Son pays tribute to fallen member On October 11, Frank Tatum — the son of Diane Moore Parsons, a PEF member at the state Department of Tax and Finance who died one month earlier at the World Trade Center, spoke the following poignant words to thousands of mourners at a memorial service on the Gov. W. Averrell Harriman NYS Office Campus in Albany: “On September 11, many lives changed forever. Mine changed with the loss of my mother, Diane Moore Parsons or ‘Dani’ as most of you knew her. “My mother was my inspiration. She worked hard, lived honest and always put others first. She was the very definition of ‘generous and caring.’ “But my Mom’s story is one of several thousand. The magnitude of the loss has been beyond comprehension. One can struggle to make sense of it. I know I sure have. “In New York, there was some good coming out of the most tragic circumstances. People came together. They helped each other. They became friends. I saw vigils where Christians, Jews and Muslims prayed together. I began to understand what it means to be an American. There is strength in our unity. “On the Internet, I saw a poster that shopkeepers in Hamburg, Germany were displaying. It had a picture of the World Trade Center that says in part, ‘Many years ago, a magnanimous United States of America helped the German nation to free itself of its darkest past. Today, we say to the American people: We stand by you.’ “On September 11, 2001, the world turned a corner. It was one of those dates like December 7, 1941, when the world will never be the same again. It’s up to us to decide what kind of world we want it to be. But we’d be doing a disservice to the memories of our loved ones lost, if we allowed ourselves to be cold or hateful. We owe it to them to do good things.” The Communicator Home Page