Twenty-five years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Rev. Canon Jan Naylor Cope can still picture a quiet moment inside the Washington National Cathedral.
After President George W. Bush spoke during the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance, Cope recalled, his father reached over and took his hand.
“His father just, without saying a word, reached over and took his hand,” Cope said. “I think only presidents know what it’s like to sit in that seat in the Oval Office and have the responsibility for a nation.”
The service was held Sept. 14, 2001, three days after the attacks, bringing political, military and religious leaders together as the country searched for comfort and meaning.
At the time, Cope wasn’t a priest. She ran an executive search firm, had served in President George H.W. Bush’s White House and helped with George W. Bush’s presidential transition. She was also an active lay leader at St. John’s Episcopal Church, across Lafayette Square from the White House, where she knew then-Bishop of Washington Jane Holmes Dixon.
On Sept. 11, Dixon called with a request.
“She said, ‘Jan, I want to get a message to the president. I want to offer the cathedral to hold a service for the nation,’” Cope recalled.
No one publicly knew where Bush was at that point. Cope thought about who she could contact and remembered an old White House transition directory that included a fax number for Oval Office operations.
She called Dixon back and told her where to send the message.
But there was one more challenge.
“Jan, I’m embarrassed to tell you this, but I never learned how to type,” Cope remembers Dixon saying after sending the cathedral staff home.
Cope told her to print neatly and fax it.
Three days later, the service was held.
“I just quietly and happily sat in my seat and was so profoundly grateful,” Cope said.
She remembers the cathedral becoming what she described as “a sacred vessel” for a grieving nation.
She also remembers Bush focusing on the goodness people showed in the midst of tragedy.
“He talked about the goodness, the inherent goodness of people,” Cope said.
Bush told the congregation about a man in the World Trade Center who could have saved himself but instead stayed with his quadriplegic friend.
Cope’s own path eventually led her back to the cathedral. She was ordained there in 2007, joined its staff in 2010 and now serves as provost.
The service, she said, “stays with me always.”
“Particularly now when our country is so divided, I look back at moments like that and know that we can be united,” Cope said.
The cathedral will mark the 25th anniversary on Sunday, Sept. 13, with special prayers and another reminder of that day.
The Pentagon cross, made from Pentagon attack debris and later donated to the cathedral by a military chaplain, will be placed in the center of the church.
Cope said the cathedral’s bourdon bell will ring four times, once for each of the four hijacked planes, before a wreath is laid at the cross.
A quarter-century after helping get a message to the White House, Cope will once again be inside the cathedral as the nation remembers a day that, for her, has never really left.
“It stays with me always,” she said.
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