A Decade of Hope

by Dennis Smith

  That Tuesday morning, Pete left for a day tour. I was sleeping upstairs, exhausted from a long weekend and not feeling well. At the time I was on medical leave because I had been very sick in 2000. I had fallen off my bicycle while we were on vacation at the cranberry festival in Cape Cod. It was a very bad fall, and we should have gone to the hospital. I was cut up, and the bone was sticking out of my leg—it was really bad. Pete took it kind of lightly, because he had seen so much gore in his life as a fireman that it didn’t seem like a big deal to him. I got an infection from the gravel and dirt and developed fibromyalgia. I was critically ill, bedridden for five months, and Pete literally had to carry me around. I also had herniated disks in my neck from the fall, for which I had to have surgery in 2004.

  So at 7:15 A.M. he kissed me good-bye. I said, “I love you,” and he said, “I love you too”—that was our thing.

  He went downstairs, where my daughter, Dana, was eating Cheerios, getting ready for her first day of school as a senior at St. John Villa Academy. She said, “Where are you going?” “I gotta go to the firehouse.” She said, “Stay home. Mommy doesn’t feel good.” He said, “I can’t.” And he wasn’t usually affectionate with the kids, but that day he kissed Dana good-bye, and left.

  After I got up, I and my son, Anthony, were getting ready to go to the mechanic. I was trying to use my cell phone, and I had no service, and Anthony said that his phone didn’t have any service either. And so I thought, That’s weird, and turned on the TV. We saw the first plane hit the World Trade Center, and I said, “Oh, my God, do you know how many people just died? Anthony, do you realize what just happened?”

  I got on the phone and called Pete’s firehouse, but the phone just rang and rang. Finally someone picked up: “Squad.”

  I said, “It’s Toni Ann. Where’s Pete?”

  “Toni Ann, I can’t talk to you right now. Pete was one of the first. He was driving. He’s gone; he’s there.”

  Anthony and I went to the mechanic, and as my car was being inspected we were watching TV in the shop. We saw the second tower fall, and at that point I felt like that was it. He’s gone. Pete’s gone. And we cried.

  My father was supposed to have a meeting at 2 World Trade that day, but it had been canceled. He and my mom were still going to the city for some reason, though. Anthony was getting worried that something may have happened to them too, so when they walked into my house later that day, we were so happy and relieved to see them.

  My mom immediately said, “Pete’s not working today, right? He’s painting, right?”

  I said, “No, Mom. He’s there.”

  Oh, my God, he can’t be there. So that’s what happened that day. I watched the towers fall.

  Then it was night, and still nothing. No word. I heard from no one.

  I called the firehouse again that night and finally spoke with one of the guys, Timmy Rogers. He said, “Toni Ann, don’t be too optimistic.”

  And I said, “What do you mean? What are you telling me?”

  He said, “Just what I’m telling you. Don’t be too optimistic.”

  For the rest of the night everyone was calling for Pete: his father, his sister, his brother, his kids. His two older kids from his first marriage, Nicole and Michael, had come over to my house.

  Pete had four kids in all. Nicole and Michael were around the same age as Dana and Anthony; from the second marriage, he had two little boys, Peter and Christopher. It was Christopher’s birthday that day, on September 11. He was turning six. I was saving Christopher’s birthday gift that we had bought for him.

  Later that night the phone rang, and it was little Christopher on the line. He said, “Is my daddy dead?”

  And I said, “No, Christopher, Daddy’s not dead. Who told you Daddy’s dead?” “Mommy keeps saying that Daddy’s dead.”

  I tried to tell him that Daddy was helping people to get out of those buildings.

  Two minutes later the phone ran again, and it was Christopher’s older brother, Peter. “Toni Ann,” he said, “Mommy keeps saying that Daddy’s dead.”

  I said, “Peter, Daddy’s not dead. All right?”

  And all of a sudden their mother got on the phone with me and said, “He’s fucking dead! You understand? He’s fucking dead!”

  I only found out later that someone had forgotten to change Pete’s contact number, so they called his second ex-wife that night and told her that they had found him. And that’s why she told me he was dead. She didn’t like me at the time, but I realize now that it was a traumatic thing for her as well, and maybe that is why she reacted the way she did.

  And she kept saying, “He’s dead! ” But I didn’t believe then.

  The next morning there was still no word about Pete. And my father kept saying to me, “Don’t give up hope.” And my brother: “He may be under the stairwell.” No, nothing.

  On September 13, they finally came to my home. I was sleeping on the couch, still waiting. My boss, Simon, had come over. Even though I was on medical leave, we were very close, and he was truly there for me after 9/11, taking care of me, because I was not in a good place. The bell rang, and Simon went to answer the door, and it was like out of a movie.

  Simon told me, “Toni Ann, you have to come here.”

  I got up and saw the two men with black suits. They flashed their badges, and one said, “Mrs. Carroll, we found Pete.”

  “You found him?!” I was so excited. My face lit up, and I said, “See, he wasn’t killed. He must have been under a stairwell.” But then I looked at Simon, who was crying. I asked him why he was crying.

  Then one of the two men said, “We are so sorry.”

  I said, “Sorry for what?”

  “You will have to make funeral arrangements.”

  And I collapsed in hysterics. They had to carry me to the doctor’s office and tranquilize me. And that’s what happened when I realized that Pete wasn’t coming home.

  I had to determine where we were going to have his wake. I remembered, when we went walking one night, Pete said, “You see that funeral home, that’s been there for years. It’s a family-run business. And you see this church? I love this church. And I want to be cremated.” These things stuck in my mind. So I knew what Pete wanted. When his father suggested we bury him, I said, “No, I know he wanted to be cremated.” He had told another friend the same thing, so he was cremated.

  The funeral was held on Monday, September 17, 2001, at the Harmon Funeral Home in Staten Island, followed by a mass at Blessed Sacrament Roman Catholic Church. At the funeral home we had a traditional wake with a casket. I was told that they found him intact, but they wouldn’t let me see him. I wanted to open the casket, and they wouldn’t let me. They just had a photo of Pete on top of it. And in my nerves, I tried to pry open the casket. I began to lift it, and they had to pull me off.

  I wanted it open. I wanted to see him.

  And everyone was saying, You wouldn’t want to see him. Remember him the way he was.

  I never saw so many people in my life as at his wake. I used to say to him when he would have to go to a wake, “Why do you have to go?” and he would say, “Because they are firefighters,” and “Out of respect.” I couldn’t understand why he had to go to each and every one, because he didn’t know these people, and then I’m in a chair and these firemen are coming up to me, and I said, “Did you know Pete?” “No, ma’am.” And I said, “Oh, my God. Now I understand.” And I cried, because I had never really known what it was all about. And I got to experience it.

  The older children came to the wake with the first wife. I didn’t want the second wife there after the way she had spoken to me on the phone on September 11. I said her kids could come in, but I wouldn’t let her in. She came after-hours and put some pictures on the Peg-Board. They both came to the funeral, though. I was distraught. People had to dress me. I remember having Pete’s dress cap on.

  The years following 9/11 were a difficult time for me.

  Pete wasn’t ori
ginally supposed to work on the eleventh. He switched his tour with someone at his firehouse, one of his best friends. We were very good friends with this fireman from the squad and his wife. After 9/11, I would go out to dinner with them, and he would never look me in the face. I couldn’t understand why. Finally, after three years, he looked at me and said, “I have to say something.” He was crying. He told me, “Pete came to me in a dream, and it was so real, and Pete said, ‘I want you to grab her, and I want you to look her right in the eyes and tell her everything is going to be okay.’” And that’s what this fireman did. A grown man crying. And his wife was hysterical. She said, “I’m so glad he finally did it. He couldn’t face you.” He then gave me this big kiss, and I guess it helped him come to terms with it. He felt so guilty that Pete lost his life for switching tours.

  I thought for a while that Pete had been found intact. My mom finally told me that he wasn’t: He had been severed. I was in hysterics when she told me this. Later, I got a letter from the city medical examiner. So I called up the medical examiner’s office. I was by myself in the house, sitting on my bed, when I phoned. I said, “I’m calling about Peter Carroll. I got a letter from the medical examiner saying that if the person wasn’t intact to contact the office. And that you’ve been looking for me. For what reason?”

  “Oh,” she said. “We found a body part of your husband. We found his heel. And he’s also missing the top portion of his head.”

  Well, I just went into hysterics again. I called the Fire Department, and they came to the house to try to console me. It was like 9/11 all over again. I had to cremate another body part, and now I have two urns. I spread the ashes from one of them. I wanted to give the second to Pete’s son Michael, because he had asked for it. After the fifth anniversary of 9/11, I met up with Michael, who had become a firefighter like his father, and I saw him in uniform. He held his arms out to me, and we exchanged phone numbers. I thought things would be okay again. After that he didn’t talk to me anymore. I tried calling him to say that I wanted to give him the ashes and he wouldn’t accept my phone calls.

  And then, in 2006, the medical examiner called again, while I was in the middle of a birthday lunch in Atlantic City. They had found the top portion of his head. Everyone at the lunch was then crying with me. I called up the funeral home again, and they told me, “You can’t keep doing this to yourself. I’m going to have to step in, Toni Ann, because we have already given you two urns, and this is just not healthy for you.”

  What happened was that we waited until December, and then accumulated whatever we had and put it into a single urn. The urn is in my bedroom now. And I also got back his wallet and his wedding band, which they found. The wallet has our wedding picture in it, and ten dollars and twenty-five cents. Pete always wore his wedding band, so I feel blessed to have gotten those items back.

  I was so angry for a while, because Pete had said he would never leave me. I know it wasn’t his fault; he was killed. But I was angry, because I had finally found Pete after all these years of being miserable. I was left with two babies to raise on my own. Then I remarried and made another mistake. So many empty years before Pete, and then, finally, I find my soul mate, and he’s taken away from me. That can make a person bitter. But it wasn’t Pete’s fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault except Osama bin Laden and the terrorists’.

  I went through a depression, and I was hospitalized in 2006 for about ten days. I couldn’t find happiness for years—you know? I just couldn’t find it. And it wasn’t until 2006 that I was able to go on with my life a little bit more and let go. I was suffering from depression and post-traumatic stress syndrome. And that’s when I think I snapped out of it, when I learned I had post-traumatic stress.

  After the hospitalization I realized that Pete wasn’t coming back. I used to look at people and think they looked like Pete in some way. It’s so hard. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about him. Still. I have a handyman who helps me out, and Dana says that he smiles just like Pete. You still relate people to him. It just doesn’t go away. It doesn’t go away.

  I’m not like some of the other widows. I lost $517,000 in 2007 when the market had a big downturn. I was awarded $680,000, and I lost $517,000—almost my entire settlement—from a person who was highly recommended to help people. I saw it coming, and I wanted to jump ship, and he wouldn’t take me out of the funds. And yes, the market did crash. So I’m not a millionaire. I never was.

  Most people I meet have this preconceived notion of the “9/11 widow.” The first thing they think of is money. I didn’t lead an extraordinary lifestyle ; money didn’t change me. If I could have Pete back, that would be my first wish. I didn’t care about the money. I didn’t marry him for money. And I found it upsetting that they had to put a price tag on someone’s life.

  Healing is different for everyone after 9/11. For me, one of the things that helped was a letter I received from a woman, Ruth Rossi, who worked as an attorney for Morgan Stanley [on 9/11]. Ruth had seen Pete’s picture up in a gas station in Neversink, which was hung as a sort of memorial, because his family was known around town. And when she saw his picture she recognized him by his eyes, because he wasn’t in gear. She knew those eyes and said, “That’s my fireman.” So she asked who the parents were and got the address and wrote a letter to his father. And then his dad had called me and said, “I have a letter here. It’s from a woman that Pete saved on 9/11. And she wants to get in touch with you.” I have the letter she wrote to me framed in my home. And she wrote to me about exactly what he had done—how he led her to safety and saved her life.

  Ruth had seen Pete standing in front of the rig, because he was chauffeur that day. She said she had frozen when she saw the blood that was splattered and body parts and bodies in the plaza, and it was Pete who went to her and put his hand on her shoulder and turned her away from it all. She looked at him—she remembered the sad look in his eyes—and he said, “Ma’am, you don’t have to look out there. Look at me and I’ll lead you to safety, we’re going to get out of here.” And she said he escorted her out and went right back into the South Tower. And then the tower came down.

  As Ruth ran across the Brooklyn Bridge, she wondered if her fireman—that’s what she called him—had ever made it out.

  Sal Cassano called me last year and asked me if I wanted to meet Ruth. She came really to thank me for giving up Pete to save her life. It was a very touching meeting. My son was there with me, and she was with a battalion chief, a woman who was friends with Sal. The four of us just huddled together and cried.

  Ruth had to leave Morgan Stanley shortly after 9/11, because from their new location in New Jersey she could see the site across the river. And she could not look at it anymore. So she gave up her job and moved to Maine.

  I met someone back in 2002. His name was Pete also, and he helped me a lot. He was very kind to me, but I wasn’t ready for a committed relationship then. I just couldn’t commit, and I felt guilty. I felt unfaithful. But this past year he came back into my life. He asked me to marry him, and I said yes. He’s a good man, and he understands when I talk about Pete.

  So I’m moving on in life. It’s just a little harder to move forward when you’re not well. My fibromyalgia was actually Lyme disease that turned chronic as of last year, so it’s as if the Lyme disease is taking over my life little by little by little. Hopefully they’ll find something to help me get better. I can’t take antibiotics anymore. I just had the gallbladder taken out, and so the stomach became so badly inflamed that I cannot take antibiotics anymore. So I just have to be thankful for each day. The only thing is, I live each day in pain.

  I love life, yes. And if I had at least my health, I’d be happier. Because if you don’t have your health you have nothing. I have to say that. You could have all the money in the world, but if you don’t have your health . . . So I don’t really know what’s going to happen.

  I asked Pete to send a sign that he was with me: Send me a quar
ter. I want to find quarters. I don’t want to find pennies, nickels, or dimes. How often do you find a quarter? It’s more special, because it’s not that often. Well, now I find them constantly, and in the weirdest places—in the basement, even on top of the cuckoo clock. It’s just amazing, how little things happen.

  One day we’ll be together again, but for now I’m trying to move on with my life here.

  But you know what? It’s all in God’s hands.

  John Vigiano

  John Vigiano is a retired captain in the FDNY. His reputation within the ranks of the city’s firehouses is that of a very professional, experienced, and reliable manager—a “great boss,” as many refer to him. Throughout his career he worked in the busiest fire companies of Brooklyn, including the legendary Rescue 2. He and his wife, Jan, had two sons: John, thirty-six, a FDNY firefighter, and his brother, Joe, thirty-four, a NYPD police officer. Both brothers responded to the World Trade Center on the morning of 9/11, and they died in the line of duty.

  We are a police and fire family. My father joined the Fire Department in 1937. He was a very interesting, talented man. He could draw, and illustrated most of the training material that the department used. I can still see a huge picture of the MSA mask [an early smoke mask]. He drew the whole thing and labeled all its parts, like something you would see today in a catalog.

  My mother and father divorced when I was seven, so I never really had a father. I didn’t know him, other than that he worked in Greenpoint, was a handsome fireman, and took me to the circus, the rodeo, and The Last Alarm, the firemen’s show they used to hold in Madison Square Garden. Maybe that was the mustard seed that was put in my head about being a firefighter.

  I lived with my mother and my grandmother. Back then there was no such thing as alimony checks. A fireman was probably making $2,000 a year, so every month my father would send a green money order for $18.75, and every month I would take it to the delicatessen, where the owner would cash it and take his $0.75 out of it. We lived in a poor man’s brownstone, a frame building laid out like a brownstone, no heat, one bedroom. So I would sleep in the living room.