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Even 25 years later, people aren’t quite sure how to reconcile celebration with the sadness of September 11.
“It catches people off guard,” Aaren Evans said of her birthday. “I have to sit with them for a moment and let them process it.”
More than 150 babies were born in New York’s major hospitals on that day in 2001. Evans is one of six that The Post met in 2002, as they turned 1, hearing from parents who recalled the emotional rollercoaster of devastation and joy as their children arrived into great uncertainty.
“It was such a bittersweet moment,” first-time dad Derek Parks said in 2002 of of his daughter Madison’s birth. “On one hand, this was the happiest day of my life. Moments later, there was mass destruction. I didn’t know whether to feel guilty about feeling so joyful,”
But the kids now say they grasped early on that the way in which they entered the world was meaningful, and insisted they would change nothing.
“I feel really honored to represent a good part of a really terrible day,” said Serena Wurmser, named for the serenity she brought her family when she was born at Columbia Presbyterian at 11:13 a.m., less than an hour after the second tower fell.
She prefers to think of it as a “serendipitous moment. I’d never change my birthday.”
Nor would Reggi Condos, a lifelong West Village resident.
“I have a very special relationship with New York as a city, and 9/11 gave me a different understanding and appreciation of New York,” Condos, a musician who graduated from NYU Tisch last year, told The Post.
His mom, Marika Condos, was herself 25 at the time when she gave birth at 9:23 a.m. at New York University Medical Center, and recalls feeling “grateful” that her baby was “a glimmer of hope.
“New motherhood is already riddled with unpredictability, but now there was this whole other piece no one had control over,” said Marika. “I knew I would do everything in my power to keep Reggi safe while not avoiding difficult conversations about the day.”
Indeed, it’s impossible to avoid such conversations when strangers learn of the kids’ birthday, whether it’s at the DMV or every doctor’s appointment. But Madison Parks, who was born at Beth Israel Hospital, insists, “I love to hear people’s stories of where they were that day.”
For Luke Judge, born at 9:59 p.m. at St. Vincent’s Hospital, exactly 12 hours after the first tower fell, “I knew that the day was bigger than a birthday party, bigger than me … It’s not about cake and candles – it’s about the people lost, about those who sacrificed their lives. And that’s a lesson for me that your birthday isn’t just about you. It’s about others too.”
The Long Islander, who works at an asset management firm, said “it forces you to be humble, more grateful and appreciate others. You realize anything can happen at any given moment.”
That’s certainly the case for the Silva family. Baby Gracie arrived six weeks early when her mom, Marylynne, went into early labor on September 11. Dad Naveen would normally have been passing through the WTC around 8:46 a.m., the time the first plane struck the North Tower.
“He calls me his good luck charm,” said Gracie, now a science teacher who coaches soccer in New Jersey.
The family philosophy is “don’t wait for the future,” said Naveen, noting that nothing in life is guaranteed. “All those people who went to work that day on 9/11, they never thought it was their last day.”
Gracie added, “I’m always telling my parents, you never know when life can change — don’t put things off.”
Aaren, who was born at NYU and whose family left Brooklyn for Atlanta when she was 4 years old, said having September 11 as her birthday has given her empathy. It’s a trait that helped her decide to pursue a career in the medical field; currently a lab assistant in the pediatric department at Emory University’s School of Medicine, she hopes to pursue a Ph.d in neuroscience.
Madison, who lives in Bergen County NJ, is employed in the medical field, too, as a phlebotomist at an HIV testing center.
“She wants to save lives,” said her proud dad.
Serena, a Harvard grad now studying for her Ph.D at Stanford, studied light pollution and dark sky preservation — and her presentations usually included an example of the 9/11 memorial beams she visited every year on the anniversary, a “huge family tradition” when she grew up on the Upper West Side.
“It was core to my birthday,” she said. “It was bittersweet, but it is what it is.”
She considers herself “more reflective” of the day than many of her peers, who largely grew up reading about 9/11 “in a history textbook.”
And the group’s parents say they have learned from them.
“He taught me that kindness changes everything — and he’s the epitome of kindness,” said Luke’s dad, Patrick Judge, a longtime Post employee. “It’s almost like a special class of kids that were sent that day, to be examples of goodness … Luke just happened to show up on a day that we really needed him.”
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