Cornell University Library Staff Web

I was 13 when JFK was killed. My son Michael was 13 when 9/11 happened. Like most of you, we both have indelible memories etched in our brains about the moment we heard the news. The assassinations of Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X continued the horror of November 22, 1963, and Cornellian Michael Schwerner was killed in Mississippi by the KKK during a voter registration drive in 1964. Schwerner’s image graces a stain glass window in Sage Chapel. Eamon McEneaney ’77, died in the World Trade Center on 9/11. At Cornell he had been an All-American lacrosse player and, during the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, had been instrumental in saving his fellow workers at Cantor Fitzgerald. In 2004 CUL published his collection of poems, A Bend in the Road, the proceeds from which support the Eamon McEneaney Visiting Irish Writers Series at Cornell and the Library. 9/11’s legacy includes a decade of war on multiple fronts and intense struggles to balance security with individual liberties. CUL, like other libraries across the country, struggled to conform to regulations stemming from the Patriot Act while protecting individuals’ rights to privacy in their reading choices. 11/22 and 9/11 were both tragic days. Their aftermaths continue to affect all of us. 

Have a healthy and productive week.

Anne R. Kenney
Carl A. Kroch University Librarian
Cornell University Library
201 Olin Library
Ithaca, NY 14853-5301
Tel. 607-255-3393
ark3@cornell.edu

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