{"id":1102,"date":"2010-04-21T16:21:41","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T16:21:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hub-dev.bates.edu\/magazine\/?page_id=1102"},"modified":"2017-09-06T11:38:52","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T15:38:52","slug":"matthew-scherzer-03-and-erin-russ-03","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/back-issues\/y2006\/fall06\/features\/why-911-stories-matter\/matthew-scherzer-03-and-erin-russ-03\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew Scherzer &#039;03 and Erin Russ &#039;03"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 220px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-left: 0px;margin-right: 0px;border: 0px initial initial\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/Images\/Bates_Magazine\/fall06\/Matty-Erin-engagementv4C.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" hspace=\"0\" width=\"210\" height=\"157\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Matthew Scherzer &#039;03 and Erin Russ &#039;03<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Matthew Scherzer \u201903 and Erin Russ \u201903 weren\u2019t supposed to be in Washington, D.C., in September 2001. Scherzer had planned to spend his junior fall in South Africa. Russ was headed for London. But unforeseen circumstances (which had nothing to with their budding romance) put the couple in Washington, where Russ had an internship with a news agency and Scherzer was on Capitol Hill. That fall, they were among eight Bates students on the Washington Semester program at American University.<\/p>\n<p>In the hours after the Sept. 11 attacks, they witnessed the capital\u2019s transformation from open city into an armed camp with \u201cHumvees and military personnel everywhere,\u201d Russ recalls. \u201cIt was not what you were used to in America.\u201d<br \/>\nWhen the school locked down its campus, the Batesies sought out one another. \u201cWe clung to each other,\u201d Russ said.<\/p>\n<p>Almost wistfully, Scherzer remembers lounging on the Capitol steps three weeks earlier, listening to a concert. \u201cAfter 9\/11 that area was completely shut off.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Fast forward a year, when Russ and Scherzer approached then-chaplain Kerry Maloney and offered to help plan a Chapel service on the first Sept. 11 anniversary.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRegardless of how we felt personally about the U.S. and its response, we thought it was very important to organize an apolitical event,\u201d Scherzer says. \u201cWe wanted to give the community an opportunity to remember the victims and to come together in a comforting and peaceful environment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Russ and Scherzer are now engaged to be married. She\u2019s at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, and he\u2019s wrapped up his fundraising job with the American Jewish Committee and attending Yale School of Management for his M.B.A.<\/p>\n<p>Building their lives, they\u2019re among millions who react differently to the world around them. \u201cYou\u2019re scared. Living in New York, you are even more scared. You question everything,\u201d says Russ. \u201cYou remember being carefree before, but then after that there was Madrid, and London, and India. 9\/11 teaches us the importance of not being angry with each other when we leave in the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For Scherzer, the events of Sept. 11, coupled with his work for the AJC, gave him a window onto the world, illuminating the fact that many people have long lived in fear of terrorism and violence.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBefore 9\/11, America was very na\u00efve,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Matthew Scherzer \u201903 and Erin Russ \u201903 weren\u2019t supposed to be in&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":0,"parent":1098,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_dimp_site_id":"","_dimp_override_contact":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"class_list":["post-1102","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1102"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11387,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1102\/revisions\/11387"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}