Often at the Beginning of Something Else

 

Jeremiah Joseph Ahern was born in the Bronx on September 8, 1927.  Seventy-four years and three days later, he was killed in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001.   Mr. Ahern served in the United States Army in World War II.  When the war ended, as a nineteen-year-old man, he went to work.  Spoiler alert:  He never stopped.  

Mr. Ahern attended Baruch College, working for the United States Post Office as he earned his degree, and continued to work for the Post Office thereafter for a total of ten years.  He moved on to the Internal Revenue Service, where he worked until 1982, when at age 55 he retired from the IRS.    

Retirement from the IRS did not mean retirement from working apparently.  Almost immediately after he "retired" from the IRS, he went to work for the State of New York in its Department of Taxation and Finance.  

The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance had an office on the 86th Floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center.  It was there that Mr. Ahern was working on that tragically beautiful Tuesday morning twenty Septembers ago when the murderous cowards who had hijacked United Airlines Flight 175 flew the jet into the South Tower, striking the building between the 75th and 85 floors.  

@The Ahern Family

-AK 

The Mighty Quinn

 

James Francis Quinn was the middle son of Noreen and Michael Quinn's Brooklyn-based power trio, preceded by Michael by a couple of years and followed by Joseph a couple of years later.  At shortly before 9 am on what had dawned as a glorious late summer Tuesday in New York City, Jimmy Quinn was where he usually was, which was at work for Cantor Fitzgerald in its offices in the North Tower of the World Trade Center.  Jjmmy Quinn was only twenty-three years old. 

He had played basketball at Xavierian High School in Brooklyn and, thereafter, had been the student manager of the basketball team at Manhattan College, where his fellow students nicknamed him "the Mayor".  He loved sports and rooted passionately for his beloved New York Mets.  

At the time of Jimmy's death on September 11, 2001, his younger brother Joe was a 21-year-old Cadet at the United States Military Academy in West Point.  Upon his graduation from West Point, Joe Quinn has served this nation with distinction, both as a member of the United States Army and in other capacities, which service included multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.  

In 2015, the Brothers Quinn (Michael and Joe), decided upon a way to ensure Jimmy Quinn's life and legacy shall not be forgotten while honoring a Brooklyn institution.  Way back when, in 1867, Charles Feltman of Coney Island invented the hot dog, which he marketed as a convenient way for beachgoers to enjoy a frankfurter sausage on a long bun, without dealing with the hassle of plates or silverware.  Feltman's of Coney Island became an institution and Charles Feltman's "Coney Island Red Hots" became the impetus behind the creation of Feltman's Ocean Pavilion in Coney Island, a restaurant that served as many as 10,000 customers a day.   Over time, however, business faded.  In 1954,  Feltman's of Coney Island shuttered its doors - seemingly forever.  

Joe and Michael Quinn brought it back in 2015.  They did so to honor the memory of their brother, Jimmy.  And oh how they have honored it.  Feldman's is a veteran-owned and operated Gold Star business from which has sprung the 3 Brothers Foundation.  Annually, a portion of Feldman's online sales is donated to various organizations, including the Headstrong Project, the Travis Manion Foundation, Tuesday's Children, and Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), which support and provide assistance for veterans and their loved ones.  

Jimmy Quinn loved the New York Mets.  Annually, since his death twenty Septembers ago, close to 200 members of his family have gathered at Citi Field - wearing a t-shirt created for the occasion - to celebrate the "Annual Jimmy Quinn Mets Game".  On September 11, they gather to read his name at the 9/11 Memorial ceremony.  

You'll not see nothing like the Mighty Quinn.  Each and every one as mighty as the next.  

May it always be so. 

-AK 

Requiem for a Beautiful Soul

 

Technically speaking, Lance Corporal Rylee McCollum of the United States Marine Corps is not a casualty of September 11, 2001.  On that terrible Tuesday morning two decades ago, he was not even a year old, having only been born that February.   Yet the events of that day, and those that followed thereafter, would inexorably shape the direction of his life.

Thursday, Lance Corporal Rylee McCollum, 20 years young, who was on his first deployment in Afghanistan - helping safeguard the American evacuation - was one of thirteen American services members killed by a suicide bomber outside the airport in Kabul.   He graduated from high school just two years ago, but the young Marine from Bondurant, Wyoming was a husband whose wife Jiennah Crayton is expecting the couple's first child next month.  

Rylee McCollum dreamed of becoming a United States Marine since he was three years old.  Roughly two and one half years ago, he and his friend Eli Stone enlisted together.  According to Rylee's father, Roice McCollum, once his son finished serving his country, he hoped to serve his community as a teacher and a wrestling coach.  

Now, he will not have the chance to pursue that dream.  He will never meet his baby.   He will not watch his child grow up.  He and Jiennah will not grow old together.  He will not grow old at all. 

As we approach the twentieth anniversary of September 11, we are reminded that that day continues to claim victims.  Thursday, it claimed thirteen more.  

-AK

Telling Time in a New York Minute

"New York Minute" 

Don Henley

Middletown Township, New Jersey had thirty-seven of its sons and daughters killed on September 11, 2001.  Thirty-seven.   An eerie symbol of the loss was seen in the parking lot of the train station, where dozens of residents who had parked a car there that morning to catch the train into Manhattan, where they worked, never returned to hop into the car for the drive home to their family. 

Two of the thirty-seven were members of the Lang family. 

Rosanne Lang, 42, was the only daughter in a family of twelve siblings from Brooklyn, New York.  Six brothers preceded her.  Five followed her.   Marriage took her west, to Los Angeles, California, with her infant son, Michael.  Divorce brought her home to the east coast where she, like a great many members of her family, settled in Middletown Township, raising Michael as a single mother and forging a successful career at Cantor Fitzgerald as an equities trader.  

Her oldest brother, William, summed up his sister beautifully, "Rosanne was a self-made, successful woman.  She was this amazing woman, always smiling."  His only sister, forever his little sister, was his "princess".  Her son, Michael, was just seventeen at the time of his mom's death.  

As if it is not cruel enough for a family to lose one loved one to the deliberate machinations of murderous cowards, on September 11, 2001, the Lang family was unnecessarily punished.  Brendan Lang, thirty years young, and recently married, also died that morning at the World Trade Center.  Brendan Lang was William's son. 

Brendan Lang was a construction manager for Structure Tone and was doing work at the World Trade Center that morning.  After the first plane struck the North Tower, where he aunt Rosanne worked, he telephoned his parents to tell them what had happened and that he had a plan.  It is the family's belief that knowing his Aunt Rosanne was in her office in the North Tower, when Brendan hung up with his parents, he made it his mission to go help his aunt.  Neither of them made it out of the North Tower.  Brendan Lang's wife, Sandy, survived him.  

In a New York minute, everything can change.  Sometimes it does in the most tragic of ways.  

 

The Double-Ended Candle Burner

I did not know Brian Thomas Cummins.  Although our time as undergraduates at CU Boulder overlapped, he was a senior when I was a freshman, to my knowledge our paths never crossed.  Not even one time.   

Now they do annually, even if just for a moment, on the final weekend of September. 

Brian Thomas Cummins,

University of Colorado, Boulder 

(Finance 1986)

Brian was the fourth son of six boys, born in Somerville, New Jersey and raised in Belle Mead, New Jersey, a bucolic little piece of paradise located about ten minutes away from Princeton that the Kenny clan also called home for several years when I was a small child.  Upon reading his brother Brendan's tribute to him, I immediately wished I had known him - even if just for a little while.  I smiled reading Brendan's description of him, "He had quick, alert eyes that took you in with every conversation.  He could immediately grasp situations for what they were.  He had fun." 

He loved to ski.  He loved to surf.  He loved what he did for a living and excelled at it.  After he graduated from CU in 1986, he returned home to New Jersey and attained his MBA at Rutgers University.  While he was in graduate school, he opened and operated The Lobster Trap restaurant in Belmar.  

Brian transitioned from Belmar to Wall Street where he worked on the trading floor of the Exchange for Donaldson, Lufkin, and Jenrette before he joined Cantor Fitzgerald.  

He started at Cantor Fitzgerald as an Assistant Trader in 1993.  On the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, he was in Cantor Fitzgerald's offices on the 104th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center in his position as an Equity Market Maker and a Partner.   Back on February 26, 1993, when terrorists staged the first attack on the World Trade Center, he had also been at work and had survived.  On September 11, 2001, tragically he did not. 

If it is possible to achieve some measure of solace out of a deliberate murder of a loved one, then perhaps the Cummins family did when firefighters working "the Pile" at Ground Zero recovered Brian's body on October 30, 2001.  He was buried next to his brother Patrick at Madonna Cemetery in Fort Lee, New Jersey on Saturday, November 3, 2001.   

Brian Cummins never married.  He was just thirty-eight when he died.  His survivors included his parents, his four brothers, their four wives, and nine nephews and nieces.  

In this piece, the final words about Brian Cummins belong, as they should, to Brendan Cummins:

He prodded and pushed you to do well and was the 

first to help you out the second you needed it.  

He was my big brother. 

Some people might say

he burnt the candle at both ends -

and we're glad he did. 

-AK  

Peter Pan and Wendy

 

Christine Egan was born in Hull, England, where she was raised and where she lived until, upon graduation from the Hull School of Nursing, she moved to Canada.  She lived among and provided medical assistance and education to the Inuit people living in remote northern Canada.  

She embraced them, their culture, and their language and they returned that embrace.  She was more than respected.  She was a beloved member of their community.  To better herself and to better serve them, she earned her PhD in Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba (Go Bisons!) in 1999. 

Christine Egan, 55, never married.  She traveled extensively.   In early September 2001, her travels brought her to the New York City metropolitan area...

...where her younger brother, Michael Egan, 51, lived and worked.  Michael, his wife Anna Maria, and two sons Jonathan and Matthew, had moved to Middletown Township, New Jersey from Connecticut earlier that year.  Michael Egan, a Vice-President at Aon Corporation, worked in lower Manhattan - on the 105th floor of the World Trade Center's South Tower.  

Michael and Anna Maria Egan were preparing for a 20th anniversary celebratory trip to Bermuda.  Aunt Christine had come to stay with Jonathan and Matthew while their parents were away.  Christine arrived a few days prior to the Egans' departure.  So, on Tuesday September 11, 2001, Christine Egan accompanied her brother to his office "for a cup of coffee and a peek out the windows."  

Michael Egan was on the telephone, speaking to Anna Maria as he did every morning, when the South Tower collapsed.  When he called, Anna Maria was hopeful that it was to report that he and Christine had gotten out of the building and were somewhere safe.  "No, we're stuck", was his reply.  Knowing perhaps not what else to say and knowing, for certain, nothing else needed to be said, Anna Maria said, "I love you, darling."  Neither hung up.  Anna Maria Egan was still talking to Michael as she watched the collapse of the South Tower live on television.  

Christine Egan and her brother, Michael Egan

-AK 

Mikey B.

Michael Emmett Brennan always wanted to be a firefighter.  It was his boyhood dream.  He was twenty-one, in 1995, when he left college so he could join the FDNY.  

He began his career at "The Pride of Midtown", Engine 54, Ladder 4, and Battalion 9 at 48th Street and 8th Avenue in Manhattan.  Although his career in the FDNY took him first to a house in Queens and thereafter to Brooklyn, he returned to Engine 54 and moved over to Ladder 4.  

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, he responded to the World Trade Center with Ladder 4.  He was one of fifteen members of his house who died on that terrible day.  

FF Brennan was "Mikey B." to his family and friends, a lover of life and one who loved a good prank, whether he was pulling it or on its receiving end.  He was survived by his parents, stepparents, four sisters, and four brothers, all of whom loved him dearly. 

FF Michael Emmett Brennan was just twenty-seven.  

FF Michael E. Brennan 

FDNY Ladder 4

-AK 

Semper Fi

 

I do not know whether Sergeant Mike Curtin of the NYPD, a member of the Department's Emergency Service Unit, ever met Muhammad Ali.  I do know that he took Ali's words to heart and he put them into action every day.   He was the Squad Sergeant for ESU's Truck Company 2, which is based on 125th Street in Harlem.  Sgt. Curtin was, in the words of Officer Robert Yaeger with whom he served on Truck 2, "the epitome of an E cop.  He was always thinking on his feet and wanted you to think on your feet too." 

Before he became "Sgt. Mike Curtin, NYPD", he had been "Sgt. Major Mike Curtin, USMC".  He was an active-duty Marine for a dozen years, which service included seeing action during Operation Desert Storm.  

Mike Curtin had been on the job, protecting and serving the people of New York City, for thirteen years.  During those thirteen years, he was sometimes called upon to assist those far beyond the geographical boundaries of New York City: 

In 1995, Curtin was one of the NYPD/FDNY contingent sent to 

Oklahoma City immediately after Timothy McVeigh's cowardly 

bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which claimed

168 lives.  Curtin, while digging through the rubble, saw a bit of

clothing, the distinctive blue pants with the blood red stripe, and

knew he had found the body of a fellow Marine.  He and his 

colleagues dug for five hours and were finally able to extricate the

remains of 28-year-old USMC Captain Randy Guzman, who worked

the recruiting station in the Murrah Building.  Curtin gathered some

fellow Marine rescue workers.  The body was draped with the 

American flag and solemnly carried out of the still-collapsing building.

If one visits the Oklahoma City Memorial, they will find a section

honoring those brave first responders from New York, including 

Curtin, who took part in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City blast

and later died on 9/11 at the World Trade Center. 

-"9/11 Remembered - Twenty Years Later" 

Bob Martin 

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Sgt. Curtin responded to the World Trade Center following a terrorist attack for the second time, having done so on February 26, 1993 also.  Tragically, unlike that dismally cold February day eight-and-one-half-years earlier, on that beautiful, sun-splashed September day, Sgt. Curtin did not make it home to his wife Helga (a fellow Marine), and the couple's three daughters.  He was killed while rescuing people from the Twin Towers.  He was forty-five years old. 

Sgt. Mike Curtin did, eventually, make it home to Helga and his girls.  On the night of March 6, 2002, ESU members working the site now known as Ground Zero, found Sgt. Curtin.  Immediately, the USMC Public Affairs Office in midtown Manattan, of which Major David Anderson, USMC, served as the Director, was inundated with phone calls from Sgt. Curtin's fellow E cops, all of whom left him the same message, "Dave, get down here - we found the Sergeant Major."  

Mike Curtin's remains were carried up from and out of Ground Zero with the same solemnity and reverence he had himself ensured those of Captain Guzman had been carried out of the wreckage of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City six-plus years earlier.  When the procession carrying Sgt. Curtin made it to the top of the bridge, there waiting to carry Sgt. Curtin off the site was his ESU Truck - Truck 2.  And when the time came for those who had carried Sgt. Curtin to Truck 2 to climb up onto the Truck to coordinate the handing up of his remains, it was Helga, Sgt. Curtin's wife and fellow Marine, who did it.  

Sergeant Michael Curtin, NYPD - ESU Truck 2

-AK 

The Renaissance Man

Police Officer John William Perry served the people of New York City with honor and pride from his post in the 40th Precinct in the Bronx from the time he was appointed to the NYPD in 1993.  The path that had led him to the NYPD might have been a bit more unconventional than that of his fellow officers.  He was truly a renaissance man. 

As a small child in Brooklyn, he was diagnosed with a learning disability, which he not only overcame, he eviscerated.  He began studying French in the eighth grade.  By the time of his death he spoke it, Spanish, Swedish, Russian, and Portugese (among others) and was learning Albanian.  He graduated from NYU Law School, passed the New York Bar, and practiced as an immigration law specialist before applying to the Police Academy.  He was an actor - taking parts in movies and TV shows that filmed in and around New York, such as NYPD Blue.  He volunteered his time as an investigator for the Kings County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.  

On that that terrible Tuesday morning twenty Septembers ago, Police Officer John William Perry's morning began at 1 Police Plaza (a/k/a "the Puzzle Palace").  He was off-duty and was a 1 PP filling out his retirement papers.  He was off to begin his next career:  a medical malpractice attorney at a Manhattan law firm.  While he was there, he learned of the first plane striking the North Tower.  He stopped filling out his papers, and in spite of being off-duty, raced with all due speed to the World Trade Center.  He apparently was not wearing any clothing or uniform that identified him as an NYPD officer, so he bought a golf shirt with the NYPD logo on it, which he put on as he headed over to the Twin Towers.  

Officer Perry was working with other officers to evacuate people from the Towers at the moment the South Tower collapsed.  He and his friend, NYPD Deputy Inspector Timothy Pearson were helping a woman who, upon descending the stairwell to the North Tower's lobby, viewed the horror of the plaza outside the building, and had become paralyzed by panic.  She could not go on.  Perry and Pearson each took an arm and started guiding her out of the building.  As they did, the South Tower collapsed.  Pearson would later describe what happened, "A wind like a tornado came at us, carrying debris and glass and soot.  It was sheer pandemonium.  There was complete darkness.  Windows shattered and parts of the floor collapsed."   

Deputy Inspector Pearson never again saw Officer Perry or the woman the two were helping to safety.  

Police Officer John William Perry was thirty-eight years old. 

P.O. John William Perry - NYPD

End of Watch: 09/11/2001

@Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation

-AK 

One Who Believed He Could

We are now less than three weeks from the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks.  Twenty-one days.  Twenty-one days can be an eye blink.  Twenty-one days can be an eternity. 

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, Peter Paul Apollo was twelve days away from celebrating his twenty-seventh birthday.  An equities trader at Cantor Fitzgerald, he was preparing to relocate from Cantor's office in the World Trade Center to its Shrewsbury, New Jersey office.  When he awoke on what proved to be the last day of his all-too-short life, his wedding to his fiance, Debbie Johnson, was only sixty-six days away.  None of those milestones, all of which were so tantalizingly close, were milestones he reached. 

The poem above is one that his family found in an old college scrapbook Peter had kept after graduating from the University of South Carolina.  His parents, who survived him, said he was the man about whom Walter Wintle wrote.  He was the man who never doubted himself, his plan, or all he could attain.  He did not merely think he could win.  He believed he could.  

And that, indeed, made all the difference.

Drive, Determination, and More Drive

Mark D. Rosenberg - "Mickey" to family and friends - conducted a great deal of business in the Far East, which of course necessitated a number of extra-long trips from his home in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, which he shared with his wife of thirty years, Meredith, and in which he and Meredith had raised their two daughters, Rachel and Sara.  He not only endured them, he thrived on them.  He was driven to be excellent and did not complain about the hard work required to attain that success.  

On the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, Mickey Rosenberg boarded United Flight 93 in Newark, buckled himself into his seat in first-class, and began what was intended to be the first leg of a very long travel day with a cross-country flight to San Francisco.  

United Flight 93's takeoff from Newark that morning was delayed by roughly forty minutes.  It finally took off at 8:42 am.  Four minutes later, the North Tower of the World Trade Center was struck.  At 9:27 am, Captain Jason Diehl checked in with air traffic control in Cleveland and reported all was well.  Almost immediately thereafter, the calm was shattered by frantic calls of "Mayday! Mayday!"  At 9:30 am, first-class passenger Tom Burnett telephoned his wife Deena.  He told her that the plane had been hijacked and that the hijackers had stabbed and killed, Mickey Rosenberg, a fellow first-class passenger.  He directed his wife to call the authorities and report what he had told her. 

In addition to his wife and his daughters, Mickey Rosenberg's mother, Dorothy, survived him.  His dad, Irving, with whom he had worked before forging his own path in business, which led to him being the President of MDR Global Resources, Inc. at the time of his death, predeceased him.   He was fifty-two years old.  

-AK 

Fear-Resistant

While it was most assuredly not something she intended or wanted to become when she boarded her flight out of Newark Airport on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, Marion Britton became a window into a moment of time whose specific details would have otherwise been left to the vagaries of time and speculation but for her efforts and those of several of her fellow passengers.   Jurors in the 2006 sentencing trial of Zacarias Moussaoui heard recordings of conversations passengers, including Ms. Britton, had with family and friends on the ground following the terrorists' takeover of the flight.  It was Ms. Britton who reported to one of her friends that the hijackers had slit the throats of two of her fellow passengers.  

She had the terrible misfortune of flying out of Newark that morning on United Flight 93, the destination of which was San Francisco, California, but the final resting place of which became Shanksville, Pennsylvania and not the murderous cowards' hoped-for targets of the White House or the U.S. Capitol Building, thanks to the desperate courage of its passengers.    

Marion Britton spent more than two decades working for the United States Census Bureau.  At the time of her death, she was the Assistant Regional Director of the Bureau's New York office.  On what proved to be the final morning of her life, she had boarded Flight 93 with one of her co-workers, Waleska Martinez, to attend a conference in San Francisco.  

Marion Britton was fifty-three years young at the time of her death.  

-AK

A Generous and Righteous Man

As if the tragedies of the deaths of the first responders who died in lower Manhattan on that terrible September Tuesday morning were not in and of themselves terrible enough (rhetorical observation for indeed they were), the awfulness of the day is exacerbated by the fact that a number of the men and women of the FDNY, the NYPD, and the PAPD of NY/NJ killed in the line of duty that morning died while being someplace they were neither obliged nor required to be.  Whether they were off-duty - and responded on their own time - or were assigned someplace altogether different and were drawn to the World Trade Center by the inexorable pull of knowing that it was the place they were most desperately needed, it was to the World Trade Center that they responded.  

It was there where they died. 

Police Officer Nathaniel Webb of the Port Authority Police Department was one such hero.  Officer Webb's post was the Holland Tunnel.  Yet, after roll call that morning, he headed to the World Trade Center to what he could to help those in need.  He died there.  

Nathaniel Webb served the public as a Police Officer for twenty-eight years, which was essentially half his life.  He was loved by his family, including his daughters, Camille and Valerie.  He was also - in his late fifties - unabashedly a mama's boy.  He stopped in to check on his housebound mother several times a week.  

During his time in the Port Authority Police Department, he received several commendations, including a Meritorious Active Duty Award and a Police Group Citation.  He was a man who put others first and whose family, whose friends, and the people for whom he laid himself on the line every day loved him for it.  Their only regret?  

They did not have as much time with him as they would have liked.  

-AK 

A Man of Faith

 

Alfred J. Braca never shied away from his faith.  According to what his family learned from spouses of co-workers who died right beside him on September 11, 2001, shortly after the North Tower had been hit, he gathered a number of his co-workers at Cantor Fitzgerald into a circle, had them join hands, and led them in prayer.  He was sixty-four.  A husband, a father, and a grandfather who had spent sixteen years at Cantor Fitzgerald, some of his co-workers called him "The Rev" because of the way in which he carried himself.  

Mr. Braca met his wife, Jean, on the Staten Island Ferry.  For him, it was love at first sight.  Not so much for Jean.  He pleaded with her to go out with him on just one date.  She declined.  However, she did agree to talk to him on the telephone.  He called her.  Twelve hours later, she hung up after agreeing to that one date.  On it, he kissed her and Jean said to herself, "Maybe this is not so bad."  

It proved to be so much more than "not so bad".  Albert and Jean were married thirty-three years at the time of his death.  They had four children (two sons and two daughters) and had already been blessed by three grandchildren by the time of his death on that terrible Tuesday morning in September two decades ago. 

-AK 

In The Garden. Under The Sea.

In 1999, Brian Wilkes moved from New Jersey to North Carolina.  At his going-away party, he met Lorraine Antigua.  He moved to North Carolina as planned but did so while maintaining a long-distance relationship with the woman who had won his heart and whose heart he had won.  His status as a North Carolinian proved short-lived.  He moved back to New Jersey so he and Lorraine could get married. 

The couple lived together, with Lorraine's two children Aaron and Caitlin, in a home that Lorraine bought in Middletown Township, New Jersey.   At age 32, Lorraine Antigua loved her job at Cantor Fitzgerald.  So much so that she had turned down job offers so she could stay at Cantor, doing something she loved. 

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Lorraine was already at work when the murderous cowards who had hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 flew it into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, impacting the building several floors below those Cantor Fitzgerald occupied.  Lorraine called Brian's cell phone and left him a message on its voice mail.  She told him that a plane had hit the building but that she was fine.  

Sadly, she was not. 

-AK

Alone With The Gods

It takes a special type of person to be a first responder - to rush headlong into danger, to put one's life into peril, and to be willing to sacrifice one's self so that people you may have never met before and may never meet again do not have to sacrifice themelves.

Kenneth F. Tietjen was a special type of person.   At thirty-one, he was a nine-year veteran of the Port Authority Police Department.  His assignment was the 33rd Street PATH Station.  On September 11, 2001, Officer Tietjen was manning his post when he learned the World Trade Center had been attacked.  He commandeered a taxi - hopping behind the wheel after directing the driver to get into the back seat - and headed downtown.  

When he arrived on site, he immediately got to work helping evacuate the injured from the North Tower.  At some point, he found himself in need of a new respirator, and learned that only one remained.  He looked at his partner, who was his junior officer, and smiled while saying, "Seniority rules", before taking the respirator and running into the South Tower to help those in need. 

Officer Tietjen was inside the South Tower when it collapsed. 

He grew up in the Belford section of Middletown Township and joined the Belford Volunteer Engine Company when he turned eighteen.  He would join the Port Authority Police Department four years later.  As a child, he had been afraid of fire trucks and police cars.  To the surprise of no one who knew him, he not only overcame that fear, he converted it into a love.  

More than that, he converted it into a way for him to help others.  It was something he loved to do.  It was something he did exquisitely well. 

-AK 

A Life. A Love. A Legacy

Don't wait for tragedy.

Say it today.

- Dianne Bullis Snyder

John Snyder drove fourteen hours through heavy rain to Chicago, Illinois to ask his high-school girlfriend Dianne Bullis, whose grip on his heart was something from which he had never been able to - and never wanted to -  extricate himself to marry him.  She said yes.

It was 1983. 

Dianne Bullis Snyder and John Snyder married in 1984.  In 1999, they moved with their then-school-age children, son Leland and daughter Blakeslee, into their dream home.  Dianne, a flight attendant for American Airlines, relocated her base from New York to Boston.  She constantly told John and their children that her #1 responsibility as a flight attendant was to ensure airplane safety. 

Tuesday, September 11, 2001 was a work day for Dianne Bullis Snyder.  She worked American Airlines Flight 11, which flew out of Logan Airport in Boston at 7:59 a.m. bound for Los Angeles.  Less than one hour later, the murderous cowards who hijacked the plane and redirected it to New York City, flew it into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.  

Life goes on for the families of those who were murdered on September 11, 2001.  It goes on because it must.  It has gone on for Blakeslee, Leland, and John Snyder.  As they have soldiered on and continued to live their lives, the wife, the mother, the doer they loved remains fixed in their collective memory and forever present in their hearts.  

-AK 

Family First

Twenty-eight-year-old men, who are husbands and the father of a beautiful, sweet five-month-old daughter, are not supposed to die.  They are supposed to grow old, walking arm-in-arm with their wives and, later perhaps, with their daughters on the latter's wedding day.  They are most assuredly not supposed to die. 

Tragically, and emblematic perhaps of the inequity of life, Donald L. Adams - at age 28 the loving husband of Heda Adams and the doting daddy of baby Rebecca Adams - was killed on Tuesday, September 11, 2001.  He was a Vice-President, eSpeed Sales at Cantor Fitzgerald and was in his office on the 105th Floor of the North Tower when the cowards who hijacked jet airliners and bastardized them into weapons, flew one into the building.  

Don and Heda have a great "How did you two meet?" story.  A big man (captain of the Fairleigh Dickinson University football team and a stalwart on its offensive line), he was working as a bouncer at a bar down the Shore one night in the summer of '92 when she, underage, tried to gain entry.  She did.  It turned out to be one of the best decisions he would ever make. 

He commuted by train from the family's home in Chatham, New Jersey to Cantor Fitzgerald's offices in lower Manhattan.  In the summer of '01, Heda and baby Rebecca would sit on the home's front porch and wait for him to walk up the road from the train station.  "There's my girls!" he would exclaim as he approached them, smiling.  They would smile right back.  

May they still - even if only at the memory.  

-AK 

The Born Rescuer

Alfonse J. Niedermeyer, III spent seventeen years serving and protecting the people of New York and New Jersey as a Police Officer for the Port Authority Police Department.  He had been recognized by his department for his role in rescuing passengers from US Air Flight 405 when it skidded off a runway at LaGuardia Airport on March 22, 1992.  

On what turned out to be the final morning of his life, Officer Niedermeyer, forty years young, was at his job in the Commercial Vehicle Inspection Unit.  It was his first day back following a two-week vacation.  He responded to the South Tower because that was where people needed his help.  It was there, of course, where people needed to be rescued.    It was there, tragically, where Office Niedermeyer died. 

He lived in Manasquan, New Jersey with his wife, Nancy, and the couple's son, A.J.  In May 2002, Nancy gave birth to the couple's second child, a little girl named Angelica Joy.  

Nancy Niedermeyer has put her incredibly tragic experience to use in a career helping others.  She is a Mental Health Professional who counsels people through the worst times of their life.  It is, unfortunately, a journey with which she is intimately familiar. 

-AK

 

Prince Paul and His Hot Shots

At age 42, Paul Nimbley was a twenty-year veteran of Cantor Fitzgerald and a Vice-President with the company and was already at work in his office on the 100th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center when it was struck by one of the hijacked airliners on September 11, 2001.  

He lived in Middletown Township, New Jersey with his wife, Isabel, his four daughters, ages eight through fifteen, and the couple's eight-month-old son.  He was an unqualified success in a hyper competitive industry who, according to those who knew him well, never tried to "bigfoot" anyone.  He was well-liked and well-respected.  He was neither loathed nor feared.  

He volunteered time to coach a local girls' basketball team, the Hot Shots.  Shortly before he died, he bought a Ford Expedition.  The reason?  Isabel said he needed a car big enough to carry all "his kids", which she knew meant their five and his team of lady hoopsters.  

On what tragically proved to be the final Father's Day he would ever spend with them, Mr. Nimbley, his daughters, and their teammates were at Madison Square Garden to watch a New York Liberty game - and to play a scrimmage on the Garden court.  He was quoted in a Star-Ledger article as saying, "I'm going to do whatever my daughters enjoy because I love spending time with them."  As the basketball coach he was, he knew and appreciated the importance of time.  

He simply had no way of knowing just how little of it he had.  May it be of some solace to those he loved and to those he loved most of all that he made such wonderful use of all that he was given. 

-AK 

A King of Swing

Andrew Marshall King loved to play golf.  So did many of his colleagues at Cantor Fitzgerald.  Unlike many of them however, he was incredibly skilled at it.  So skilled in fact that he was a four handicap and had made three holes-in-one.   Three! 

He was only forty-two when he was killed on Tuesday, September 11, 2001.  He had arrived that morning, as was his practice, by 8:00 a.m.  When the first plane hit One World Trade Center, he telephoned his wife Judy to tell her he was on his way down.  He had made that long walk to safety previously in his career at Cantor Fitzgerald - on February 26, 1993, when he walked down 104 floors to get out of the building following what history now knows as "the first" World Trade Center bombing.  Sadly, of course, on September 11, 2001, history did not repeat itself. 

Andrew King graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1983 with a degree in Political Science.  He and his wife, Judy, had been married slightly less than fifteen years at the time of his death.  He and Judy, lived in Princeton with their three children, CeCe, Drew, and Carly.   

-AK 

Jacques and George

 

Seven years ago, Margaret and I bought our little Paradise by the Sea in Lake Como.  Our plan is to move to the Shore full-time at some point.  For now, however, we just spend our summer weekends (and occasional weekends throughout the year) there.  I believe every word of what Jacques Cousteau said because I live them every day.  

Lake Como (f/k/a South Belmar) is roughly 1 1/2 miles south of Avon-by-the-Sea.  George J. Strauch made the four-hour round-trip daily from his home in Avon to his office at Aon, which office was located on the 99th floor of Two World Trade Center, where he worked as a National Practice Leader for Risk Control Consulting. Mr. Strauch, 53, and his wife, Virginia McWatters-Strauch, to whom he was married for twenty-seven years, were the proud parents of Hillary, who was twelve years old on the day her father died.  

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, he reached his office in Lower Manhattan by 7:30 a.m. as he typically did.  He called his mom, Alma, who lived in Kearny.  After One World Trade Center was struck by the first plane, he called Virginia.  He told her that he was all right.  Tragically, his situation was changed irrevocably when the second plane practically bisected Two World Trade Center, impacting the building many floors below Mr. Strauch's floor and making his escape from it impossible. 

Two Fridays ago, Margaret and I had dinner at Avon Pavilion with our friends Mel and George Hagstoz.  Although I have run through the Pavilion more times than I can count, until that evening I had never noticed the bench dedicated to George Strauch's memory.

His love for the sea, reciprocated by the place he lived, and memorialized.  He shall be linked to the sea - and it to him - forever.  

-AK 

Three Sons of Sea Girt Now Forever in the Palm of God's Hand

 

I take the words of Cicero to heart.  Today, through September 11, I shall do my small part to honor the lives of those who died twenty years ago on that terrible September Tuesday morning.  I do so for reasons that are, in part, selfish.  I loathe things I lack the ability to control.  I hate problems that I cannot fix.  I am impotent when it comes to fixing the problem each of them has had to deal with every day for the past twenty years, which is the hole in their heart left by the loss of a loved one far too soon.  

Writing these simple, small remembrances certainly does nothing to fill those holes.  It allows me to feel, illusory as it may be, as if I am doing a little something.  It might be next to nothing but it feels better than doing nothing.

This past Saturday morning, as Margaret and I were walking around prior to the start of the Sea Girt 5K, I noticed a memorial I had never noticed in the ten years' worth of trips made to Sea Girt for this event, the beauty of which is simply stunning.   

Sea Girt September 11 Memorial

Edward A. Brennan, III was a Vice-President at Cantor Fitzgerald.   An Elizabeth, New Jersey native who grew up in  Sea Girt, "Teddy" was an avid golfer and a devout sports fan, who pored over the sports section of the newspaper every day before he went to work as a Master of the Universe.   He was the oldest of Gail and Ed Brennan's four kids - and their only son.  He was thirty-seven years young when he was killed on Tuesday, September 11, 2001.  He had worked at Cantor Fitzgerald for eleven years at the time of his death and had - on Friday 26, 1993, been at work when the first World Trade Center bombing happened.  He ran to safety by running down 105 flights of stairs.  In addition to his parents and his three younger siblings, his fiance Meghan Daly survived him. 

Charles W. Mathers, 61 years old, was a Managing Director at Marsh McLennan.  He was a veteran - having spent six years in the United States Navy - much of it as a submariner.  He and his wife, Margaret, to whom he was married for thirty-nine years, raised their three children in Sea Girt.  He spent twenty-five years as a member of the Sea Girt Volunteer Fire Department.  

William A. "Bill" Mathesen, 40, was a Vice-President at Euro Traders.  On September 11, 2001, he was in his office on the 84th floor of Two World Trade Center, talking on the phone with his wife Kathy as they did most mornings and chatting about nothing in particular.  It was 8:30.  Fifteen minutes later, he called Kathy back.  He told her that One World Trade Center had been struck by an airplane and, apparently, out of his window he could see the building on fire and people jumping out of it in desperate.  The couple talked until he was too upset to talk any longer.  It would be the last conversation they would have.  Bill and Kathy Mathesen had two daughters, Emily and Jessica, who were only six and five respectively when their daddy died.  Their father's vocation was finance but his passion was music.  The day after Emily was born, he wrote "Emily, I Believe in You", which he recorded for her so that she would always have it with her - even if he could not be.   

-AK 

A Beautiful Fight

Food for thought for August's second Sunday...

...keep punching.

-AK 

SAMvincibility

Today is the Sea Girt 5K.  It is one of my favorite summer road races.   Last summer it was a COVID-19 casualty.  This year, it is back. 

Truth be told, it is more than just a great, small-town race.  It is a great event.  A labor of love for those who put it on.  This year promises to be no exception.  The Honorary Race Marshal is Sam Jarmer.  Sam is a young man who was just sixteen years old when he suffered a terrible spinal cord injury on July 24, 2019 while working as a lifeguard in Ocean Grove.  It paralyzed him from the chest down.  Two years later, he is fighting his way back.  He is SAMvincible indeed.  

www.samvincible.com

-AK 

 

Only One Way to Eat an Elephant...

I must confess that I am guilty of observational bias when it comes to Pat Forde's writing.  I have been a fan of him for as long as I can remember.  A piece he wrote, which SI.com posted on its website yesterday, is as good an example of his skill set as I can offer - so the link to it is here.  

Set aside a few minutes and read it.  If my hunch is correct, you shall be happy you have done so...  

...and once you have done so, you shall understand that what the quote above champions is patience and perspective and not poaching.  

-AK