Nikki Stern’s quote opened the 9/11/2014 article in the New York Times on the Family Room, “which served for a dozen years as a most private sanctuary from a most public horror.”

“What tower? What floor? That was the way other people saw our loved ones,” said Nikki Stern, whose husband, James E. Potorti, was among those killed on Sept. 11, 2001. “It was adamantly not how we wanted to define our loved ones. The Family Room was the beginning of the storytelling that was controlled by the families.”

I saw Stern at the U.S. 1 writer’s party in August. The author of two books and an in-demand speaker (she  belongs to the speakers bureau of the Center For Inquiry) , she wrote a review of the new 9/11 memorial for U.S. 1 Newspaper. She served on the advisory committee for the museum, and notes,

One thing was clear: while other memorial space designers had the advantage of perspective, we had to supply it. Three years out isn’t much of a vantage point.

I am grateful for the chance to read about the museum from Stern’s vantage point.