About Oregon Loves New York: A Story of American Unity After 9/11:

Three weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks when the world was paralyzed, New York City’s economy was tanking, and getting on a plane was terrifying, 1,000 courageous Oregonians came together across politics, religion and race to fly to New York City to show that we need not live in fear and to support New York’s suffering businesses. What they found were fellow Americans who needed more than their money, they needed their hearts. It was called the Flight for Freedom and no other community in the United States carried out a similar effort, though many wanted to. Oregon’s courage, caring, and capability were unparalleled.

Oregon Loves New York tells this inspiring and little-known story from its birth as one woman’s daring idea to the Freedom Fliers’ return home—and all the events in between, from group events such as the Columbus Day Parade, Good Morning America, and dinner for 700 in Chinatown to the personal visits to fire and police stations and “Ground Zero,” the bomb site. Oregon Loves New York includes photos of rarely seen views inside the barricades where recovery teams were working.

But perhaps more important, Freedom Fliers were routinely stopped, hugged, and thanked by New Yorkers, whose 9/11 stories often came tumbling out. Oregonians never expected this—and yet they embraced the New Yorkers at every level and demonstrated the healing power of person-to-person contact and how we as a nation can honor each other. Sally Ruth Bourrie was there covering this remarkable phenomenon as a freelance writer for the Chicago Tribune and The Boston Globe. Oregon Loves New York is more than 700 pages of tales of courage and humanity, including 200 full-color photographs, 100 personal interviews, 20 years of research, and rare, archival news pieces.

Author bio:

Sally Ruth Bourrie has been a writer for more than 30 years. Her work has appeared in newspapers including The Oregonian, The Boston Globe and the Chicago Tribune; and such magazines as Chicago and Newsweek. She contributed more than 1,200 artist biographies and object descriptions to the J. Paul Getty Museum website.

Sally served as senior editor for the permanent collections at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where she oversaw the first new museum guidebook in more than twenty years. She was the first editor for internal communications at the University of Virginia Health System and magazine editor for the University of Virginia Graduate School and College of Arts & Sciences Communications. She is currently a writer-editor at the Farm Credit Administration, where she wrote a World War II film about soldiers’ letters home called “Letters from the Grapevine,” which can be found on YouTube.

Sally holds a master’s degree in art history and museum studies from the University of Southern California, where her master’s thesis was the catalogue for the Los Angeles County Museum exhibition on Paul Landacre, the first museum show on this important California printmaker. She received her bachelor’s degree from Vassar College, where she was a double major in political science and art history.