Whitney Clark and the Footsteps She Follows

Middlesex Borough September 11 Memorial

as seen on August 16, 2022

Twenty-five days from today marks the 21st anniversary of the September 11 attacks.  Twenty-one years.  

In the case of Whitney Clark, the September 11 attacks occurred a lifetime ago.  Figuratively and literally.  She is the second-born child of Lisa Clark and Thomas R. Clark, born approximately a year and a half after her big brother, Matthew.  She was just seven months young when her dad was murdered on that terrible Tuesday morning twenty-one Septembers ago.  He was a Vice-President at Sandler O'Neill & Partners and he was in his office on the 104th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center.  He was only thirty-seven years old.  

"T.C." - as his friends and family called him - was a proud graduate of the University of Richmond and a member of the Class of 1986.  A history major and a member of Phi Delta Theta, he made an indelible impression on practically every other Spider who knew him.  

And on one who was deprived of the chance to do to.  

Whitney Clark is a senior this year at University of Richmond.  She is a member of the Class of '23.  She is a Spider wth the heart of a lion - a young woman who specifically selected Richmond so that she could follow in her dad's footsteps.  I cannot recommend enough that you set aside the time today necessary to read this profile of her, which was published last year on the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. 

Her dad was one of four University of Richmond alumni murdered on September 11.  Each of the four is memorialized in his own bench located on campus in the Gumenick Quadrangle.  

Photo Credit:  University of Richmond

(c) University of Richmond

Life has treated Whitney Clark anything but fairly.  A little girl should not have the father who adored her torn from her when she was just seven months old.  Yet that is precisely what happened.  It happened, of course, not just to Whitney Clark but to far too many children becuase of the acts of those murderous cowards twenty-one years ago.  But rather than descend into a spiral of "woe is me", Whitney Clark has embraced her life and, in the course of doing so, has embraced her father's legacy.  

Methinks that no matter where she goes or what she does, the dad with whom she was given far too little time, is right there with her, watching her as she goes, and smiling.   

-AK