Forever transformed

By Cynthia Hubert -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Sunday, Sept. 8, 2002

	Amy Patterson and David Hendricks play with their son, Brian, in their new home. They moved back to California from Maryland after Sept. 11 to be closer to family and friends. Sacramento Bee/Anne Chadwick Williams

One year ago this week, the terror attacks that broke our hearts and made us feel fragile also nudged some of us closer to our dreams. On that terrible day, countless Californians vowed to change their lives in meaningful ways. Some actually succeeded.

Sometimes, in the fallout of unimaginable tragedy, small blessings rain down. Parents cling more closely to their children. Long-lost friends find one another. Procrastinators turn their hopes into reality. One year ago this week, the terror attacks that broke our hearts and made us feel fragile also nudged some of us closer to our dreams. On that terrible day, stricken and inspired by the death and heroism at Ground Zero in New York City, countless Californians vowed to change their lives in meaningful ways. Some actually succeeded. Claire Thompson was one of them.

Just hours after the terrorists struck, Thompson, a New York City native who adopted Sacramento as her home 25 years ago, began shipping box after box of beautiful handmade blankets to comfort young survivors on the East Coast. That very day, she decided to broaden the mission of the nonprofit group she manages, Project Linus, to provide crocheted, knitted and quilted blankets not only to sick and needy children but young victims of emotional trauma from natural disasters and terrorist attacks.

At the same time, Thompson made a promise to herself to do something to honor her late sister, Robin Nelson, who died of AIDS in 1995.

"I always wanted to do more as far as volunteering," said Thompson, who for years before moving to Sacramento would gaze at the twin towers on her daily rides on the Staten Island ferry. "Then came September 11th, and right after that I heard about a vaccine trial. Rather than let any more time go by, I signed up immediately."

Since October, Thompson has endured regular injections and blood tests that she hopes will lead to a cure for the disease that killed her sister.

"September 11th made me realize that we never know what is going to happen day to day," said Thompson, a secretary for the Board of Equalization. "It made me feel I needed to do something more for other people and for the country, that if the world ended tomorrow at least I would have contributed something."

At about the same time Thompson started shipping out her blankets of love, computer software specialist Mary Sanders started thinking about her childhood pal, Susan Bourie.

The pair had been nearly inseparable in junior high and high school in New York, sharing gossip and giggles and Earth Wind & Fire records. But they lost touch after Sanders moved to California about a decade ago.

The events of Sept. 11 touched Sanders deeply and personally. She thought about the many times she had ridden the subway to the World Trade Center stop in Manhattan, three blocks from where she worked for New York state's Department of Social Services. She phoned her brother, a retired New York police officer, to make sure he was OK. And she wondered whatever happened to Susan Bourie.

A few days after the attacks, she found Bourie on an Internet site that reunites former classmates. Bourie confided that she needed to hear words of comfort from an old friend. Sanders called her right away.

"There was real fear in her voice," Sanders recalled. "I just let her vent that day." Now, it is never more than a week or two between telephone calls for the two women, as they relive their shared history and catch up on each other's lives.

Sanders has invited her friend to visit her in California, but she said Bourie remains afraid to fly.

By the time Sanders and Bourie found each other, Amy Patterson and David Hendricks, historians who fell in love as graduate students at the University of California, Davis, and then moved east, had begun talking about taking a major leap of faith. Maybe they would quit their jobs, sell their home outside of Washington, D.C., pack up their newborn, Brian, and move back to California, closer to family and friends.

Within three months they did it, arriving in the Sacramento area without the promise of full-time work but with the hope of improving their lives. Today they are financially poorer, but richer in other ways.

"It just feels right," said Patterson. "We would have been perfectly happy in Washington. But this is better for us in the long run. September 11th gave us the nudge we needed. It gave us the extra push and the opportunity to really talk about doing things that had been simmering for some time."

Patterson and Hendricks have more flexible schedules now, allowing them to share child care. He teaches classes at UC Davis, and she has a contract preparing historical documents for the state.

After living in a Davis apartment for awhile, the couple recently bought a house. It's smaller than their home in Maryland, "but we weren't using all the space in our last place, anyway," Patterson said.

Their daily lives have become less stressful. Rather than rushing to their respective jobs each morning, either Hendricks or Patterson usually has a leisurely breakfast with Brian, who just turned 1. They cut their commute from 45 minutes to less than 15. They eat most meals together and have more time to just talk.

Best of all, their son is getting to know his paternal grandparents, aunts and uncles and other relatives and close friends.

"We know now that there are more important things than having steady work with the federal government," Patterson said. "There's something really nice about being closer to your family when things are unsettled in the world."

Like Patterson and Hendricks, Sacramento lawyer Lesley Clement found herself reconsidering her life path when the horror of Sept. 11 hit home.

Within a couple of weeks of the attacks, Clement, who represents elderly and disabled people abused in nursing homes, decided to "give wings" to her dreams of working less and enjoying life more.

Though only 40, Clement met with a financial planner and drew up a map for early retirement. She started planning "dream vacations," including a trip to New Zealand this February. Last month she bought a gourmet delicatessen in Sea Ranch, the coastal town where she owns a vacation home.

Within five years Clement plans to trade her brutal schedule, with workdays that can stretch to 18 hours, for gardening, cooking and spending quality time with loved ones.

"So many times, we wish for our own personal Etch A Sketch where we can take our life and turn it upside down and erase it and start anew," said Clement. "If ever there was an event that makes us look at what we are doing, slow down and try to live a better life, it is September 11th."

While only a few of us made tangible changes in our lives after Sept. 11, many others felt profoundly changed inside.

Though thousands of miles removed from the misery of Ground Zero, Northern Californians speak of a renewed sense of civic spirit, greater patriotism and an intensified love and appreciation of children.

"I have tried all of my life to teach my children love of my country," said Carmichael resident Susan Hurst. "After September 11th, my son finally began to love America. He learned to play the guitar in his band class, and then he began the task of learning how to play the beautiful patriotic songs that I have sung for most of my 43 years. It touches my heart when I hear him play them."

While Hurst and so many others point to fulfilled dreams, both large and small, others talk of a foreboding fallout from Sept. 11.

Some admit to being suspicious, for the first time in their lives, of people with olive skin and Arab names. One Sacramento woman said she quit her job because her boss was Muslim and she no longer trusted him.

Many describe a general feeling of vulnerability. One Sacramentan predicted future devastating terrorist attacks, arguing that Americans are destined to pay a price for placing their personal freedoms above tough but restrictive security measures.

"We will eventually end up like Israel and live with daily terrorist attacks, much like we do with serial killings and child abductions," he said. "September 11th was only the beginning."

Sept. 11 is something more for superlawyer Tina Thomas. It is her birthday. As the date approaches this year, she finds herself consumed by a lingering unease.

Thomas, a prominent environmental and land-use attorney and the mother of three, still cannot enter a tall building or a crowded room or cross a bridge without thinking about last year's terror.

"It's with me always," she said. "I'm still scared."

She will spend her 49th birthday the same way she spent her 48th, quietly at home, with her husband and children.

"I think about the future, and I really fear for my children and what they might have to face in the next decade or two," she said.

Then she reaches for the pragmatism that has served her so well in legal circles: "You cannot let things like this change your life in a negative, radical way," she said. "You have to move on. You just hug your kids more tightly, and you move on."