our involvement in Project 2996 that I wanted to apply to the 13^th Anniversary. The biggest is that while we want to see every victim represented by the anniversary, we realize that this not at all achievable, but Project 2996 can use the anniversary to capture peoples’ interest in September Eleventh. I recently scheduled some time to put a lot of pins in the group pinboard and if we can all take some names and a lot a certain amount to time weekly (or daily), we can make great strides towards honoring the victims via our various campaigns. Let us use the days leading up to the anniversary and the entire year to honor the victims via our three-pronged approach.

I can’t speak for you, but I know that I’m fascinated by numbers and I’m sure that I’m not alone on this. The number 13 has a bad reputation. While we all know that given the nature of what happened on September 11th, that we can’t rally change it, but lets put some Legacy into this year’s commemorations. All of the victims have left some kind of Legacy, let us see if we can’t find it and let the world know!  I hope that you’ll all join me in pinning at the all new Project 2996 Legacy Group Pinboard and in promoting it. Let’s have fun with the “Lucky 13” and honor the memory of the victims!.

Darryl Heron