September 6, 2002

Dear Colleagues:

The first anniversary of the September 11 tragedy that profoundly affected all of our lives is a time for coming together as a nation and as a community. Yet we grieve and remember in different ways. Working with members of the faculty, staff and students, a variety of commemoration events and services on 9/11/02 have been planned. These range from a Turner Auditorium ceremony including the televised memorial at the Twin Towers site, to Meditation through Music, to prayer services, to a student-led Peace Vigil. Details are available online.

We recall with great pride the way the Hopkins Medicine family responded to those events of last year. When called on by the Secretary of Health and Human Services, our hospitals quickly prepared to receive vast numbers of the injured. At the request of the American Red Cross, vanloads of you traveled to Washington to staff a blood donation center across from the White House. Some in Emergency Medicine responded to a request from the government to join in search and rescue efforts at the Pentagon.

In the months since, we have taken ourselves to a new level of preparedness. Our Critical Event Preparedness and Response group (CEPAR), for instance, is coordinating with civil defense efforts at federal, state and local levels. We hope we will never need to implement the many new action plans we now have in place. But the community at large should take great comfort in knowing that Hopkins Medicine always will rise to the occasion.

Sincerely,