A White Rose, a Birthday, and a Promise to Remember

Guest blogger Caleigh Leiken was born on September 11, 2001. Twenty-five years later, the law school student reflects on her connection to the 9/11 legacy and her first trip to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. 

When I was 17, I visited the 9/11 Memorial & Museum for the first time. It was June 16, 2019. I had the honor that day to participate in the placement of the birthday roses. Each day, white roses are placed on the Memorial parapets beside the names of victims who would have celebrated their birthday that day. I placed a rose on the name Alena Sesinova, on what would have been her 75th birthday.

Alena's story is the embodiment of the American dream. Born in Czechoslovakia, at age 25 she left behind a communist regime in pursuit of freedom and opportunity. She arrived in New York with little money and limited English. She worked tirelessly, taking English classes and working at the Macy’s cafeteria counter. She earned a degree in computer science from the Borough of Manhattan Community College, and built a successful life. Friends remembered her fierce love of America and her unwavering belief in the freedoms she had traveled so far to find. Alena worked in information technology at Marsh on the 96th floor of the North Tower and was killed in the attacks.

I did not know Alena. She never had the opportunity to know me. Yet, placing a rose at her name during my first visit to the site, I felt a connection that has stayed with me ever since. Alena left the world on the same day and in the same place I was born: September 11, 2001 in New York City.

For most of my life, September 11 had been the story of my birth. I grew up hearing how my mom, eight and a half months pregnant, walked with her work colleagues from lower Manhattan where she worked as a Legal Aid attorney, more than five miles north to my parents’ apartment on the Upper West Side. My dad was waiting for her after evacuating the office tower where he worked in Times Square as a lawyer at Skadden Arps. I entered the world later that day by emergency c-section at Mt. Sinai Hospital on the Upper East Side. The circumstances of my birth connected me to history, but as a child, it often felt like my connection belonged more to my parents than to me.

That changed when I stood at the Memorial for the first time.

The attacks are often measured in numbers: 2,996 lives lost to terrorism, countless families forever changed, a nation transformed. But the words #neverforget begin with individuals. They begin with learning a name. Reading a story. Pausing long enough to recognize that every inscription around the Memorial pools belongs to a person whose life was rich with dreams, friendships, accomplishments, and hopes for the future.

For me, that person was Alena.

I learned that she loved to travel. I learned that she treasured books and ideas. I learned that she spoke about America with gratitude and pride. Friends remembered her resilience, her humor, and her determination to create the life she wanted.

I realized that remembering is not simply about looking backward. It is about carrying stories forward. And, somehow, contributing to the world in a way that honors the memory of those we lost.

Alena left her home of Czechoslovakia at age 25, the same age I turn this year on the 25th anniversary of the attacks. Alena had dreams of a new life in a new place, helping to advance the world through the technology of computers. As I turn 25, I am beginning my third year of law school at Case Western Reserve School of Law in Cleveland, Ohio, where I grew up after my parents moved back to their shared hometown when I was five years old. I chose the law in part because of my experiences visiting the 9/11 Memorial, feeling a calling to help build a more fair and more safe world, especially for victims of harm.

A quarter century has passed since the attacks. Our generation has grown up with no personal memory of that morning, but our childhood was bookended by 9/11 as we entered the world and a global pandemic as we became adults. We learned, as children and as high school and college students, that big things can be accomplished when communities come together to care for each other: courageous first responders, doctors, scientists, lawyers, social workers, families and friends. We learned that we have a role to play in shining light in dark places, and in carrying hope forward to those coming up behind us. We carry the same hope that brought Alena from Czechoslovakia to America to work in computers and build a new life, at age 25.

My first visit to the Memorial taught me that remembrance is an act of connection. It is how we bridge the distance between past, present and future. It is how we honor people like Alena, whose courage, ambition, and love of life continue to inspire long after they are gone.

Every year on my birthday, I think about that first white rose. I think about standing beside Alena's name. And I think about the quiet promise I made that day: to help ensure that the people we lost on September 11 are remembered not only for how they died, but for how they lived.

Twenty-five years later, Alena's story remains part of that promise.

And I will never forget her.

By Caleigh Leiken