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Four freedoms:
The first is freedom of speech and expression,
everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of everyone to worship God in his own way, everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want...
everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear...
anywhere in the world.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Michael Benjamin Packer
World Trade Center

"He shouldn't have been in the building, except he was going to give the speech," recalled his wife,Rekha Packer.

Musical and Mechanical
Michael B. Packer had a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which came in very handy at his children's science fairs and birthday parties."When you walked into the house, you usually walked into a scientific experiment," said Ronald Soiefer, a close friend who had met Mr. Packer when they were Harvard undergraduates. One contraption had a microphone hooked up to a laptop computer, which recorded human voices and showed them as sound waves on a colored screen. Mr. Packer, 45, of Hartsdale, N.Y., had many other sides. He played the piano and, in his spare time, made harpsichords, a trade he had learned as a student at Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard. He made sure that his children — Sarita, 11, and Jonathan, 7 — were steeped in the classics. In June, he and his wife, Rekha, took the children on a tour of the Aegean Islands, following in the footsteps of Homer's Ulysses.Mr. Packer, who was to be the keynote speaker at a technology conference at Windows on the World on Sept. 11, joined Merrill Lynch in 1999 as a leader of a major e-commerce initiative. "He was very good at managing things," said Mrs. Packer, who remembers most vividly how he coped with the family, the house, his job and her convalescence when she suffered a brain injury in 1990. "Nothing really got him down. We really miss him for that now."



Michael's Guest Book

Several months before the WTC attacks, Michael Packer offered to assist, pro-bono, the Lower Hudson Regional Information Center -- a non-profit, consortium of schools in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties -- in achieving our goal of being an organization synonymous with excellence. He was a world class business executive with a successful track record as a strategist, team builder and manager. When he first met Michael in August, we were impressed by his expertise and humor, as well as his genuine wish to help us. In one meeting, he established a bond of trust. We decided to get together again on September 14th, and we all had the highest hopes. We at the LHRIC were but a small part of Michael Packer's world but his kindness and sincerity were evident in each of our encounters.
~Peter Reilly, acquaintance

Short video, worth the view....One minute 45 seconds. G RatedSeptember 11th Tribute
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I am honored to participate in 2996.
I think it is beautiful that the blogging community has taken on and supported this wonderful way to pay tribute to those who lost their lives on September 11, 2001.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the families who lost their friends and loved ones in this tragedy.