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By Dick Roppé, Resident On Labor Day, according to an outdated tradition, it's time to put your white clothes back in the closet. Some historians claim the "you can't wear white after Labor Day rule" was created to separate the old money elitists from the emerging new money group. For those who had money and could leave the city during warmer months, white was considered vacation attire. My recommendation? Wear white if you want. October is usually as hot as September. Labor Day has traditionally been the start of a new school year and marked the end of "summer vacation." Ding, dong! Back to school. The following is taken from the History.com website: "In the late 1800s, at the height of the Industrial Revolution in the United States, the average American worked 12-hour days and seven-day weeks in order to eke out a basic living. Despite restrictions in some states, children as young as five or six toiled in mills, factories and mines across the country, earning a fraction of their adult counterparts' wages. As manufacturing increasingly supplanted agriculture as the wellspring of American employment, labor unions… grew more prominent and vocal. They began organizing strikes and rallies to protest poor conditions and compel employers to renegotiate hours and pay." In summary, Labor Day in America is more than a barbeque in the backyard with family and friends. It was the result of a very turbulent and violent past. It became a federal holiday in 1894. 6 SOLERA DIAMOND VALLEY | SEPTEMBER 2021 By Theresa Rossetti, Resident It was a bright, beautiful morning in the Northeast that day. A perfect late-summer day. At 8:46 am on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, the world changed forever. It started with a bulletin on the radio. Then television screens exploded with images. Millions of people were glued to news outlets, some watched in person as the unbelievable happened before their eyes. The news continued to get worse and worse as the day went on. Another plane in New York, then one at the Pentagon. Towers falling and another plane crashing in a field in Shanksville, PA. Unbelievable, even as we watched it happen. 2,977 killed. Passengers, crew members, 125 military personnel, emergency workers from FDNY (343), NYPD (23), EMTs (8). The statistics are important, they ensure that we will never forget. Let me tell you a little something about one of these people. His name was James Corrigan, but we always called him Jim. He lived a block away and his boys were in the same grade as ours. A cop for six years, he joined the Fire Department, serving for 23 years, retiring as a Captain. He then started working as the Director of Fire and Life Service for The World Trade Center. Jim was lost while evacuating children from the on-site daycare center. His body was recovered two months later. His sons, those boys that played with mine, both joined the FDNY after their father's death. Our family was one of the lucky ones. Our younger son, working on the seventeenth floor of Tower Two (the towers each had 110 floors) was told to leave the building and was walking to a co-worker's place in Greenwich Village when he heard the first rumble. He eventually met up with a friend and they walked out of Manhattan, across the 59th Street Bridge, and were driven home by one of the many cars waiting at the other side to help people get home. The kindness of strangers. It's been 20 years since 19 terrorists hijacked those three planes, intending mass destruction. I'm sure you already know this. We all must have memories of what happened that day and know of the devastating after effects. We are still impacted now whenever we fly, going shoeless through security without any liquids, and passing through metal detectors there and at many other large events. Some anniversaries bring happy memories. Not this one. Every September, we celebrate our wedding anniversary, our older son's anniversary and a cousin's anniversary. On this one particular day in September, I can never forget. No one should. May their memories be a blessing. A N N I V E R S A R I E S Labor Day – More Than A Backyard Barbeque

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