The following is excerpted from remarks delivered by Dennis P. Waters at a memorial service in New York last October for the 16 employees of Risk Waters Group lost in the attacks. They, and 65 others, had gathered at a Risk Waters conference - all of them members of a close community of professionals. Mr. Waters is founder of Waters Information Services, a New York company later acquired by Risk Publications.
I am grateful for the opportunity simply to be with you here this evening - and even more grateful for the chance to offer a few words - and I promise they will be few.
First, it is good to see so many familiar faces. As many of you know, I now spend most of my time in the biotechnology industry and regrettably have lost touch with many friends and colleagues on Wall Street. But I know now - as I stand before you this evening - that in a very real sense I have never left. Although the circumstances are awful, the feeling of good will and community spirit is wonderful. It gives us all something to build upon.
I think I can speak for everyone here when I say that in recent weeks we have all entered uncharted territory - places we have never been before emotionally, psychologically, spiritually. We have seen the extremes of what the human heart is capable of. At one extreme is the evil that could effect such slaughter. But at the other extreme are the love, the generosity, the heroism, and the spirit of community that bring us together to grieve and, hopefully, to look forward, even as we remember.
We assembled here represent a very special community in this time of tragedy. We are not among the millions of Americans who can look upon this horror from a distance with anger, outrage, and shock, who can concern themselves with the big numbers but have no faces to put with the names of the dead. I cannot imagine what it is like to be so detached. I do not have the big picture. I may never have the big picture. We all have too many faces. We have lost friends, we have lost colleagues, we have lost loved ones.
[Previous speakers have] honored those lost at Risk Waters Group, and I have nothing to add. Instead, I would like to speak of our community, the community of technology on Wall Street. It is not a community defined by geography or by loyalty to any one company or organization - yet it is a community as surely as Manhasset, Tribeca, and Teaneck are communities.
I think that financial technology is perhaps unique among the many communities victimized on Sept. 11. The speakers, delegates, sponsors, and exhibitors at the Risk Waters congress were a cross-section of the industry's smartest, most talented, and most dedicated. Most of them did not work in those buildings - they were there because they were part of a community. We have seen the heart torn out of this community - so many of our best and our brightest. Their community is our community.
And what, then, of our community? We mourn - individually and collectively. We wish to heal - knowing that time is a key ingredient, and so we must wait. We want to rebuild trust - knowing that trust is often needed most when it is in short supply. We seek justice - knowing that justice and revenge are not the same thing
As [the author and critic] Leon Wieseltier has said, the unjust world and the just world are the same world. It is the unjust world that must be made the just world. And only the spirit of community - the faith and good will reflected here this evening - has the power to accomplish this.
Our community will recover. We as individuals will recover. But this does not mean that we will forget. We will recover - but we must always remember.
