Peter Carey served as New Jersey SkillsUSA state director for 26 years. He served two terms on the SkillsUSA Board of Directors (including chair of the State Directors Association). He also served as team leader, official U.S. delegate for three WorldSkills USA teams.
Twenty-five years later, I can still remember the dilemma we faced as we prepared for the New Jersey SkillsUSA Fall Leadership Conference in October 2001.
September 11 had occurred only six weeks earlier. The shock was still fresh. The images of the World Trade Center were almost impossible to comprehend, particularly here in New Jersey, where so many families and communities had been directly affected. Nearly everyone seemed to know someone – or know someone who knew someone – whose life had been changed that morning.
Our Fall Leadership Conference was normally an upbeat occasion. Student leaders from career and technical schools throughout New Jersey came together to learn about public speaking, community service, public relations and chapter leadership. It was a day designed to build confidence, friendships and enthusiasm for the year ahead.
But 2001 could not be a normal year.
As State Director, I wrestled with what our responsibility should be. Should we acknowledge September 11 briefly and then proceed with our traditional program? Would focusing on the tragedy overwhelm a gathering intended to inspire young people? Or did leadership itself require us to confront what had happened?
A Question for the Students
I decided that this was not a question I should answer alone. I brought it to our SkillsUSA state officers.
They were teenagers – young men and women elected by their peers to represent thousands of career and technical education students throughout New Jersey. I wanted them to think seriously about what leadership meant at a moment when their country was frightened, grieving and angry.
The officers understood immediately that September 11 could not simply be a footnote to the conference. They wanted to talk about it. More importantly, they wanted other students to talk about it.
And the direction they chose remains meaningful to me 25 years later. They did not want the conference to become an expression of anger or retaliation. They unanimously believed that it should become an opportunity to talk about patriotism, heroism, service, diversity, tolerance and unity.
Asking, Then Listening
So on October 26, 2001, more than 150 students gathered at DeVry College of Technology in North Brunswick. Alongside the traditional leadership workshops, we conducted a special session: “Leadership, Patriotism, & Lessons from September 11.”
Our state officers became discussion leaders. Their responsibility was not to lecture their fellow students or tell them what they were supposed to believe. They asked questions and listened.
What does patriotism mean now? Who is a hero? What does service to others require of us? And perhaps most importantly in the emotionally charged atmosphere following the attacks: How should Americans respond to people whose cultures, religions or backgrounds are different from their own?
The students’ answers were remarkably thoughtful. Patriotism, they said, meant “everyone coming together.” It meant fighting for what you believe in, keeping people’s spirits high and putting the needs of others ahead of your own.
Their understanding of heroism had changed as well. A hero was someone who “does the right thing at the right time.” Heroes were people willing to risk their lives for strangers. One student’s observation captured how dramatically September 11 had changed their perspective: “Sports figures are role models, but firefighters are heroes.”
And when the discussion turned to diversity, their response was not withdrawal from people who were different. It was engagement. They proposed multicultural activities, school Unity Days and something even simpler: taking the time to learn about other people.
For some students, September 11 was not remotely abstract. Students from the Marine Academy of Science and Technology in Monmouth County described looking across Raritan Bay toward lower Manhattan. Their school was only about 11 miles from the World Trade Center. For days after the attacks, they could see and smell the smoke.
One student reduced everything we had been discussing to five words: “September 11 was a wake-up call.”
A Pin for Resolve
There was another decision the state officers made that autumn that I remember particularly well. Every year our conference attendees received a lapel pin. The officers wanted the 2001 pin to say something different from the message of tolerance and reflection that would characterize the conference discussions.
They wanted it to symbolize strength and resolve.
The image they selected showed the Twin Towers, the Statue of Liberty and an American flag. Across it, in large white letters, were the words: “I WILL FEAR NO EVIL.” Beneath them were the names New Jersey and SkillsUSA.
Looking at that pin 25 years later, I am struck by the balance these young leaders achieved. Their message was not that Americans should be unafraid because nothing terrible could happen to us. They had just learned the opposite. Their message was that fear would not define us.
And yet they also understood something equally important: strength without tolerance could easily become hatred. Patriotism without reflection could become something very different from the America they wanted to defend. So their pin expressed resolve, while their conference expressed unity.
A Different Kind of Leadership Lesson
These were teenagers being asked to make sense of something that adults themselves could barely comprehend. We sometimes speak about leadership education as though it consists primarily of teaching meeting procedures, public speaking, goal setting and organizational skills. Those things matter. But occasionally history presents young people with a far more consequential leadership lesson. October 26, 2001, was one of those occasions.
Leadership that day meant listening. It meant grieving together. It meant honoring firefighters, police officers and ordinary people who had demonstrated extraordinary courage. It meant recognizing our responsibility to serve others. It meant refusing to allow terrorism to turn Americans against one another. And it meant understanding that defending freedom requires both strength and tolerance.
There was even a practical expression of that idea of service. Students brought used cell phones to the conference for a project with Verizon Wireless and the New Jersey State Police. The phones were to be reprogrammed so victims of domestic violence could use them to make emergency 911 calls.
It was a small act compared with the enormity of what had happened six weeks earlier. But perhaps that was precisely the lesson. Faced with something unimaginably large, these students asked: What can we do?
Serve Someone. Help Someone. Understand Someone. Stand together.
Twenty-five years have now passed. The teenagers who sat in those discussion groups are in their forties. They have built careers and families of their own. Some may barely remember the workshops they attended that day. But I remember what they taught me.
As State Director, I had gone into the planning process wondering how I was going to help young people make sense of September 11. What happened was almost the reverse. They helped me make sense of it.
They understood instinctively that leadership after tragedy required more than outrage. It required courage without hatred, patriotism without intolerance, remembrance without surrendering to fear, and service to something larger than oneself.
The pin they chose captured one half of their message: I WILL FEAR NO EVIL. What they did at the conference supplied the other half: We will stand together.
Twenty-five years later, that may be the part of the story most worth remembering. At one of the darkest moments in our nation’s history, a group of New Jersey student leaders was given an opportunity to decide what kind of response their generation should make.
They chose courage. They chose tolerance. They chose service. They chose unity. And they stood tall.
