NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — For the children born after 9/11, the question is what to teach them about the tragedy.
Doug DePice searched for that answer as an art teacher in Secaucus, New Jersey.
“I had to get a little creative with that. I had to engage their imagination in a particular way,” he told 1010 WINS. “It wasn’t a traditional approach."
Doug wanted his students to learn about the loss; to find ways to express their feelings, but also to not feel helpless or hopeless. He found his answer in the story of the Callery pear tree found at Ground Zero.
“This tree was buried for 30 days, under three billion pounds of rubble. The trunk was scarred and ripped and torn,” he said. “Parts of it were dead, and yet there were these shoots that came through with alive, living leaves on them.”
The tree was dug out, nursed back to health, and eventually replanted at the site of the 9/11 Memorial.
“There’s something stately… about it, and yet at the same time, there’s a humility to that tree, because you still see the dead branches from which the new shoots came,” he said.
The tree is known today as the “Survivor Tree,” but Doug sees it through a teacher’s heart, and has used it to teach his art students about resilience, hope and renewal.
“It’s a global perspective. This little, gentle, fragile branch emerges from this dead stump with a leaf on it, and I said, that’s a metaphor for you,” he explained. “You all have that spirit in you, no matter how much darkness and pain and suffering there is. There’s always that strength that something will emerge through it.”