By Sheldon Spackman

prayer breakfast

9/11 survivor brings message of hope and resilience to Red Deer

Apr 9, 2019 | 12:30 PM

Roughly 450 people including mayors, councillors, police, firefighters and other community leaders gathered at Red Deer’s Westerner Park Tuesday morning to hear an amazing story of survival and resilience.

The 16th annual Central Alberta Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast hosted by Success Builders was held at the Parkland Pavilion and featured keynote speaker Sujo John, a survivor of the 9/11 attacks in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001.

John, now an author and motivational speaker, came with the message that no matter what we go through in life, we can always make a comeback.

“You’re not defined by your past, you will be defined by how you end up,” he explains. “What you’ve been through doesn’t matter. God can rewrite every life story.”

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Sujo John (sujojohn.com)

A native of Calcutta, India who moved to the United States in February of 2001, John says he was working for a telecommunications company on the 81^st floor of the World Trade Centre’s North Tower when the attacks occurred.

“I thought it was the end of the world, it was hard to believe what was going on, it felt like a movie,” he recalls. “But then I’m awake, I’m alive, this is actually happening around us. I was seeing things that no one should see, so it was a very sad day.”

During an escape to eventual safety that lasted several hours, John says he saw the ‘fear of death on everyone’s face’ as he ran down flight after flight of stairs, constantly thinking of his parents and wife who was pregnant with their first child.

She worked for an investment bank nearby, on the 71^st floor of the South Tower.

Then his cell phone rang.

John braced for the worst but was surprised to hear his wife’s voice, grateful to learn she was late for work that day and not inside the South Tower when it crashed to the ground.

“It was amazing, I had given up hope about her,” he admits. “To be hearing her voice was amazing and for her to also think that I was alive, we both had thought the other was gone. It was just incredible to know that our lives were miraculously spared.”

John who now lives in Dallas, Texas says the experience has changed him forever.

“I never take moments for granted, I don’t take my family or my friends for granted” he proclaims. “I also have great appreciation for first responders and for the military, people that go fight evil. That’s why I started a non-profit that I do, it was an FBI agent who rescued me and he gave his life and so now I was rescued and I feel my mission is now to go rescue others.”

For more information on John’s new mission, visit www.youcanfree.us.