Francesca Vanasco, who has homes in the Town of Middlefield and New York City, set up her cello on the veranda of the Village Library of Cooperstown this morning to remember her narrow escape on 9/11, and to celebrate the joy of being alive. On Sept. 11, 2001, she was working for Marsh & McLennan, the consulting firm, on the 99th floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower. She’d been working a lot of overtime, had worked the previous weekend, so on a whim that fateful morning she decided to sleep in. At 8:46 a.m., when she usually would have been at her desk, the North Tower was struck. A professional musician – she is former lead cellist at the Maracaibo Symphony in Venezuela and performed with the New Jersey Symphony – she has played her cello annually on 9/11 in New York City. April to October in recent years, she’s moved up to her local home, and thinks she may make her performance – mostly Bach – in front of the library an annual 9/11 ritual. (Jim Kevlin/AllOTSEGO.com)
