Honoring the 25th Anniversary of 9/11 and the Founding of the Celebrant Foundation & Institute

Twenty-five years ago, the founders of the Celebrant Foundation & Institute, Gaile and Pat Sarma, invited me over for breakfast on the morning of September 11, 2001. I walked over to their home and sat at their kitchen table with them. Their suburban New Jersey house sat on top of a hill, looking over at NYC in the distance. On a clear or cloudy day, from their windows, you could see the Empire State Building in Midtown and the World Trade Center (WTC) Twin Towers down in the financial district at the tail end of Manhattan. We lived 12 miles west of NYC in the town of Montclair, NJ.

That morning, as we sat at the table eating eggs with the TV news on, the news commentator suddenly announced with horror that Building One of the WTC had been hit by a plane coming from Boston. The three of us stared with confusion and disbelief at the TV, waiting and watching to find out more. We looked out the picture window in front of us and could see the smoke. Twenty minutes later, another plane hit Building Two. We gasped, stood up, and looked at the TV, then out the window again. More smoke! We couldn’t comprehend what was going on.

The TV footage showed crowds of people screaming and running for their lives down the streets of NYC’s financial district, trying to get away from the Twin Towers' explosions and the monstrous, billowing white clouds of smoke and destruction charging after them. We were convinced that the U.S. was being attacked by another country. Was this the beginning of WWII?

The TV stations covered everything. Their camera crews got downtown immediately. People in the street and in the buildings were also videoing the unraveling horror. Then, the unthinkable happened: as we all know, the WTC Twin Towers collapsed. Who would think that this was even remotely possible? No one. We heard that other buildings next to the WTC went down, too.

We were in total shock, experiencing something like nothing we had ever felt before. We didn’t know what to do, but we had to do something. We continued to watch TV, seeing the horrifying events unfold more and more... and what was to be the continuing catastrophic aftermath.

Needing validation, we called and texted our friends and family to see if they were seeing what we were seeing. We called friends to see if they were okay—if they had friends or family working downtown in NYC, in the Twin Towers, in any of the buildings next to the WTC, or commuting to NYC, especially via the subway trains that go under the Twin Towers. When everything collapsed, everyone thought the end of the world was coming.

When Tragedy Became Personal

The Sarmas and I had just started the Celebrant Foundation & Institute, and I had booked my first wedding ceremony, coming up in the last week of September. It was for a wonderful couple who lived in New Jersey; she was a lawyer, and he was an electrician. They each had children from previous marriages, and now, with the wedding, the families would unite like the TV show The Brady Bunch. Family from both sides were getting ready to fly in from across the U.S. to celebrate their wedding. Diane, the bride, was making all the arrangements and was excited that their nine-year relationship would finally make them officially married parents to their six happy kids.

Earlier that morning, Diane’s fiancé, Glenn, got a call from one of his coworkers asking if he would fill in and work for him while he took his daughter to the orthodontist. Glenn said, “Of course, Bob!”

Now, news stations worldwide were covering the 9/11 catastrophe. President Bush was flying into Ground Zero, as it was now named. Rescue workers came in droves from nearby states. Evacuation boats landed. Helicopters landed, retrieved the maimed survivors, and got the people around Ground Zero out of there across the rivers to land on either side of Manhattan.

People in the Twin Towers died terrible deaths. Some jumped out of the towers' windows to their deaths instead of being burned alive. And the passengers on the planes that hit both towers died on impact. Some of the passengers were able to call their families on their cell phones to say goodbye forever.

My cell phone rang; it was Diane, telling me with a trembling voice that Glenn was working in Building One and that she had not heard from him yet. She asked me if I could come over to her house to wait with her for some word. I drove right over to her house in Teaneck, NJ, a town just north of the George Washington Bridge on the New Jersey side. My hands were sweating on the wheel while I was driving. On the way there, the roads and highways were empty. The whole world was staying in their homes watching TV—horrified, shocked, confused, and frightened. Those who knew people who went to work on Wall Street hoped their loved ones made it out alive.

I pulled up in front of Diane’s little Tudor-style house. I walked through the open door and sat with her at her kitchen table. Her wedding dress was hanging on the pantry door right behind her. Her eyes were swollen, and her nose was red. She was consumed with terror and grief. She told me that her family from California was getting ready to fly in for the wedding, but at this point, the government had issued a decree, and all airlines were told to stop flying immediately. The Pennsylvania plane had gone down, too, and everyone inside had died. Another plane hit the Pentagon. More people died; no survivors. Diane and her children were suffering in sorrow and fear.

We waited. She received no news from Glenn. His boss told her that he was working on the top floor in the Windows on the World restaurant in Building One. I have been there—it is extremely high up.

At this time, all the hospitals in NYC were packed with people rushing in, escaping the devastation. Doctors and nurses were being called in to help from other boroughs and nearby states. Only medical staff and FEMA were allowed to come into Manhattan; no one else.

Glenn’s car was parked in a lot close to Building One. He had draped his jacket over his car seat, suggesting that he’d only be working up there for a short time—because it was his day off.

At nightfall, I left Diane and her still-stunned family to go home. She kept her front door open. Streams of neighbors and friends were now coming over to be with her and her family. Her son lit a candle and set it by the door; more candles were placed there as each day passed. Our collective, deepest hope was for Glenn to walk through that door and take Diane in his arms.

I was their Celebrant who would officiate at their wedding in two weeks. Their beautiful wedding ceremony was written. I had worked with both of them on their "family unity and wedding love story." In the ceremony, Glenn stated something so poignant: “Each morning when I wake up and put my two feet on the ground, I know it’s a great day.” Glenn’s words will stay with me all my life.

A Community Comes Together

Early the next day, on the 12th, I went to our town’s fabric shop and bought a large ream of dark blue material, scissors, and a white marker. I headed over to our town square, where Church Street and Bloomfield Avenue converge, spread blankets on the ground, and set up chairs for our townspeople to gather and be together... to talk, or just be with one another silently.

More and more people came. We all had to get away from our televisions and walk into town to be with others like us, face-to-face, to cry and hold each other—even if we didn’t know each other. They started helping me cut up the fabric to make armbands. They wrote and drew the Twin Towers on the strips with white markers, writing, “Tower of Love and Tower of Strength – We are one.” Then they tied the bands onto each other’s arms, like what WWII soldiers and Red Cross medical staff wore to identify themselves during wartime.

Throughout our town, churches, mosques, and synagogues were overflowing with people of all races, creeds, and philosophies of life who needed to be together to share their enormous sorrow. Our town’s commuter parking lots, filled with cars belonging to NYC workers who had not returned home, were being turned into shrines by family and friends hoping that somehow their dear ones were still alive and would return home soon.

Two weeks later, our town of Montclair planned a Healing Event for our community to take place in one of our big parks. I got on the committee and helped gather prominent people and leaders of religious organizations, including Christians, Atheists, Muslims, Jews, Quakers, and more. Everyone was included, as well as celebrities, actors, artists, singers, and musicians who lived in town.

Our group got up on the stage we built, speaking and performing with love and grace at what was to be one of the most sorrowful and horrible events in human history. I got up on stage as a Celebrant from the Celebrant Foundation & Institute. My reading was from the book The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff, chosen to speak to the children of our community, many of whom were sitting in the front rows. As I looked into their young faces, I said these dear and heartbreaking words that Pooh said sweetly to his friend Christopher Robin: “If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together... keep me in your heart, I’ll stay there forever.”

The Moment Celebrancy Took Root

Before I got to the park, I had called my Celebrant mentor, Kathy Hurley in Australia, who was a director for the Australian Celebrant Federation. She gave me the confidence to get on stage and deliver. She said to me, “Charlotte, you are a Celebrant. What you will say to these families and children right now is vital. If you didn’t exist, these families would never receive your loving and hopeful message. Now is the time!” Her wisdom, truth, and generosity gave me the confidence and conviction to grow deeper as a human being and a Celebrant.

That day was the first time I would speak as a Celebrant. The Sarmas had asked me to help them start a Celebrant movement, and I promised them that I would try to make it work. Gaile Sarma and I had planned to visit Australia the following month to meet Australian Celebrants headed by Dally Messenger III, and to see if she and I could really and truly start Celebrancy on this side of the globe—in our town.

That day at the event, several people who performed came up to me and said they wanted to be Celebrants, too. It was the beginning. From that day forward, Celebrants emerged—every one of us. We did many 9/11 remembrances and memorial ceremonies for years to come.

After the event, I went home and couldn’t wait to call Kathy Hurley to tell her how beautiful the event was, to thank her, and to tell her that Gaile and I were looking forward to meeting her and staying with her at her home in Melbourne in a few weeks. Instead, I got a call from Gaile telling me that Kathy Hurley had died of a brain aneurysm a few hours before. I was one of the last people Kathy spoke to before she died.

It was clear then that this was the time and the place for Celebrancy to take root. Kathy had passed the Celebrant torch to us—to you and me. We started our organization with six celebrants who emerged from this horrendous 9/11 time. And from those ashes, like the phoenix rising, we rose.

Twenty-Five Years of Celebrancy

Today, we are over 1,000 Certified Life-Cycle Celebrants throughout the world, serving everyone with personalized life-cycle ceremonies and rituals. During our 25 years, our non-profit organization has passed laws to include celebrants in the Marriage Act, developed Celebrant certification courses, brought forth great Celebrant teachers, created a huge ceremony and ritual library, developed great Celebrant Alumni Chapters, and had dedicated directors and board members.

Proudly, we carried on the “Kathy Hurley” tradition, always helping one another. We referred ceremonies to one another and mentored each other. We’ve cross-pollinated and made alliances with many like-minded and like-hearted organizations. To this day, so many of us Celebrants have made lifelong friends with our colleagues. The Australians started the movement, Gaile and Pat had the vision to bring it to North America, and each one of us Celebrants has grown Celebrancy worldwide for the last 25 years. We are a great, strong family who have weathered many trials, tribulations, and triumphs together—and always will. I like to sing these words aloud: “What the world needs now are Celebrants, sweet Celebrants.”

Love Surrounded Us All

On a crystal-blue day in mid-October 2001 in Queens, NY, the electricians’ union held a memorial service for the families and friends of the workers who had died on 9/11. Diane walked up to the podium at the VFW Lodge, which was packed with people, and gave her speech that brought everyone together. She had lost the love of her life—the father of her children and his children—on 9/11. She leaned forward to address the mourning families who, like her, had lost loved ones who were coworkers of her fiancé, and she said with love: “Glenn had a great way of looking at life that I will remember forever. He used to say, ‘Every morning when I wake up and put my two feet on the ground, I know it’s a great day.’

As she stepped down, the bagpipe musicians marched in through the double doors one by one in their Scottish uniforms, playing their melodic, bellowing lament for us. They circled the room, and we all followed them outside the building. Once outside, we were amazed to see that we were encircled, as far as the eye could see, by the local neighborhood people who had gathered to pay tribute to their community’s electricians who lost their lives on 9/11, and to pay their respects to their families. Time stopped. Love surrounded us all. We shared our grief together as one.

Carrying the Light Forward

On behalf of all of us Celebrants, on the 25th Anniversary of 9/11, I say:

May the light of life that shone so brightly in the lives of the people who perished live on and shine on in all of us, and in the future generations who carry forth their legacy and their love.

It’s an honor for me to be your colleague and to have the opportunity to share these memories of our Celebrant beginnings with you on the 25th Anniversary of 9/11.

May Celebrants continue making life on Earth better.

Sincerely,

Charlotte Eulette, International Director Emeritus, Celebrant Foundation & Institute