On Saturday we spent a fun time touring Brooklyn with local residents, Mike and Catherine Leavitt. Catherine is Carole Beal’s daughter and she works for Tory Burch corporate in Manhattan. After Catherine earned her MBA from NYU she stayed in New York working in the fashion industry (Vera Wang, Narcisco Rodriguez, Cole Haan before her new stint at Tory Burch).Brooklyn’s official motto is “Eendraght Maeckt Maght” which is an early dutch spellling for “Unity Makes Strength.” And, after seeing all the ethnic neighborhoods, the motto makes really fits. Brooklyn has always been a magnet for immigrants. We loved seeing the Park Slope neighborhood that Carole’s kids live in, Brooklyn Heights, and the Hasidic Jewish communities in Borough Park (especially since it was their Sabbath).
We also went to the US Open on Saturday for the semifinals. We watched more great tennis and thought we were really living large!
On Sunday at the Manhattan 1st Ward I ran into Susan Patton who had been in our La Jolla Ward over 20 years ago. Bill and Susan Patton’s son, Chris, is an attorney with Cravath Swain and Susan and I both happened to be visiting the same ward on the same Sunday..... serendipity! It was fun to catch up with Susan & the church meetings all focused on 9/11 and were outstanding!
The rest of Sunday was filled with visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art and then dinner at Sylvia’s in Harlem. Apparently a church member owns Sylvia’s but sorry to say, we weren’t very impressed with the food unless you happen to like soul food.
Listening to a youth speaker, Jason, in Sacrament meeting yesterday talk about his memories of 9/11 as a 6 year old (he’s now 16) was really touching. One thing Jason remembers is his dad spending all day calling ward members because his father was the bishop of their ward at the time. Jason said it was the first time he remembers having feelings of concern for others. He also recalls how everyone in the New York City communities treated each other differently after 9/11.
9/11 is such a senseless tragedy but many good things did come out of bad. Yesterday the city seemed to need all the memorial tributes; it felt like a day of healing for the big apple. The terrorists can kill but they can’t take our spirit.
