Sad thought. Almost a year since 9-11.

[Lauren]

I hope I don't offend anyone with this thread. The one year mark of the September 11th disaster is about eight weeks away. Our company wants to show rememberance to the victims, families and entire country. I'm in HR and my boss and I were tossing some ideas around. We thought of inviting all employees (1,000 in this location) to gather outside the building at the appropriate time and possibly release 51 (one for each state) red, white and blue balloons. We were thinking of giving small flags to all employees, have a moment of silence and then play America The Beautiful.

Do you think this is appropriate? Has anyone heard what other companies may be doing? We also have two NJ sites and one in Chicago that would participate in some capacity.

We thought of planting a tree, but don't own the building here. I'm trying to come up with some creative ideas that our employees will appreciate. Thanks in advance!

[LaraW]

Lauren, are you a member of SHRM? Their bulletin board has had some discussion about what people are doing for the anniversary of 9-11, though many of the comments have been toward the idea of having a moment of silence and really not much more than that.

I am also in HR, and one of our employees lost his sister that day, so I don't know what we are going to do. We had a small candelight vigil on Sept 14 and allowed time off for anyone wanting to attend a church service that day. I think we will probably take our cue from any national day of rememberance or something.

[Julie O]

My husband works for a university. He was just asked to give a presentation before his department on Sept. 11. This will be the first time most of the people in the department will meet him. He feels very weird about doing the talk that day, but doesn't feel like he can ask them to change it. He's trying to decide if he should say anything to remember the occassion. I didn't know what to tell him.

[Gilgamesh37]

Some sort of remembrance would be appropriate, I'm sure lots of places will be doing things--everyone will be thinking about it certainly and I'm sure the day will be quite somber.

I'd like to ask that you reconsider releasing balloons, though. They do terrible things to wildlife--once the balloons deflate, the strings can wind up trapping birds/animals, and especially shorebirds apparently will eat the deflated balloons (I can't recall what it is they mistake them for) and die. Depending on where in the country you and what the weather is like in September, you can order butterflies to release instead (assuming it's not too cold). Just a thought.