A reader sent in the below sequence of pictures and attached explanation. I was especially moved by the story for it illustrates that no matter how destroyed, bombed out, or terrorized we feel, we can always come back with a remedial response. Even when our life looks like a dump, a scrap pile of waste, a hopeless mess, there are still the resources and means about us to build things back up again and come back.

I was at the World Trade Center site last May. I stood on the edge of a huge pit, busy with new construction, envisioning what that huge pile of concrete and steel must have looked like after the Trade Towers fell in a burning crumbling heap. What a huge emotional, physical and economical mess to repair, I contemplated. But the people targeted by the terrorists did not throw up their hands in despair and give up. They did not wave a white flag. The did not bury themselves in self-pity. They came back and are coming back. The story is not finished…

USS New York: It was built with 24 tons of scrap steel from the World Trade Center.

It is the fifth in a new class of warship – designed for missions that include special operations against terrorists. It will carry a crew of 360 sailors and 700 combat-ready Marines to be delivered ashore by helicopters and assault craft.

Steel from the World Trade Center was melted down in a foundry in Amite, LA, to cast the ship’s bow section. When it was poured into the molds on Sept 9, 2003, ‘those big rough steelworkers treated it with total reverence,’ recalled Navy Capt. Kevin Wensing, who was there.’ It was a spiritual moment for everybody there.’

Junior Chavers, foundry operations manager, said that when the trade center steel first arrived, he touched it with his hand and the ‘hair on my neck stood up.’ ‘It had a big meaning to it for all of us,’ he said. ‘They knocked us down. They can’t keep us down. We’re going to be back.’

The ship’s motto? ‘Never Forget.’

I’m not an advocate of torpedoes and bombs to establish world peace, but I also understand that world thought has much spiritual growth to obtain before all conflicts are going to be solved without occasional armed intervention. The less the better, but until then, there is a hope and spirit in this story that gives one much food for thought.