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CNN Live At Daybreak

Laura Bush Speaks of September 11th

Aired November 09, 2001 - 06:38   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KAGAN: Back here in the U.S., First Lady Laura Bush is calling on parents to constantly assure children that they are safe at home and at school. Mrs. Bush put the day of September 11th in historical perspective during a speech to the National Press Club in Washington and here is some of that speech.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

LAURA BUSH, FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES: It seems that every generation has its day of infamy that none would ever forget. For my parent's generation that day was December 7th, 1941 when our nation was shocked by the early morning attack on Pearl Harbor.

For my generation, that day was November 22nd, 1963, the day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on a street in downtown Dallas. I was a senior then at Robert E.Lee High School in Midland, Texas, and I was sitting in a classroom when we learned that the president had been killed.

I remember feeling as if a blanket had been thrown over our school suffocating all the usual sounds of chair scrapings and classroom chatter. People cried - the horror was so sudden and so unimaginable. I went home for lunch that day, and I remember my parent's sadness and like most American families we spent the next few days watching television.

I remember it as a terrible blow almost too much to bear. A sudden reminder at a very young age of how fragile life truly is. Now we've experienced another one of those days in our national life - a day so horrifying that it'll be permanently seared in the hearts and memories of all of us who witnessed it. I was on my way to meet with Senator Ted Kennedy when a Secret Service agent told me that a plane had just hit the World Trade Center.

We thought it was an accident at first, but as we approached Capitol Hill, the Secret Service said that another plane had hit the second tower. We knew then that it was terrorism, and I remember thinking that nothing would ever be the same. Senator Kennedy and his big dog Splash were waiting for me when I got to the Capitol. Words can't describe the depth of feeling that I had being with President Kennedy's brother as our nation's heart was broken with another tragedy.

As I've traveled around the country, I've found that children still need to be reassured. When I visit classrooms, children will sidle up to me and whisper what do you think of what happened. And I'll say I'm sad and they'll nod their heads and say that they're sad too. Our children are working through the same feelings that many of us are working through and they're doing it with remarkable resilience and wisdom.

We're reminding that little things and little hands can make a huge difference. I knew there was a renewed spirit of love for America in the places that were most directly affected by the attacks, yet exactly one week after the attack, we were driving through the streets of Chicago, and almost on every house and nearly every building I saw an American flag.

We're a kinder nation today. People seem to take more time to ask about each other. I notice more people hugging their friends and even reaching out to touch people they barely know. We're opening our doors to our neighbors and our hearts to strangers. We're a different country than we were on September 10th in ways that the terrorists could not have imagined or intended.

We'll go back to our routines as we always do, but we'll do so with a stronger sense of life and liberty. Americans are willing to fight and die for our freedoms, but more importantly, we're willing to live for them. We'll move on with our lives, but we won't forget the images and the events, the photos in the front pages of the past two months. They're edged into our minds forever.

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KAGAN: And that was Mrs. Bush speaking at the National Press Club yesterday.

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