A reader sent me this story, from the Morris County Daily Record in New Jersey, about how families are transforming the heartbreak of 9/11 into a force for healing:

Matt Sellitto was driving home from Florida when he heard a radio report about an attack on Virginia Tech students. He just happened to be heading toward Blacksburg, Va., where grieving parents gathered with young people who lost friends or who watched classmates die.

He pulled off the highway because, he said, he had some idea what to say to them.

He offered to talk to family members and students — just as someone offered to talk to his family six years ago after his 23-year-old son, Matthew Carmen Sellitto, was killed at the World Trade Center. He said families from Oklahoma City were there for 9/11 families to share their stories, telling them what kind of pain to expect — and that it would diminish, but never disappear, over time.

“That meant a lot to me,” Sellitto, of Harding, said.

He believes there was a reason he was driving through Virginia on April 16, the day a student shot and killed 32 people at Virginia Tech. It was just one more way his life has changed, one more way he went from dealing with his own pain to helping others. He and members of some other 9/11 families have become activists for political or social causes related to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Sellitto and his wife, Loreen, started a foundation in their son’s name to give out college scholarships. They were part of a group of families consulted by the 9/11 Commission during its investigation into what led to the attacks. Loreen has lobbied Congress to implement the commission’s recommendations. Matt is active in a federal lawsuit filed against groups alleged to have funded terrorism.

“You can’t survive on hate,” Matt Sellitto, a retired teacher, said. “You have to survive by doing something good.”

Matt Sellitto said he also has supported a group called World Trade Center Families for Proper Burial, which demands that ashen remains of 9/11 victims be moved from the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island. He said his family received most of his son’s remains. About 1,400 families received no remains at all.

“When they reflect, they have to do it in front of a garbage dump,” Sellitto said. “That’s horrible.”

Friends helped establish the Matthew Carmen Sellitto Foundation to provide scholarships for students at all Morris County high schools, among other schools. An annual golf outing held in Sussex County, scheduled this year for Sept. 27, funds the foundation. Matt Sellitto said his son, who caddied at Somerset Hills Country Club, loved to play golf.

“It’s a happy day,” he said about the event. “We wanted to keep our son’s name alive for something good.”

Matthew Carmen Sellitto always wanted to work in finance and, not long before 9/11, had received his first promotion at Canter Fitzgerald. He called his father from the World Trade Center after the first plane hit, saying he loved his family. The father said he always will feel pain — “Closure will come when I die,” he said — but at Virginia Tech earlier this year, Matt Sellitto told those suffering what he had been told six years ago.

He said he knew Virginia Tech family members would be in shock because their lives suddenly had been transformed by tragedy, and nothing seemed familiar. That’s what he was feeling on 9/11.

It will get better, he said.

Read more to see what other families are doing. On a day like this, we need news like this.

Also, wander by Deacon Tony’s Place for his reflections this anniversary — and to glimpse a beautiful memorial his parish has placed outside their church in Brooklyn. They lost nine people on 9/11.

Photo: Matt and Loreen Sellitto lost their son Matthew on 9-11. Here they are in their son’s former bedroom, which now serves as the office of the Matthew C. Sellitto Foundation. A portrait of Matthew hangs behind them. Photo by Dawn Benko