Georgetown Remembers
Julie Ryan for the Georgetown Magazine
Like so many others, I will never forget the morning of September 11th, 2001. To this day, I still cannot figure out why I was so lucky to have survived physically unharmed while so many others faced a horrific death. That morning was just like any other for me up until 8:48 AM when I heard a muted crash coming from outside. I remember walking down those flights of stairs, fearing something bad had happened, but not really believing it had. I had worked in 2 World Trade Center since I graduated from Georgetown. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I witnessed sights that still give me nightmares. Unable to fully process what was going on, I convinced myself that everything was going to be fine. Despite the fact that I saw bodies falling from the buildings above me, I convinced myself that no one was hurt. The morning of September 11th remains mostly a blur in my head. I remember returning calls to friends and family assuring them that I was alive and realizing that most of them had assumed I was dead. One of the first phone calls I returned was to a classmate, Peter McCurdy. I asked him ‘How about Jason, has anyone talked to Jason?” “No” he replied, “I spoke to Mr. Sabbag, but we haven’t heard from him yet”.
Ever since that day, I have been reading articles covering September 11th. I have read articles describing Jason, and most have made me sad and angry. Sad that no one has been able to capture the fear and terror of that day and angry that the articles, as complimentary as they may be to our friend Jason, have done little to capture the true essence of him. They can’t answer why he had to die senselessly. They can’t explain how much we all miss him. I guess what I have learned over the past 18 months is that that day was too horrific, and Jason too incredible to be captured by words on a page. It’s not his promising career, his 3.5 GPA or his athletic ability that we continue to miss. We miss his friendship, his kindness and his ability to make us laugh. He always had the ability to make us laugh. We miss his love for dining out, how he hated small portions and how he wanted to start a restaurant that served nothing but different types of cole slaw. We miss his love for the Westminster Dog show and his self- proclaimed status as an amateur dog show judge. We miss his love for the paradoxical Natural Light bottled beer. We miss playing Trivial Pursuit with him; how he would always shout out the answer if he knew it, regardless if the question was directed at his team. We miss the way he loved to embellish stories, how details weren’t important as long as the story was retold in the funniest manner possible. We miss his convincing pitch to get us to go out to Champions with him despite the fact that we had 2 tests and a paper due the next day. We miss his ability to tease us in a way that made the whole room laugh at you, and made you laugh at yourself too. We miss the way his smile would light up the room and the glow he got about him when he told you stories about his family.
We realize that starting this scholarship find will never bring Jason back. No money, time or effort will ever fill the enormous void that has been left in our lives. What it will do, however, is give another student like Jason the opportunity to spend their college career at Georgetown. It will afford another student the opportunity to make terrific friends, become involved in the University, and make a difference, like Jason did. It will allow us, Jason’s classmates and friends, to remember him through the stories and memories we cherish. We will never forget the imprint that he has left on our lives.
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