The Life & Legacy of Joan Donna Griffith: A Conversation with Peter Griffith (Part 2)
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Description
September 11, 2001, is a date that lives in infamy. But the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center that day were an intensely personal experience for my family. For my father, Peter Griffith, the loss of his wife and my mother, Joan Donna Griffith, in that tragedy had an immediate and long-lasting effect that has reshaped our lives.
In the second half of our conversation on the Branding Room Only podcast, you’ll hear our candid discussion about the events of that day, the overwhelming grief that followed, and how we got through our darkest days as a family. Through our recollections, we uncover the crucial role of support systems, from legal and financial planning to the unwavering support of family and friends, and reveal how my mother’s legacy of love, resiliency, and the enduring bonds of family lives on.
Chapters
1:10 - How we learned about the attacks and our initial shock and disbelief
10:53 - How we began to process our grief in the immediate aftermath
17:04 - Reflections on the time we got to spend with Joan right before 9/11 and the “last piece of love” she gave me that August
25:32 - The memorialization of Joan and the day we went to retrieve her waterlogged purse from Lower Manhattan
30:22 - The challenge of navigating grief in the public eye and managing personal pain amidst widespread sympathy
40:18 - How Joan’s values and love are influencing and shaping future generations in the family and the lasting impact of 9/11
Mentioned In The Life & Legacy of Joan Donna Griffith: A Conversation with Peter Griffith
“A Tribute to My Mother Joan Donna Griffith”
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PGE Consulting Group LLC is dedicated to providing a practical hybrid of professional development training and diversity solutions. From speaking to consulting to programming and more, all services and resources are carefully tailored for each partner. Paula Edgar’s distinct expertise helps engage attendees and create lasting change for her clients.
To learn more about Paula and her services, go to www.paulaedgar.com or contact her at info@paulaedgar.com, and follow Paula Edgar and the PGE Consulting Group LLC on LinkedIn.
Transcript
Paula Edgar: Welcome to The Branding Room Only Podcast where we share career stories, strategies, and lessons learned on how industry leaders and influencers have built their personal brands. Now, let's get started with the show.
Welcome back to Branding Room Only. I'm your host, Paula Edgar. Today we continue with part two of our Branding Room Only Rewind Series where I share a deeply personal conversation with my father, Peter L. Griffith.
In this episode, we discussed the life and legacy of my mother, Joan Donna Griffith, who we lost in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11th. If you haven't listened to the first episode, I encourage you to go back and listen to that one before you continue here.
In this episode, we dive into that tragic day and reflect on our individual experiences and the profound impact her loss had on our family. We also celebrate the incredible woman my mother was and the legacy she left behind. This conversation is not just about remembering the events of September 11th, but it's about honoring the life of a remarkable woman who was loved by all who knew her.
Let's talk about work and what happened on September 11th. At this point, just so you both know where we were parallel in this space, Daddy, you were working in Philadelphia, and I was living in California. That's another podcast for another day. Tell me, how did you find out about the attacks?
Peter Griffith: I was at work. We were in our little cubicles, and I was sorting some papers, lots of them. I think somebody passed and said, “Something is going on in the World Trade Center,” or whatever.
I went into what we had a TV room. We had a lot of computers and a TV in the corner. I saw that one of the buildings was burning. I went and I told my manager, I said, “One of the World Trade Center buildings is burning.”
I got back to my desk and I was there still doing the papers or whatever. She called. She said that it looked like a plane hit the building next to her. She said she could see the fuselage and stuff down on the underground.
There was a lot of confusion and stuff. Anyhow, if I remember correctly she just said, “Okay, I'll talk to you later,” or whatever. Something along those lines. I was back at my desk and my niece called me and she said, “Donna's building is burning.” I said, “No it's the other building.” She said, “No, I'm on the roof of the building that I worked in.”
Because she worked uptown. She was looking downtown and she saw both buildings burning. Donna called me back. No, wait a minute. I might be wrong here. She called me back and told me that the building was burning and she could see people jumping out of the building.
I said, “Get out.” That was the last time I heard from her. Obviously, I don't know how far she got before the other plane hit the building. I don't like to think about what possibly could have happened to her because that doesn't help me in any way, but I just know when they said the building fell, I knew she couldn't make it down.
She was on the 97th floor. Getting from the 97th floor, there's no way she could have gotten anywhere close to the 40th floor by the time the plane hit. I think it might have hit below the 97th floor, so that was it.
I just started crying. I was sitting at my desk and I was crying and I was still sorting papers. I was in shock, still sorting papers and my manager and her manager came over and they basically got me up and told me to go home and they got one of the other co-workers there, a guy named George and told him to go with me and they gave him a cap slip, and he drove me, and came home with me.
I and this guy were not the biggest buddies, but here he was crossing me. I'm dying inside. I'm dying inside. I'm coming down 95 in Philadelphia. I remember going on to the Betsy Ross Bridge and there's all the refinery there.
You can see the flame coming out with the gas. I remember that vividly and I remember getting home, he asked if I was going to be okay and I said yeah. I went inside and the phone rang and the person says, “Is Joan there?” and I was like, “Um, she's at work,” and the person says, “Oh, my God.” It was our lawyer.
We had an appointment that night to sign our wills. I think I came in and I started cleaning because I was in so much shock. I knew she was dead. I knew she was gone. I could just feel it.
I guess, the beginning of the shock of knowing that we had just come back five days earlier from a cruise for our 20th anniversary. She was so happy because she went with her sister and the two of them were like two peas in a pot and they had a great time, her sister and her husband. We had a great time and everything and here we were now.
It was funny the night before September 11th, I don’t remember whether it was a Monday or Tuesday, I think she was home and she got up and she put on some clothes and she went over to a friend of our's house, a friend of mine named Ava.
She went over there and Ava told me later it was very strange because she never did this before but she was like in her bedroom on her water bed and stuff and she was just having a good time or whatever and she came home and we went to sleep.
I don't remember if I was up the next morning to see her off because by then I was working in Philadelphia and I didn't have to leave home as early as she did so I don't remember when I saw her that morning or we just say bye and kissed or what. I don't remember any of that, but I know she was gone.
Paula Edgar: I just realized that this is the first time that I've heard the breath of that story from you. Obviously, I know the pieces of it. On the flip side, 3,000 miles away, I was in California. At this point, I was living with an ex-boyfriend who definitely should not be named.
We had gotten a big screen 60-inch TV the weekend before. September 11th was a Tuesday, and we got in that big-screen TV. It was six in the morning. He came into the room and said, “The World Trade Center just got hit.”
What was wild about the footage was that it wasn't at all tempered, they were showing, you could see people jumping. It was just cameras on the buildings and you could hear the broadcasters just in shock as they were reporting and seeing these things.
I remember calling that 800 number and the lines were down. I was able to get through to you once and when I talked to you and it was brief, you were crying. I was like, “Okay I'm calling Mommy.” In my mind, I was like, “All right, good, well, this sucks but I'm sure she's fine.” I was again that shock of it all.
I kept calling, and I kept calling, and I kept calling and I went to work. I was home when that happened and I was like, “Okay, I want to go work.” I got to work and I remember sitting at my cubicle, similar to what you were saying, and just doing whatever I was doing on the computer.
But then I would keep calling the number. I would keep calling the number as if she was going to answer. Then when the towers went down, people kept coming. I'll give a shout-out here to two people. The company I worked at was Sage Software.
I didn't have family there in California, but I had friends. They were like, “Go home. Go home.” I was like, “I can't go home.” Because at this point, I was with this guy who I didn't really want to be with him anymore, but I was stubborn. Anyways, long story.
Going home was not going to be helpful to me. Being there at work, they bought me food. I felt well taken care of in this horrific time. It was two weeks or something like that before I was able to travel because they stopped the flights. You couldn't fly.
I was not trying to be on a train across the country because everybody was scared about everything at that point. We didn't know what was going to happen next. Then thankfully, when the lines got back, I was able to call and speak to you and Joann, and obviously at that point, my sister was 16 and in high school.
Our whole world flipped upside down. I don't want to let it go without saying who that lawyer was, who you were going to meet with because she was such an instrumental part of us being okay. I think really a catalyst for me thinking even about being a lawyer.
Shout out always to Angela Titus, who is one of the best estate attorneys, and wonderful people who I've ever met and who is truly the embodiment of what you call a counselor as opposed to just a lawyer.
Having her to be able to help us navigate the whole process of not just the will, but also dealing with the compensation fund and all of that process, I don't know how we would have been able to really do it without having someone like her.
Peter Griffith: Let me stop you there. I was paralyzed. I was paralyzed. Losing someone who you are tied to very tightly because even at year 20 we were still very much in love with each other.
Losing her, it was like I was dead. I say that Peter died in the World Trade Center with her. I was just numb. I think I was numb for quite a long time. This is where giving you the education that you got and the values and the understanding about family and stuff like that became very important because what I could not do, and I couldn't do a lot and I would admit that I was just numb, I would be at meetings and I would have no idea what's going on and you were instrumental in holding my hand.
I said, “What would I have done without you?” What would I've done if I didn't have a daughter who was able to come and say, “Okay, daddy, this is what's going to happen. Here's what this is.”
The thing about it is, I realized this, there's a lot of stuff that I never knew happened because people kept things from me. I was glad that they did because I was just not capable of doing anything. I was just so numb for such a long time.
You say a shout-out to Angela, but my niece, baby.
Paula Edgar: Oh, yes. Of course.
Peter Griffith: If not for her, I don't know what would happen to me, which is why I love her so dearly because she made sure I was okay. She held my hand for a long time because she had moved up here to stay with us a couple of years before.
If she was not here, I don't know what would have happened. I probably would have scraped through, but not the way I did because she was so instrumental in making sure I was okay. You were great at handling the stuff. I realized that you had a lot of grief just like I did but you did something with your grief, you turned it into activism for our family.
I don't know how you dealt with a lot of the stuff externally, but I know that you threw yourself into taking care of me and making sure our family was okay. It was a testament to, like I said, who you were and who you would become, that you were so strong and I was so weak. I was so weak. It was a bad, bad time.
Paula Edgar: When people say that mourning is not a straight line. Now 22 years later, I still miss my mother. It doesn't go away. It happens in different waves, et cetera. But what I remember about that time and thinking about baby is what we call her, but her name is Dina Codrington. That's my cousin and his niece, but they're similar in age—long story. That's for chapter 17 of the novel—but she's very much someone who takes care of people.
That's one of the things that I love the most about her that if you are sick, she would make sure that you feel better. If you are hungry, you will never be hungry, and she is such a special person. And Mommy loved her and they loved each other.
When I think about that time, you were, when I think about Daddy, it's kind of almost you're over there kind of person who I loved but very much deified, it's kind of like I am the epitome of Daddy's girl.
We were down from the beginning. When I finally was able to fly back and again, the company I worked for paid for my flight, I flew back and I remember the pilot saying, “For those of you who are from New York, welcome home,” and I burst into tears. By the time I got off the plane, I was like, “I'm not going to cry anymore. I cannot cry. I'm not going to do it.” But I didn't tell you I was coming because I didn't want you to be scared that I was going to be in a plane.
When I got there, you were in the hospital because you would had a panic attack. A really good friend of mine, James, who again, I had met in California, he picked me up from the airport, drove me home, and when I got home, Baby was like, “He is in the hospital.” And I went to the hospital. I remember walking into the hospital behind a curtain, and I came out of the curtain, and we just both collapsed into each other crying.
Although I knew what was real at that point, it was really real then. It was like, “Oh, my gosh, she's gone.” While we understood, extended family didn't necessarily have that same realization. We had my aunt who’s suffering from Florida had come to New York to search for Mommy.
At that point, there were a lot of people who were in the hospital, like folks found people and there were missing signs and all that. We had our family really coalesced to support each other at that time. But I think we both had the realization that she was gone.
Peter Griffith: Yes. I definitely knew, but grief is an interesting thing. You can't tell people how to grieve. You went to different places looking but I knew she was gone.
Paula Edgar: As you mentioned, you both celebrated your 20th anniversary the week before. There are two things that I remember about that trip. One is that I finally had a little bit of money because I had a job. I was like, “I'm going to do something nice for them.” You were on a cruise, and I had called to get balloons and a bottle of champagne, and a cake.
Peter Griffith: I think there was a sign that said Happy Anniversary in the room we went to. I still have that. You didn't know how proud Mommy was of you.
Paula Edgar: It was something she would have done.
Peter Griffith: Yes.
Paula Edgar: I remember thinking I'm going to do something grow--
Peter Griffith: As much money as she was giving you, I'm sure she was surprised. You had enough money to do that, but she was very happy with that.
Paula Edgar: Yes. Right before then, I had come to Jersey. I'd seen you both in August of that year because I'd come from California because I was going to go to Caribana in Toronto.
I'm glad I took the trip because I had the opportunity to spend some time with Mommy in August, and we went shopping. It was one of the things that Mommy and I used to do.
She was like, “Don't tell Daddy we did this.” But we had gone to—oh, gosh, and I'm going to forget the name of the department store—but she'd opened a card so we could get a discount. But we bought a bunch of clothes.
I had come there essentially with like two empty suitcases and they were full, and actually bought a suitcase. When I went to Caribana, I had all this stuff because she had bought me this stuff. That was not the first time she had done that.
Thinking about having that chance to spend time with her, just her and I, before this all happened and before your anniversary, was something special that I remember. But one thing that was very different about that trip was that—you'd gone on trips before, you'd always vacation and done stuff—but it never was never something where she would say other than, “Here's where we're staying,” or, “Here's the hotel,” or the flight.
She wrote—and I have this paper still—she wrote down the financial planner that Angela, the lawyer, who I talked about, she wrote all that information down on a piece of paper and gave it to me.
Reflecting back to think about, I needed that information because you were a mess. I was able to act on the information she had given us, she had given me what she had never done before. It's almost like the universe. Whatever deity is there understood that that had to happen in order for us to be, I say, “okay” because we're still not okay.
We're still impacted by Mommy being gone, but it would have been so much more challenging if she hadn't. It was like that last piece of love to say, “Here's what you need to take care of this.”
Peter Griffith: Let me say this to you. I don't know whether it was a holdover from the first bombing of the World Trade Center, what it was, but we talked about the fact that one of us was going to leave the other.
We knew that something was going to happen. We just feared, and I wouldn't even say fear, we just knew it was something was going to happen. A couple of months before that, that's when she went and got a lawyer and started working on the will. That's when we got the financial advisor.
It's like all these things were being put in place. Was it just something that was done? No, this is something that she said we needed to do because this was important. We went to the financial advisor and the financial advisor told us, “Because she makes a hell of a lot more money than you, we need to put more insurance on her.”
When she died, we had that money because she had set out to make sure that we would be okay if something happened to her. She would come home late at night by private car from New York when she worked late and I always disliked that because I found myself at the window looking out for her whenever a car passed or something like that because I was fearful that something was going to happen to her and I didn't think that it was going to be like this, but God in his infinite wisdom makes decisions that we don't have really the right to ask why. We just deal with it.
I always say that if I complain about the fact that Mommy was gone, as she was taken, I would be doing a disservice to the 20 years that God gave me with her. Because those 20 years were so wonderful. I had a really great life, really great. One child was gone, never to come home.
I had one that I was working on, but that was a bit challenging. You started saying this up, “I don't think this one is ever going to leave home.” But we were happy. We were so happy. I'm not going to say perfect because we still had a lot of debt from sending you off to college, but we lived well.
We didn't want stuff. If we needed something, we got it. We did well. It was just sad that it was how it turned out. But like I said, I'm thankful for the 20 years. I'm thankful for what she brought to my life.
One of the things I wanted to say also is that part of being married, because I was an only child for most of my life, my father had kids, my mother had a child before me, part of my life was I was alone so I was very selfish. I mean everything was Peter.
When I got married, things were rough the first year or two until I made a decision that this is what I wanted. I gave up being Peter and became part of Peter and Donna.
When that died, and I say that, because that partnership died in the World Trade Center, then I had to find myself again and that was difficult because you don't realize how much you give to a relationship until you don't even know what size shoe you wear.
Because you share memories and you share information so she knew what size I was, all these things, and now I have to relearn all these things because she's not there. My rudder was not there because she was the CEO of this house. I was the owner of the company.
She would come to me and she would say, “We're doing so and so,” and I would say, “Okay,” because I knew that she was better at managing stuff than I was. So if she had an idea, we would talk about it and we would go with that. I lost all of that. Then I had to try to build my life back.
It was like starting to walk on your knees before you can get up and try to just be-- I made lots of mistakes. I don't regret the mistakes I made because they're part and parcel of who I am right now. But I am like that person, but I'm not that person.
And talk about crying. You hear people talk about wailing and the amount of crying that I did would hurt my head. I couldn't believe that she was gone. I knew she was gone, but the pain of it. Then there was the memorial. We decided that we needed to have a memorial.
This was like in October because there was no thought of her being found in a hospital someplace or someplace else. We needed to have some closure on the agony that we were going through. So we set up a memorial.
It was in the church. I used to go to Second Baptist Church in Moorestown. It was amazing. Sonia held my hand as we walked in. That's one of my cousins. The place was filled with co-workers. The church was filled with people to the point where there were people in the choir loft.
Paula Edgar: Mm-hmm. There was an overflow of people outside.
Peter Griffith: Yes. Like the CEO of my division. It was just an amazing showing of people. People came from all over because she was very loved. We have it on tape, but the sound is very bad. It's almost no sound. I really wished that there was some way to be able to get that sound back.
But I can remember you singing just “A Spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” You don't know how proud I am of you. You don't know. There was a part of it looking at the other day, you held Vicki's hand as she went up to read. I mean, the memories, you know?
Paula Edgar: Yeah, I remember that day. I remember leading up to that day because I had to really be who she trained me to be in those times because I had to lead. The one thing that is hard about being a leader, and I feel like I've always been a leader, but to be a leader in a space that I wasn't prepared to lead for—I shouldn't say that, because I was prepared for it—I didn't want to, but I knew I had to.
It was us going to pick out the flowers at the florist. And you saying, “You have to get sunflowers.” I remember sitting there being like, “I don't know what flowers she would want. Daddy has to know what flowers she wants because I don't know what flowers she would want,” and in little things.
I remember, and I'm jumping around a little bit, but months after 9/11, might have been a year, they found her purse. They found my mother's purse. We had to go into Lower Manhattan.
Peter Griffith: Oh, my God.
Paula Edgar: The 1 Police Plaza.
Peter Griffith: No, the municipal building.
Paula Edgar: Whatever. I remember going downstairs. Yes, okay, yes, I know what you're talking about. But we had to go downstairs. It was like we were in a movie, like this dank place, you to go to this window, and give this number because every victim of 9/11 had a number. Then they gave us a purse and it was waterlogged.
Peter Griffith: Right. But wait a minute, before that, we get there and they don't want to give it to us because of something they had, and I'm like, “Oh, my God, I can't.” I started having a breakdown right there. The guy gave us the purse and you go ahead.
Paula Edgar: Yeah. No, I forgot about that part, but I also remembered, it wasn't just your breakdown because I remember I was like, “You don't really want us to have to come back here. You're not going to do that.”
But it was one of the times where I remember feeling like, I hate that she has been minimized to just being a number. I hate that we have to go through the bureaucracy of her being a victim as opposed to me being like, “Are you kidding? This is my mother. Give me her purse.”
Anyway, we get the purse and it's waterlogged. Then we took it home and we went through it. She had your high school ring in the purse. I just remember thinking she had your high school ring. She loved you. It's one thing to know it and it's another thing to have reminders of just how much she loved us all.
People throughout these years have asked a lot of times, like did they find her? And, yes, we were able to have another memorial because they found remains. But I never, in all of that time, people would be like, “Oh, is it hard for you to go down there?” I never thought of her being there.
When I go down to the memorial, because I've studied museum anthropology, I think it's a beautiful memorial. They did a fantastic job of capturing the imprints of the building and anybody who hasn't been there, I really do think that folks should go there. It is, I think, one of the best memorials that has been done. But I don't think of my mother as being there.
Peter Griffith: Yeah. I've come into Manhattan through the tunnel and when you're coming up one of the streets, and I remember one day I looked up and I was shocked because the building wasn't there because usually, you can't see past, and like you said, I don't think about her as being there and I don't know why but it's just like it doesn't affect me like that because I mean, okay, it's very nice and everything, but Mommy's not here. Mommy is not here. Mommy is here.
I guess it's the relationship that we have with her. It's like, Mommy is always here so she's not there. It is very nice to see all that. But I really don't care about that stuff. That stuff means absolutely nothing to me. I could go down there and see her name and it's like, one day I went down there and I remember a friend of mine and she took a candle and stuff to light it, it's like, “What?” This is not what Peter does. This is not how we are.
I am looking at this place as a historical thing. I'm not looking at this as a burial ground for my wife. For me, it's like, “Okay, I can go there and walk around it, not a big deal.”
It's so funny too because there's a place that I go to take pictures of birds. As I'm coming back from there, I think it's Absecon or something is the name of the place. They have a piece of metal from the World Trade Center, a big piece of bent metal as a memorial. I see this and it's like, “Yeah, yeah, okay.” Like, okay. Yeah.
Paula Edgar: The interesting piece about having lost a family member in the World Trade Center is that it is not as if she was hit by a car. We have our personal connection to her and having lost her but it is a very public and shared experience that we experienced, not as just having lost our mother, wife, our family member, but also as Americans, as New Yorkers, on multiple levels, we experienced grief.
That, I think, was the hardest piece for me. It's not a private thing that we can just manage on our own. People were always in it with us. It was very frustrating to show up for other people in that space.
Peter Griffith: So one of the things, the public grieving, and I mean, I went back to work and I spent many days at my desk crying because the grief doesn't just hit you and move, it comes at you. I went to Best Buy one time and I was watching they had football games on the thing and I started looking at it and I started crying.
You don't know when the tears are going to start coming, you don't know when the overwhelming feeling is going to be on you. After she died, I would go outside for a walk and I would walk like maybe two houses down and walk back crying, just crying up and down the street because I couldn't just sit down in the house anymore and cry.
People in the neighborhood knew what had happened to me. There was nothing they could do. There was this guy at work who came to me one time and said, “If you ever want to talk or go to lunch or something,” and I was very taken aback. I was like, “Why do you want to take me out for lunch? I don't know. I don't really know you.”
But years later, I could appreciate the fact that he just wanted to help me get through the stuff that I went through and it was so incredibly public. Everybody knew. Everybody on the job knew what had happened. They would see me and I could see it. I wrote about this in something that I wrote a long time ago. It's like everybody is thankful it's not them and I don't ask myself why me because a better question is why not me? Why not my wife?
I know everybody is saying, “You know, I feel sorry for him but damn, thank God it's not my wife, my husband, or whatever,” and I have to deal with that. I have to deal with people trying to be nice to me, but I really don't want people to be. I don't want you to touch me. I don't want anything. I just want to be.
I remember in church sitting down and this lady put a hand on me and I could just hear Donna saying, “Just let her put her hand on you,” because I was to the point where I was like, “You know what,” I could feel the calm come over. I know exactly what she would say to me.
Because everybody was so awfully, the people at the church were unbelievable. They just wanted to be there for me to make sure I was okay. It was just incredible. One little anecdote. Joann's school, she was going to a Christian school, and the principal and his wife came over and we were there and they met you or whatever and the principal said, “You look so much like your mother to you.”
The thing is it's like people don't know what to say or anything. We asked about it afterwards but it was such a time in this country where we've never seen a time—I think things have gotten considerably worse since then—but everybody was focused on healing the people who were hurt and it was wonderful, it was also painful to have people know that you're hurting.
Paula Edgar: Yeah, in listening to what you were just saying about people pitying, and feeling sad, sorry for you, I specifically pushed back against that. To your point about how lucky we were to have her for that amount of time, yes, it sucked that she was gone, that is indisputable. But in my mind, I'm like, “You could have a hundred years to somebody else and it never be the quality, the value, the love that we had in the 20 years we had.”
When people say, “I'm so sorry,” I bristled because I was like, “Yes, I honor the fact that you were trying to connect, but don't feel sorry for me because I had the most amazing mother.”
Paula Edgar: Yes, yes, you will never know the kind of love that we had. I tell people, “You just don't understand.” People talk about Mommy, and I don't get to talk about her a lot now, obviously, because it's over 20 years and a lot of people don't ask me about her.
But when I tell people about her, I had to be very careful because I started to hear myself and I was like, “Wait a minute, am I talking about a real person here?” Because if you hear people talk about her and it's like, “Who was this lady?” She was just incredible and you don't know whether they actually believe you or they think, “Well, they’re just full of it because their mother's gone and they're trying to--” but she was just an incredible human being.
Paula Edgar: Whether or not they believe it or not, Mommy was everything. Last year, when I read names at the September 11th Memorial at the Ground Zero, and I wore a shirt that said my mom was everything, I remember talking to somebody after I got off of the dais and she was like, “Oh, that's such a beautiful shirt,” I was like, “You have no idea.”
I love the statement t-shirt, I wear statement t-shirts all the time, but it was like, “You cannot understand how fantastic she was.” I'm sure people say that about their mother. It's true. But I've never heard anybody say a bad word about her.
Again, truly no one's probably going to say a bad thing about her to me, but in that sense, still, in all of the different circles and spheres that she was in, people only said just how wonderful she was.
One of the reasons why I wanted to have this conversation with you, and one of the reasons why I've taken it upon myself to keep her legacy alive as something that is very, very important to me, for all of you who are listening, there is a page on my website, paulaedgar.com, and when you go to About Me, there's a place that it talks about my mother, Joan Donna Griffith.
I encourage you all to go there to learn more about who she was. But this conversation is going to give you more than that page will. It's really why I wanted to have it because you're hearing her impact.
I have a question here about her legacy, but I'm like, “I don't have to ask that question because you are hearing about her legacy in her spouse, in her children, in her grandchildren, in her extended family.”
Peter Griffith: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. You talk about nieces and nephews. Her legacy is in each and every one of them. She was just incredible. There's still a huge hole in this family that can never be filled.
But I must tell you that the position that you're in as being one of the leaders of this family, being my conciliary, this is the reason why you educate your kids and you pour into them. This is the reason why my mother was made, so that I could be, so that you could be, so that TJ could be, so that Austin could be, so that Joann could be, so that Cayden could be, so that there's a foundation.
When you step on stage, you are not going alone because Mommy is there with you. My mother's there with you. Grandpa's there with you. Your old buddy from the White Castle days, the people who are going to remain nameless in my family, those people are all there.
The future, the future is bright because of Mommy. The future is bright because of the love that we shared. When I say shared, we, and I'm just including this, we went on vacations and took two other kids with us. Leigh and Vicki always went on vacation with us because that was who she was. She wanted the people to experience things that she did and I think it was all for the good.
Paula Edgar: Often when I'm speaking to your audiences, I will share something that she said to me a few times which was I had the choice, you could be the wind or you could be the leaf. That was how are you going to shape where you are going to be.
She was such an important part of who I am. I always tell people, I'm like, “If you know me, you know her.” Because so much of who I am was because of who she was. To pull the circle and close it in taking my child to college at Spelman, yay, they had a closing ceremony where you are supposed to give your kids to the school and entrust them.
It was something that the priest or the pastor who was speaking, she said that this moment is something your ancestors have dreamed of. I burst into tears because I think of all the people you just mentioned, but I specifically thought about this child who I named after myself and my mother. She is the culmination of who we were and what we poured into.
You all know who my mother is because you have heard about the story and the things and how she added value, but you will continue to know who she was because we will continue to pour the values and the lessons and the fun that she made sure to prioritize into subsequent generations.
They will watch this and they will listen and they will hear and know about these things because it is important to remember that the victims in September 11th were not numbers. It was not a fraction of one out of 3,000 people. In particular, and I could not be me without speaking to the fact that not just that there were people, but that raising out the fact that they were Black people that were victims and they were Black executives who were also killed like my mother.
It's important to know that they existed and who they were and that they were not just a number. When we think about it on that day, it's not just a day off or day of service. It's a day of remembering exactly what the world lost, but also what the world had.
So, Daddy, I'm so happy that we had a chance to have this conversation. You know that I always say that I'm going to chip off the old block. I love you very much. I'm so happy that we were able to talk about Mommy.
For all of you who are listening, remember to go and look on the website to learn a little bit more about Mommy, to share this with other people who you think would be helpful to hear about her and her legacy and her impact. That's all. Thank you so much, everybody. Bye.
Peter Griffith: Love you.
Paula Edgar: Thank you for joining me for part two of the special Branding Room Only rewind episode. I hope our conversation has provided insight into the incredible legacy of my mother, Joan Donna Griffith, and how her life continues to inspire us.
I want to give a heartfelt shout-out and thank you to my dad Peter L. Griffith for sharing these deeply personal memories and stories. I miss my mother deeply. For those of you who are interested, remember to visit my website paulaedgar.com to learn more about my mother's legacy and share this episode with anyone who might benefit from hearing her story.
As always, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and share this podcast. Until next time, take care and stand by your brand.
