On a wall at Manhattan’s East 29th Street firehouse, above a growing shrine of flowers, sympathy cards and children’s drawings, there’s a blackboard. Scrawled on it in chalk is Ladder Company 7’s duty roster for the morning of Sept. 11: RICHARD… PRINCIOTTA… CAIN… MENDEZ… FOTI… MULDOWNEY. Someone has taped up a note in big letters: DO NOT TOUCH THIS BOARD. The surviving firefighters say the names will stay there until the lost crew comes home.
Rodney Dickens’s first plane trip was supposed to reward him for beating the odds. The oldest son of the single mother of five children in one of Washington’s toughest neighborhoods, the 11-year-old honors student was one of three outstanding local sixth graders chosen for a special prize: a four-day field trip to the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, sponsored by the National Geographic Society. Dickens’s mother had two goals: to keep him off the streets and nurture his love of books. He died along with his two fellow winners, three dedicated teachers and two members of the National Geographic staff who were accompanying the group. His desk at Ketchum Elementary is covered with cards and mementos.
“He would have held my hand. He would’ve been in the room. I had a hard time being happy.”–KELLIE LEE, wife of Backstreet Boys roadie Danny Lee, 34. She gave birth two days after his death.
Life at Fiduciary Trust left Crossley Williams Jr. dissatisfied. On Monday the 28-year-old financial analyst told his parents he had decided to go to business school. The next morning he called them from his 95th-floor office in Tower 2 to say a plane had just crashed into Tower 1. “He promised to call as soon as he got out,” says his father. They’re still waiting.
In Kaysville, Utah, the family is mourning matriarch Mary Alice Wahlstrom, 78, and her daughter, Carolyn Beug, 48, of Santa Monica, Calif., passengers on American Flight 11. It’s a close-knit clan: in addition to Carolyn there are four sons, 16 grandchildren and a great-grandchild on the way. Now the family’s main concern is Mary Alice’s husband Norman, 83. “Grandma was his source of thought, his energy,” says grandson Nate Wahlstrom, 24. “Grandpa was really confused most of the day yesterday. When we first tried to tell him what happened to grandma and my aunt, he was just staring at the television. He kept asking us, ‘But where are they right now?’ We had to keep explaining that the plane crashed.”
Best friends Ruth McCourt and Paige Hackel booked separate flights to Los Angeles. That way, they joked to friends, at least one would survive, no matter what. McCourt and her 4-year-old daughter, Juliana, took United Flight 175. Hackel, the little girl’s godmother, was on American Flight 11. They were all going to Disneyland.
Christopher Newton, 38, president and CEO of Work/Life Benefits, had a bad habit: “He played it so close on the clock to catching flights that he was forever missing them and having to rebook,” says Bill Gurzi, Work/Life’s director of marketing. “When we didn’t hear from him, we thought, ‘Odds are he missed this flight, too, so we’re not going to worry’.” Newton leaves a wife and two children, 10 and 7.
David Retic, 33, of Needham, Mass., was a partner in a venture-capital firm. He and his wife have a 4-year-old son and a 2-year-old daughter; Susan is expecting their third child in November. “Dave left notes for the kids on the table. He does that sometimes. I LOVE YOU, I’LL SEE YOU SOON. DADDY. So that’s something nice we’ll get to keep forever. We were, up until now, the luckiest people ever.”
Cindy Gonzalez and Jennifer Gordon are looking for their friend Joyce Carpeneto, 40, who worked for General Telecom on the 83d floor of Tower 1. “She left a message on her mom’s answering machine after the first plane hit and said they were evacuating. I’ve talked to her mother. She had to be at work at 7:30 in the morning so we know she was there.” Adds Gordon: “I don’t want to speak in the past tense but she just really loved life. A very joyous person–and she’s a fighter.”
“Please be happy. Please live your life. That’s an order.” –BRIAN SWEENEY, 38, a United Airlines passenger, leaving a phone message for his wife, Julia.
Leslie Whittington, her husband, Charles Falkenberg, and their two young daughters, Dana and Zoe, were excited about their long-awaited plane trip to Australia, but the farewell parties were starting to get to her. “Come on, I’m not going away forever,” she told a friend. “It’s not as if you’re never going to see me again.”
He was only 25, but Shawn Nassaney had already “done everything,” says his cousin Albert Shaw. Nassaney had spent a semester in London and lived for a year in Sydney, Australia. Last Tuesday’s plan for adventure: a trip to Hawaii with his college sweetheart, Lynn Goodchild, 25. A relative, Bethaney LaBarre, 25, escaped from the World Trade Center’s South Tower moments before Nassaney’s plane slammed into it.
Eric Stein is looking for Sean McNulty, who just turned 30 and worked for Cantor Fitzgerald on the 105th floor of Tower 1. “He was with a group of people who said they were on their way out of the building, but he was above the first plane’s impact so we’re very worried. He was on a very high floor. What we’re really trying to do is reach anybody from Cantor Fitz who was on those high floors and made it out, so we could talk to them and find out if they saw him leaving before or after that. He was the type of person who would have been helping other people. We think that he wouldn’t necessarily have been the first to make it out the door.”
Simone Mitchell is looking for the father of her 9-year-old son, Julian, Port Authority police officer Clinton Davis, 38. “He was on duty on Tuesday so he probably went down there. I haven’t heard from him since. But we know he’s going to be walking out of the rubble. We know he’s OK; he’s a military man. We are confident that if he was anywhere near there, he’s OK because he knows the building. We definitely still have hope; we’re not giving that up.”
Michelle Marie Reed, 26, worked at Aon in Tower 2. Her aunt and her twin sister are looking for her. The aunt, Nancy Davis, asked NEWSWEEK to include this message to Michelle: “We all love you and hope to see you soon.”
Paul Ambrose, a self-described policy wonk, was so excited about the medical conference on public health issues that he was planning to attend in California that he set two alarm clocks to make sure he wouldn’t miss his early-morning flight from Dulles. The 32-year-old physician worked part time with low-income patients at a clinic in Arlington, Va. He got engaged three weeks ago.
“He knows but he doesn’t understand. I told him his mom is the bravest mom in the world.” –SANDE SANTIAGO, at the funeral for her EMT partner Yamel Merino, 24. Merino left an 8-year-old son.
Even though William Caswell, 54, a Navy physicist from Silver Spring, Md., traveled frequently for his job, he never strayed from his morning ritual. Every day he awakened his daughter, Jennifer (“He was my alarm clock,” says the 17-year-old), then brought his wife, Jean, a cup of coffee so the two could do the crossword puzzle together. On Tuesday they didn’t have time to finish the puzzle before Caswell left home, so as he drove to Dulles Airport he called home from his hands-free mobile phone. Jean read him the questions and he fed her the answers. Even with the complicated back-and-forth, Caswell was on time to make his flight.
On Wednesday, South Bronx firefighter Scott Burik worked amid the rubble all day. “At least 10 people I’m buddies with are dead,” he told a NEWSWEEK reporter. The following day he saw the reporter again. “Now it’s up to 32,” he said.
Ernie Willcher had a new job. After 40 years with the Army, he’d finally retired. So five months ago he started a second career as a consultant. When his wife, Shirley, came downstairs early Tuesday morning, Willcher was rushing out the door with a suit jacket in his hand. Hours later as she watched the horrifying scenes unfold on television, she remembered the jacket. He only took his suit coat when he had important meetings. “Dear God, did he have a meeting at the Pentagon?” she cried. He did.
“You hear a lot about the people who switched off a tragic flight at the last minute,” says David Filipov. “My father, unfortunately, was one of the people who switched onto it.” Alex Filipov of Concord, Mass., was an electronics consultant and engineer who had always been obsessed with complicated gadgets. “He’d always show me little screws and parts and things and say, ‘Look at this, can you believe it?’” says Filipov. “And I’d go, ‘Sure, Dad, whatever.’ I could never understand what he was talking about.”
David Brandhorst, 3, was flying home to West Hollywood, Calif., with his two dads. Dan Brandhorst, 42, and Ronald Gamboa, 33, were founding members of the Pop Luck Club, a support group for gay fathers. Their deaths aboard United Flight 175 devastated their circle. As another dad in the group says, “It’s difficult to know what to tell your child when you don’t know what to tell yourself.”
“I have to do something for the 700 families. Seven hundred families. I can’t say it without crying.” –HOWARD LUTNICK, whose firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, was devastated. Lutnick had been out of the office, taking his son to kindergarten.
In his last hour Thomas Burnett Jr. was busy. He called his wife to say he loved her. He alerted authorities that his plane was being hijacked, and he joined other passengers aboard United Flight 93 in taking on the hijackers who had diverted their San Francisco-bound plane. On his third call, he told her that a passenger vote had decided that he and several men planned “to do something about it.” His final words: “I love you, honey.” “Tom was a very determined person,” says his priest, Father Frank Colacicco. “He believed God gave us free will to do evil or do good.” For Burnett, the choice was easy.
Ronald Ruben, 36, was a trader at KBC Securities on the 86th floor of Tower 2. “He was all I had,” says his sister Leslie Dillon. “Just me, him and my sister. Both my parents have passed. When my mother died, he had her and my father’s initials tattooed over his heart: M.P., for Marjorie and Peter.”
A friend was on the phone with Gary Frank when the first plane slammed into the World Trade Center. The 35-year-old computer programmer, who worked on the 92d floor of Tower 2, said he was headed for the stairs. For the next two days his desperate parents couldn’t even search for him. They live in New Jersey, and all the bridges and tunnels into the city were closed. Late last week they made it. They signed a missing-persons report and dropped off hair samples and dental records at the medical examiner’s office. They checked every hospital they could find. They put up posters. And they prayed.
Mary-Rae Sopper, 35, was setting out for a new life. This summer she decided to quit a rising career as an attorney in Washington and follow her true passion, gymnastics. The former high-school champion was aboard American Airlines Flight 77, heading for her new job as head coach at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She was supposed to meet the team on Thursday.
“What more can I say except that I loved her and we are praying to God for her.” –AKBAR BOLOURCHI, whose wife, Touri, 69, was on United Flight 175.
Paul Enright’s roommate, 28-year-old Sean Lugano, is missing. “It’s weird to see the different stages of grief that people are at. In Sean’s family, his brothers and sisters are further along, but his mother still holds out hope. I haven’t even started grieving yet. Once you get past the shock you get angry, and once you get past the anger, then you can start grieving. You’re resentful and bitter, but then you get past that. Then, you just remember. We haven’t gotten to that point yet.”
In “Grits, Guts and Rudy Giuliani” (SPECIAL REPORT, Sept. 24), we described the murder rate in New York as “surging.” In fact, homicides, which rose slightly in 2000, are down 11 percent in 2001 and 68 percent since Giuliani became mayor. In “Ground Zero,” we reported that two Port Authority police officers fell more than 80 floors and survived in the World Trade Center collapse. The Port Authority now believes that the officers reached the ground floor by foot before the towers fell. In “Love and Loss,” we misspelled the surname of David Retik, who was a partner in a venture-capital firm. NEWSWEEK very much regrets these errors.
