Kiran is the sincere and intelligent woman with the warm brown eyes and infectious smile who comes into your living room each morning, bringing you the news. Even though Kiran leads a busy broadcast journalist's lifestyle, she still takes time out to remember her precious memories of holidays and summer family reunions spent visiting aunts, uncles and cousins at her grandparents' home in Palmerton.
Kiran's mother, Nancy Horn Chetry, is a Palmerton native. Nancy met and married Homa Chetry while they both were in the Peace Corps, in the small Asian country of Nepal. When Kiran, whose name means “Ray of Sunlightâ€, was six weeks old, her parents returned to the United States and moved to Weatherly, where they lived the next two years. A few years later the family made their home in Montgomery Village, Md. where Kiran, an only child, spent her childhood and later graduated from Montgomery Blair High School. It was during these years that the family would travel to Palmerton to spend vacations or weekends with Kiran's grandparents, Willard and Anna Horn, in their Avenue A home.
"We would go to my grandparents' Evangelical Lutheran church on Sundays. We loved to go bowling at Haja Lanes and to swim at Memorial Park," Kiran remembers. Still today when she comes back to the area for a little rest and relaxation, her favorite place to eat is the Bowmanstown Diner. "We always have to stop at the Diner, they make the best home-cooked food," Kiran is quick to add.
One family event that she feels very strongly about is the traditional Horn family reunion, which has been an annual summer event for more than 50 years and takes place at Palmerton's Memorial Park. "I mark that date on my calendar every year and we just will not miss it," she explained. "I feel that passing down family memories and keeping family traditions alive are so important for parents to do for their children, especially in today's world."
Kiran was very close to both her grandparents and even more so with her grandmother after her grandfather's death in 1981. She remembers one visit to her grandmother that started out as a few days of family time but ended with a national tragedy. Kiran was visiting in Palmerton on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
"I was sleeping and my mom came into the room and woke me up saying she heard a plane hit the World Trade Center. We both thought it was just a small plane so my mom went back downstairs and I went back to sleep. A little while later my mom came back into the room and said, 'Kiran you better come down stairs and watch TV.' I witnessed the tragedy completely horrified just as any other American did that day, and it was from a bystanders point of view and not as a reporter," Kiran said.
Although Kiran's husband, Chris, was working in the city, he was able to make contact to say he was okay and that he was walking back to their home in Manhattan's upper east side. "My grandmother got very upset, as we all did, by watching TV that day, so we decided that we would pack a lunch and go to Beltsville Lake for the rest of the afternoon," she added.
After spending the evening joined together with neighbors and friends for a prayer service in Palmerton's Borough Park, Kiran was able to take a train back to the city. Upon her return to the TV station, she worked 12-hour shifts for many consecutive days. Her assignment was to report on survivors, and after a few days it became apparent that they were not finding life among the twin towers debris.
Kiran's reporting position moved to the "family center" at an armory in the city. The center turned into a make-shift vigil for family members who were awaiting news of their missing loved ones.
"This was the most difficult and most heartbreaking reporting I've ever done so far", she remembers. We would see and talk to the same people every day and they became like our own family."
But Kiran is very grateful that she was by her grandmother's side in Palmerton on that eventful day in history; it was the last time Kiran saw her healthy. A short time later Kiran's grandmother suffered a stroke, and a few months later shedied. Kiran said she misses both her grandparents and wears her grandmother's original wedding band that is engraved, "WH To AC 1-14-40."
Kiran and her husband Chris, a native of the Phildephia outskirts, still come to Palmerton whenever time allows. Kiran said she looks on Palmerton as her "little slice of life away from a world that changes everyday."
Good changes are on the way for Kiran and Chris as they are about to embark on the path of parenthood with the expected arrival of a baby girl next month.It will be a year of firsts - first smiles and first steps. As the baby grows older, she may follow in her mother's footsteps, with her first trip to Pennsylvania, her first splash in the Memorial Park pool or her first time learning to ski down School Hill at Blue Mountain Ski Area.
One thing is for certain though, her mother will always continue to pass down the warm and wonderful memories of those special family times spent in Palmerton.
