A few months ago, 14-year-old Payton Wall, who lost her father on 9/11, bared her grief in a 1,500-word letter to President Obama.
“I never thought he’d respond,” Payton said yesterday, after she was embraced by the president at Ground Zero following the wreath-laying ceremony. “I was so shocked when the White House called! It was all a dream come true.”
In the letter, which the Rumson, NJ, teen said is “too personal” to share with the public, she told Obama about her father, Glen Wall, who was an execu tive at Cantor Fitzgerald when terrorists attacked the Twin Towers.
She was inspired to tell her story after she and her friend, Madi son Robertson, who also lost her father, went to see the Justin Bieber documentary “Never Say Never.”
“We were so amazed by his story and how he never said never. It in spired us to believe in our selves and share our story to encourage others,” she said.
She tried to contact the pop idol through Twitter on Feb. 19.
“Hey! I have an awful life story and without your music I don’t know if I could have survived,” she tweeted him. “Do you think I could send you a letter?”
“Yeah, it is his music, and his story lifted me up when I was down,” Payton said yesterday.
When Bieber did not reply, she tried Obama and had better results.
On Monday, the day after Osama bin Laden was killed by Navy SEALs, the president was given his daily handful of letters from Americans to read, and Payton’s stood out, White House officials said.
“I sent it on a Web site that lets you send e-mails to the White House,” Payton said.
The next day, the White House called her mother, Diane — who didn’t even know Payton had written the letter, officials said. Obama invited Payton, her mother and her sister, Avery, to yesterday’s ceremony.
Payton spent days practicing a strong handshake, but in the end Obama gave her a presidential bear hug. She said he also told her that he “knows Justin” and that he would help arrange a meeting between the two.
The teen said she’s thrilled, but “I just don’t want it to seem like I only wrote the letter to meet Justin Bieber. I did it to honor my father,” she said. “My father is the reason that we all came together today. I miss and love him and don’t go a day without thinking about him.”
Her father, a Lynbrook, LI, native, worked for 17 years on Wall Street, including 12 at Cantor Fitzgerald. At the time of his death, at age 38, he headed the collateralized mortgage obligation desk on the top floors of the north tower.