In the southwest corner of the Boston Public Garden, you’ll often find Catherine Donahue on a park bench. With curly grey hair and dark brown eyes, she sits before more than 200 names etched in pink granite.
Donahue says she visits the Garden of Remembrance almost every day to pay tribute to the people who had a close connection to Massachusetts and perished in the September 11th terrorist attacks.
“I just feel so much peace here,” says Donahue.
While the memorial is a dozen years old, Donahue discovered it a little over a year ago. Now, she often stands by the low, pink wall, overlooking the swan boats, and reads the names of those lost.
“Every time I try to count I always get teary eyed. And then I don’t know whether I am reading the same name over or not because your eyes start to water.“
When that happens Donahue sits – with her partner Jose Baleon - on the bench opposite the names. From there, she says she watches other people as they experience the memorial.
Some of those people remember where they were the moment they learned of the attack.
“I was a freshman in high school and I was in piano class,” recalls Demetri Koutoulas, of Lynn, who works nearby and often comes by the memorial.
Others -- like Ryan Culleton -- are too young to remember where they were that day. “I was about five years old. I didn’t know much about it.”
Now, he’s an electrician, and with a job in downtown Boston, he decided to take his lunch break at the memorial.
Catherine Donahue watches quietly as people come and go and linger. She says she’s particularly heartened when people from other countries visit Boston’s 9/11 Memorial.
“They come here and they read everything,” Donahue says.
Susan Mullins and Noel Mullins did just that. They’re from Ireland and have visited Boston numerous times over the past few years and each time, they say, they come by this garden.
“September 11th didn’t just touch the people of New York or the people of America,” says Susan Mullins. “It touched everyone around the world.“
Standing before the names of the deceased, she say she worries that the world is still a dangerous place.
“It’s scary,” Mullin says, shaking her head. “When you consider what’s happened in France a few weeks ago, not much has changed.”
Claire Barker, of Jamaica Plain, also pauses at the memorial. She says she’s concerned by how political leaders have responded to the threat.
“I honestly don’t think we’ve learned enough,” says Barker. “We should know that being open to new communities – I particularly think asylum seekers and refugees coming to the United States – is a gain. We are all refugees. My family came here from famine. And to treat people as other is foolish.”
Catherine Donahue agrees.
Donahue thinks people should be kinder and gentler to one another. And she says, here – at the September 11th Memorial in the Public Garden – they are.
