Standing up to the scourge of terrorism

As Americans and much of the world paused on Sunday to remember the day 15 years ago when New York's giant twin towers were felled by terrorists, I recalled the tiny church that stood nearby unscathed, though fire and brimstone rained down around it.

I first learned of St. Paul's Chapel at a holiday party several years ago hosted by author Robert Lawrence Holt, my neighbor in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California.

His fellow author Arline Curtiss introduced us to a children's book she had just published, an illustrated work meant to help kids cope with the horrors of 9/11. The book tells the story of St. Paul's Chapel, the tiny Episcopal Church that was built in 1766, less than 100 yards from where the towers would later rise.