A Long Walk Home

 Here, everybody has a neighbor

Everybody has a friend.

Everybody has a reason 

To begin again.

"Long Walk Home" 

- Bruce Springsteen

Imagine if you can that in addition to keeping up with all its current cases, the Office of the Medical Examiner in New York City continues to devote its time to working on an open case - a mass casualty event - that in less than thirty days shall be twenty-one years old.   You need not imagine it.  For the men and women of the Medical Examiner's Office, it is not a dream.  It is their job.  

Last September, shortly before the twentieth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, using DNA analysis on the unidentified remains recovered from the mass grave that had once been the World Trade Center, identified Dorothy Morgan of Hempstead, New York.  Ms. Morgan became the 1,646th person the Office has identified.   

She was a broker for Marsh & McLennan in its confidential services department.  On September 11, 2001 Marsh & McLennan had more than 1,900 employees in the World Trade Center, including eight hundred and forty-five in its offices on Floors 93-100 in the North Tower.  Nine hundred thirty-four worked in the South Tower, occupying offices on Floors 48-54.   Three hundred fifty-eight Marsh McLennan employees were murdered on that terrible Tuesday morning.   Dorothy Morgan, tragically, was one of them. 

Dorothy Morgan grew up a 'middle child', the fifth-born in a family of nine.  She was just forty-seven years old when she died.  She was a loving mother and a doting grandmother.  She found comfort in routines, the most important of which for her included visiting her mother on Fridays, shopping with her daughter, Nykiah, on Saturdays, and sitting in the same pew at her church in Jamaica, Queens every Sunday morning.  

When Nykiah was notified in August 2021 that her mom's remains had been identified and shortly thereafter the news was made public, she told various press outlets when asked that she really did not know what to do - other than that she was not planning on having a funeral.  I know not  whether she held true to that plan and frankly it is none of my business - or anyone's for that matter - whether she did.  

The decision how to honor Dorothy Morgan belongs exclusively to those who loved her and those she loved most of all.  It belongs to them much in the same way that she does.  Whatever they decided, their decision was the right one.  

At long last, Dorothy Morgan made it home to her family.  It was indeed an excruciatingly long walk. 

-AK