Q&A with Acton's Lauren Rosenzweig-Morton, Widow of 9/11 Victim Philip Rosenszweig

On Sept. 11, 2001, the wife of Acton resident Philip Rosenzweig, Lauren Rosenzweig-Morton, became a single parent in an instant to two young children – a son who is now 22 and a son who is now 15.

She went on to marry George Morton in 2010 and has been active in Acton, where she only recently completed serving six years on the Acton Board of Selectmen, including two terms as chair.

Q&A with Acton's Lauren Rosenzweig-Morton:

Acton Patch: How do you feel about the number of volunteers coming forward to build the Acton 9/11 Memorial?

• Rosenzweig-Morton: I’m very touched knowing all the people that volunteered and took so much time and effort into creating the memorial. It’s a lot of work to raise all that money, planning the project, executing it, going to New York to get the Ground Zero steel and it is just amazing to me. I feel honored. It’s not just about my husband. It’s about all of the people involved that day and especially the first responders who went in and saved so many lives. It is just so sad that so many of them perished.

Acton Patch: How did you meet Philip?

•  Rosenzweig-Morton: Well it’s kind of funny. We met on a Boston Harbor singles cruise and we had a lot to talk about because we found out we grew up in close proximity to each other. I’m from Far Rockaway Queens and he was from Hewlett Long Island.

Acton Patch: Philip worked various tech jobs, right?

• Rosenzweig-Morton: He came up to Massachusetts to work at Data General and from there he had lots of high-tech jobs. I mean, he worked at Apple for a while and Sony. He was really a high-level person. He kept getting promoted because even though he had the technical background he also had a marketing background.

Acton Patch: Aside from his work, what else was Philip into?

• Rosenzweig-Morton: He was very much into his family. He loved being with his family. He was also into sports cars and he was a good tennis player.

Acton Patch: What lessons do you think we learned as a society since the Sept. 11 attacks?

• Rosenzweig-Morton: The real lesson is that we really have to put peoples' safety at the top of the list. We do need to do things to keep people as safe as possible and it does take a lot of diligence. We can’t become complacent. Unfortunately there are bad people out there and they will try and do things, but we have done a really good job keeping people safe.

Editors note: This next question was pulled from a previous article Acton Patch published when we interviewed Lauren after the U.S.military killed Osama bin Laden:

Acton Patch: What feelings do you get as the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 is approaching?

• Rosenzweig-Morton: Our goal is to move forward and to make the best lives for us as we can because that is what Phil would have wanted. We also feel somewhat of a responsibility as people who were affected so closely and lost a loved one, that we do want to honor and appreciate every anniversary and every sort of major step in trying to prevent this from ever happening again to anyone else. We have to appreciate that there are those people out there that risk their lives to help the rest of us live safely and we can’t take that for granted.