On September 11, 2001, after my Manhattan offices at the Jewish Federations of North America were evacuated, I walked across the street to pick up my friend Wendy from her office, and the two of us headed uptown to get my husband Michael from his. We planned to camp out at Wendy’s Upper West Side apartment until the Long Island Rail Road began running again. We made one stop along the way at the supermarket, to pick up the necessities we thought we would require if we couldn’t leave for a few days.  

One of my favorite movies as I was growing was The Other Side of the Mountain, based on the non-fiction book A Long Way Up: The Story of Jill Kinmont by Evans G. Valens. In this inspirational and heartbreaking true story, Jill is a national championship skier who has a terrible skiing accident, leaving her a quadriplegic right before her 19^th birthday. The movie followers her long road to emotional recovery, including her life-changing long-distance romance with Dick “Mad Dog” Buek, himself an exceptional skier and later a stunt daredevil.