Life
On that terrible morning 10 years ago, I wondered if the searing images of 9/11 could ever be erased from my consciousness.
But it’s not the jagged hole in the New York skyline that has haunted me for the past 10 years. It’s the people.
There has been no greater honor in my career as a journalist than telling the stories of 9/11 victims and their families. They have stayed with me, every one of them.
I can’t forget Alicia Titus of St. Paris, a flight attendant on United Airlines Flight 175, the second plane that struck the World Trade Center. Her choir director, Allen Wilbur, described her as “the all-American high school girl” who was “so full of life.”
I can’t forget Rebecca Scott, then a University of Dayton freshman, who pointed to the World Trade Center 2 that morning and exclaimed, “My daddy works there!”
She wrote a series of poignant letters to the Flyer News, detailing the family’s dwindling hopes and their search for him in New York City. “The whole city is waiting for daddy to come home,” she reflected.
I can’t forget Alfonse Joseph Niedermeyer III, a 1983 University of Dayton graduate and Port Authority officer who was on his first day back on the job after a vacation with his family. At 9:45 a.m. that morning he called his wife, Nancy, to tell her, “I’m on the 14th floor of Tower 2. And I love you.”
Al never made it home, but a month after his funeral Nancy learned she was pregnant.
I can’t forget Marion DeBlase, who was on the phone with her husband, Jim, at his offices with Cantor Fitzgerald on the 105th floor of 1 World Trade Center when she heard a sudden outburst of cursing and yelling. “My first thought was that something had happened on the market,” she recalled. “Chaotic is how it normally sounds there.”
Eric Opperman is another unforgettable figure in my 9/11 coverage. Opperman was filling out paperwork on the 83rd floor of 1 World Trade Center when the first airplane hit his building. All of his 35 co-workers at Lava Trading escaped with their lives, but virtually no one survived from any of the floors above them. He stayed in Manhattan for several years, his spirit unvanquished, but married his wife Jules in 2005 and moved back to his hometown of Dayton. The couple has a toddler son, Milo. The demands and joys of raising him blot out the memories of 9/11 most days, but he admitted, “I held him up a little higher” on the morning bin Laden was killed.
Opperman’s story has the ending we would have wished for all the 9/11 victims. But I find a surprising similarity, in one respect, in the stories of families who lost loved ones that day. It’s the way they embrace life over death, love over revenge.
The miracle of Milo Opperman’s birth is symbolic of the triumph of life over terror, but so was the birth of Al Niedermeyer’s daughter, Angelica Joy, in May, 2002. “Angel means messenger, and she’s definitely a messenger of Al’s love,” Nancy told me.
Again and again, I see the same story: families embracing the legacy of their lost loved ones instead of giving themselves over to anger and hatred. Barbara Schenck of Beavercreek lost her brother, Doug Cherry, on 9/11, but confided, “I have never wasted any time being mad at anyone or asking ‘What if?’ It doesn’t change the outcome.”
Instead, the family has concentrated on charity work, building 40 houses in Tijuana, Mexico, in Doug’s memory. “We don’t want his life to be about dying in the World Trade Center. The important message is that doing good for others is what matters.”
It’s hard to imagine a more moving example of the Elizabeth Kubler-Ross saying, “The only thing that lives forever is love.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2209 or mmccarty@Dayton DailyNews.com.
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