by Ed Wilkinson

Everyone remembers where they were on Sept. 11, 2001. Mike Bellone and Bob Barrett know exactly where they were then and for the next 257 days. They were at Ground Zero, helping with the recovery efforts as New York City worked its way through the aftermath of the terrorist attacks.

This past week, both men were back at the site of the World Trade Center disaster, commemorating the 11th anniversary of that dark day in American history.

Barrett was a member of Ladder Co. 20 in Lower Manhattan on that day. Sept. 11 just happened to be his day off. But when he heard the news from TV, he hustled over the Brooklyn Bridge and joined in the battle that took the lives of more than 300 firefighters, including 15 members of his own company.

It was during the recovery campaign that Barrett met Bellone, who was an EMS worker volunteering his time. Over the ensuing months, the two became friends and have been collaborating ever since.

“That’s the way God works,” says Barrett. “I lost my friend from the Fire Department that day, but I met Mike who has become my best friend since.”

Together, the two played a part in the rescue of almost 400 bodies from the rubble that was the World Trade Center.

Bellone has arranged for crosses to be made from the steel that was used to construct the WTC, and he has distributed them to families of victims of the attack on America.

Today, the Brooklyn-born duo travel around the city and country with the organization they founded, Trauma Response Assistance for Children (TRAC). They talk with children and their communities about the effects of critical events such as Hurricane Katrina, the Columbia Shuttle disaster and of course, Ground Zero.

I had a chance to sit down with the two men on Sept. 11 just after they attended the anniversary observances at Ground Zero. During the interview which aired on Currents this past week, Bellone spoke about some of the long-term effects that the smoke and pollution from Ground Zero have caused. His lungs have been damaged and he sits rather than stands during speaking engagements, but both Bellone and Barrett would rather count the blessings they have in their families and the fraternity of New York’s Bravest.

Following the taping of our TV segment, both men sat in the news room and autographed copies of the book they wrote to mark the 10th anniversary of the tragedy.

In it, Bellone writes, “There have been struggles when I close my eyes at night and see flashbacks of the scene at Ground Zero that no person should have to face. Something as simple as seeing a chandelier or a certain chair at an unrelated event will trigger the emotion, the smells and sounds of Ground Zero.”

And for Barrett, he writes that the saddest thing is to see the children who lost parents at the World Trade Center. “How does one survive without that love, advice and guidance?” he asks.

Not waiting for the answer to that question, Bellone and Barrett have decided to do something to make a positive out of a negative.

Bellone and Barrett are the epitome of the slogan that has become the rallying call of 9/11: “Never Forget.” And we won’t as long as heroes like Bellone and Barrett continue to remind us of what they have seen and heard.

by Beth Griffin

RYE, N.Y. (CNS) – As Chief Joseph W. Pfeifer of the New York City Fire Department sees it, the 9/11 terrorist attacks were a global trauma and the 10th anniversary of the tragedy provides a transformative opportunity for the world community to pause and think about its spiritual dimension and its aftermath.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Pfeifer was chief of the 1st Battalion, one of the first on the scene and in charge of directing firefighter response in the north tower of the World Trade Center. He met his firefighter brother in the lobby of the building as Lt. Kevin Pfeifer responded to the second alarm. They exchanged a few words, and Kevin headed up the stairs. He helped evacuate workers and directed other firefighters to safety, but he was killed in the collapse of the building.

“People were angry at God and they had every right to be, but that was not my experience,” Pfeifer said in an interview with Catholic News Service. “I was walking back to the firehouse from the site on the second day, when we knew there would be no more survivors. It was completely dark except for the lights we had brought in. There was no power and there was smoke everywhere.

“Instead of anger, I felt an encounter, as if I was coming back to an old friend, or putting on an old sweatshirt. I had wrestled with God and spirituality before. I had had the experience of being in a conflicted place and trying to understand what it means,” Pfeifer said.

“How do you encounter spirituality and what is your personal experience of God? Mine was very much on West Street, walking back in complete sadness, but it was a place I’d been to before.”

Pfeifer graduated from Cathedral College in Douglaston, and studied two years at Immaculate Conception Seminary in Huntington, L.I., from which he later earned a master’s degree in theology. He said he was familiar with wrestling with God and trying to figure out what he was called to do with his life. He is now the chief of counterterrorism and emergency preparedness for the New York City Fire Department and addresses groups of people in many parts of the world.
Pfeifer said there is transformation through trauma.

“We used to think the 9/11 attacks were just New York and D.C., and Pennsylvania, but they were more than that,” he said. “It was a global trauma, an entire world encounter and transformation occurred” when people could see that all local acts of terrorism, whether in Ireland or Israel or Afghanistan, were represented at the World Trade Center.

“It gave the victims of terrorism an international voice and showed that terrorism is a crime against humanity,” he said.
People encounter spirituality in different ways, he said, and the 10th anniversary will allow people to connect their individual experiences with those of people in a larger group.

One such larger group devastated by the Sept. 11 attacks lives in Rockaway Peninsula at the southwest tip of the Diocese of Brooklyn.
Rockaway is a relatively isolated section of the populous borough of Queens. Generations of New Yorkers have escaped the summer heat on its Atlantic Ocean beaches and more than 100,000 people are now full-time residents of the handful of communities that span the narrow 10-mile stretch. The barrier peninsula is known locally as the Irish Riviera because it attracted so many New Yorkers of Irish ancestry.

Rockaway is home to firefighters, police officers, emergency responders and financiers and the collapse of the World Trade Center tore a huge hole in the heart of peninsula. Seventy residents were killed in the disaster. Many of them worshipped at one of the eight Catholic churches that punctuate the flat, sandy neck of land.

Pfeifer is a longtime summer resident of Breezy Point and worships at St. Thomas More Church in Rockaway Point. He described one of several memorials on the peninsula that includes quiet spaces to encourage reflection.

Msgr. Martin T. Geraghty was pastor of St. Francis de Sales, Belle Harbor, in 2001. Twelve of the World Trade Center victims were buried from the church. On Nov. 12, three days after the last funeral, Msgr. Geraghty was celebrating the 9 a.m. Mass when an American Airlines flight bound for the Dominican Republic crashed one block from the church, killing all 260 people on the plane and five on the ground, including Kathy Lawler, a long-time employee of the diocese.

“At Christmas 2001, a friend from Michigan asked if I was ‘over it yet’,” Msgr. Geraghty said. “I told him it’ll never be over for us. It has been a defining moment in the lives of families here.”
He said, “There is an ongoing role for people. The message of the Gospel didn’t become irrelevant that day. We’re just at the beginning: 2,000 years hasn’t been long enough for our tribal human hearts to absorb the message of Jesus Christ.”

Msgr. Pfeifer said tribal human hearts is his way to describe that human beings have only had a short time of mindfulness since their creation and still have a long way to go.

“We’re at the beginning of this. God is calling us out of tribalism into a different understanding,” he said.

Rosellen Dowdell is the widow of Lt. Kevin Dowdell, who was a New York firefighter. She is a parishioner at Blessed Trinity parish, which includes three churches in Rockaway Point.

“I’ve never blamed God,” she told CNS. “I’ve always looked to God for an answer. I guess I always hoped there was solace in going to Church and being in the presence of God.”

Msgr. Michael J. Curran, pastor of Blessed Trinity, said 10 years after the disaster, “So many of these families, who have every reason to be angry at God, have not given up. They are still faithful. I’m more aware of the spiritual strength of people. Folks are not fair-weather friends of God.

“The question of ‘why?’ is still out there, but they are willing to trust God and keep him at the center of their lives. Nobody has just slammed down their bat and ball and gone home,” he said.

by Cathy Rivera

Ten years ago I was planning a trip to South Beach for Labor Day weekend. I was also finalizing arrangements for my parents’ trip to San Francisco for their 60th birthdays. I was a 23-year-old administrative assistant working for Morgan Stanley in the greatest city in the world, in the busiest area of Manhattan, Times Square. I was single, and full of life.

You will hear many people say that Sept. 11 changed their lives, changed the world we live in, changed everything. But for many of them, that novelty wore off in a few weeks, months, maybe even years. Nearly 10 years later my life is still changed, as is the world I live in.

Ten years ago I thought I lost my best friend – my younger sister. For a few short hours, my family and I had no contact with her while she was on her way to work at Cantor Fitzgerald, in One World Trade Center. The phone calls would not stop. And then finally, the miracle we had all prayed for came true. She was safe, above ground and on her way back home. My miracle. This miracle that so many others had prayed for and sadly did not receive.

We had always been close – closer than any sisters we had known. We were each other’s first friends. The days and months following Sept. 11 are still very fresh in my memory. I remember riding the train going back to work and silently crying behind my sunglasses envisioning myself at my sister’s funeral, unable to cope and deal with such an enormous loss.

When we were little girls, I was afraid to go to bed alone, so every night whenever I got tired, I would say “C’mon Maureen, it’s time for bed” and even if she wasn’t tired, she would come to bed anyway. These thoughts flooded my head. The countless times she held my hand as I cried over a lost love. The brutal honesty and kind apology that always followed.

No matter how hard I tried to push those thoughts and images from my mind, I couldn’t. So I let my tears flow and thanked God for my miracle. So yes, she may be two years younger, but in many ways has always been the older one. So, what would I be without her? I had no idea. All I knew was that I was spared such an enormous loss. A loss that is so unbearable to fathom that it still brings tears to my eyes.

I remember walking home a few weeks later and seeing all of the beautiful American flags in the windows of stores and homes, candles on doorsteps and barrages of flowers in the driveway of the local firehouses. The world certainly changed in just a few short weeks. Neighbors smiled at one another, said hello. When someone asked “How are you,” we actually listened to the response and we cared. My friend Meg and I decided one night to take a trip down to the West Side where the firefighters, NYPD and EMS were working tirelessly – looking for remains.

Throngs of people cheered, clapped and cried as the fire trucks came by and then the mood turned somber as the dump trucks passed. Men took their hats off and we all bowed our heads. Someone’s loved one could be in there. And the thought was enough for anyone passing by to show respect. Weeks after this mass killing, thousands and thousands of people still flocked to the streets of Manhattan in support of our fallen heroes. They were doing something we all needed. They were looking for closure. I know this because my roommate at the time was an NYPD officer. She searched remains on a conveyer belt for hours and hours on end. She was looking for something anything that could be identified and give peace to one family.

We later walked downtown to the site that was now being called Ground Zero. And I will never forget seeing the flyers plastered to the walls of buildings, gates, light poles, garbage cans, basically anything that could hold an 8.5 x 11 in sheet of paper with a picture and brief description of my husband, my sister, my mother, my brother. The word “Missing” screaming out at you. “Missing!” “Missing!”
The hope that was still in the hearts of those people was enough to break even the strongest man down. Because seeing the damage firsthand, there was really no such thing as “missing.”

The mention of 9/11 will create a very solemn silence in a room. Most people are brought back to that day and that small sliver of silence is a remembrance for us. For those who lost someone. When my sister and I are in the same room, we share a glance. Well, I guess we don’t share it.  I always look to her first to see her reaction. She’ll give me a knowing nod that menas, “Yeah, I’m okay Cat.” And my nod in return is really to God – thanking Him again for my miracle – just as I have done for the last 3,650 days.

Cathy Rivera is a resident of Woodside.

by Ed Wilkinson

Ten years after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it’s clear that it was a day that changed all of our lives. The attacks against America awakened us to the terrible threat of terrorism and the reality that it could to any one of us.

I was driving to work that morning when a bulletin came on the Imus radio show. The popular shock jock seemed genuinely stunned as he reported that a plane had hit the Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. At first it seemed to be an air trafficaccident, incredible as it seemed.

For me, it was personal. My sister worked in the Trade Center. I knew she worked high up, but I wasn’t sure in which of the Twin Towers. As I arrived at the office, I stood on the Prospect Expwy. overpass and stared into Manhattan at the landmark building that now resembled a giant Roman Candle. Flames and smoke were jumping out of the upper floors and a steady stream of papers seem to fly out of the structure and out over New York Harbor.

As I ran up to my fourth-floor office, I joined the other staffers who already were pressed against a window watching the historic event unfold. We watched as the second plane crashed and we then knew this was more than an accident.

I thought again of my sister and ran to the phones to call other family members. No one had heard anything from her.
This was Tuesday, our press day, and the news staff began ripping up the planned pages to begin laying out a whole new paper. What was going on and how did it affect the diocese?

We began to get word that Bishop Thomas V. Daily would celebrate a special Mass at noon at St. James Cathedral. Msgr. Guy Puglisi, the Superintendent of Schools, was rushing out to visit local Catholic schools to assess the situation.

As the magnitude of the crisis became more apparent, Catholic Charities was getting ready to send social workers into the field to assist in any way they could. Fire and police chaplains were being called to the scene. Tablet photographers ran to the roof of the diocesan headquarters and began snapping photos of the conflagration.

It was three hours before a call came that my sister had escaped from the 82nd floor office for EuroBrokers. She was calling from Greenwich Village as she made her way north and away from the scene of the attack. She had walked down the staircase and was still in the building when it was hit by the second plane. She didn’t know it at the time but many of her colleagues were not as lucky as she was. It was simply a matter of which stairs she had chosen to use.

We worked late that evening getting the paper to print with the story that would continue to impact us for weeks and years. Our new front page showed the Twin Towers in flames and the headline read “Let Us Pray!”

That’s exactly what we did in the ensuing days. People flocked to churches for special liturgies. Volunteers responded to the call to search for the missing at the site. Some were never found. We are still praying. We still feel vulnerable.

We learned a lot from our response to 9/11. We realized that family and friends were the real valuables in life. We knew enough to search for answers beyond our day-to-day lives.

We can never forget those who were lost that day and those who survived. We can never forget our responses as we tried to make sense of it all.   Ten years later, the wounds may be numbed by time but they are still there, never to be forgotten.