A Decade of Hope

by Dennis Smith

  On the morning of 9/11 I was in my home office in Mahopac, New York, running my public relations company, when I got a phone call from a friend. “Did you see what happened downtown?” he said. “Turn on the television. A plane just crashed into a building downtown.” I turned the TV on in my office in time to see the second plane hit. I knew that Glenn was already at work that morning. He would be running down there, as he had in ’93 when the Trade Center was attacked.

  In September 2001 he was still at the same office building he was at in 1993, which is 93–95 Broadway, just a block and a half from Ground Zero. When the towers were hit by those planes, Glenn did what firemen do—he ran to see if he could help. I later learned that he was still in his apartment on East Thirty-fifth Street getting ready for work when the first tower was hit. He was on the phone with his girlfriend at the time, and he saw what I had seen on the TV. He ran downstairs, passing the doorman, and jumped into a cab as the doorman said, “Don’t go down there!” At his office he helped with the evacuation of the two floors that Holland & Knight had at the corner of Jay Street and Broadway. He then borrowed some rescue equipment from the guys who were evacuating his building: a mask, gloves, a first-response medical kit—Glenn was also a certified EMT. And he started running west on Jay Street toward the South Tower.

  Meanwhile, the rest of us were watching this like everybody else was watching it, not thinking the worst, and of course not imagining that those buildings would come down. Just that here was my firefighter brother, responding again, in all likelihood. Calling him at work got us nowhere, because everyone had left that place, as well they should have. And so there was no reaching him at his home, on his cell, or at work. Still, I talked to my parents, and none of us was freaking out about it yet, not knowing what was to be. But then the hours started going by, and he still hadn’t called any of us, and none of us was able to reach him, and the day started turning into night. I guess we all started thinking, Well, there’s no cell phone service down there or he’s just so busy with triage or whatever it is. It’s unusual, but okay—let’s not think the worst yet. But as we were watching the news reports, the mayor was saying what he had to say, and we learned more, and of course we began to think then, Well, maybe he’s wandering around somewhere. Maybe he got knocked on the head. We were thinking what everyone was thinking. We were hoping.

  I started calling around to the hospitals that night, and the next morning, all through the next day. Getting in touch with the authorities to do a missing persons report over the phone, giving them all kinds of information. We recruited a friend of Glenn’s and mine, John, a real estate attorney with whom we grew up in Jericho, to go down to the armory, which is where I think they were doing all of the missing person’s paperwork in the beginning, before we set up on the computer, and he sat with a detective while I was on the phone giving him information to give to the detective so we could file Glenn as missing.

  My parents were probably no more or less panicked than I was at first, but the panic increased as time passed, and then really escalated. These were two parents who had raised two firefighters, whose sons ran into dangerous situations, and so they had confidence that both were able to handle themselves. Both Glenn and Jeff had had a lot of close calls over the years—every firefighter does—but they came home. Everything changed when those buildings came down. Over the next few weeks our house became the Ground Zero for our family and friends, the clearinghouse. It was where people called to check in if we knew anything, or could they do anything for the family, or what was the latest information from the authorities.

  My wife, Carolyn, and I went down to Glenn’s office. There was no electricity in the building on 95 Broadway. Because of its proximity to the towers, they had all evacuated, and the law firm had set up shop in the Roosevelt Hotel [in Midtown]. The place was a military zone. We searched Glenn’s office at Holland & Knight to see if we could determine what he was wearing. Did he take his cell phone? Was he wearing his watch? Did he leave his suit jacket and just run there in suit pants? Did he have his wallet with him? Anything we could do to try to piece some of it together to help the authorities potentially to find him.

  This was a very unusual thing to have had to do, and I don’t know what I would have done without Carolyn’s help. I talk often with people about the nature of this kind of death. It’s always tragic when somebody as young as Glenn, who was forty, dies. But to be missing, and then ultimately to be determined to have died in this way, is very unusual for several reasons. It was a murder, and it was a murder that was a mass murder, and a very public murder that continues to have a ripple effect throughout all of our lives today because of the changes that 9/11 resulted in. This is something extrapersonal in the very public loss of a sibling, which is now part of the fabric of our society. And to have that glimmer of hope for several weeks, that question of life or death hanging over you, is also very unusual. If someone dies of a car accident or an illness, or is even murdered, you know it right away, one way or the other. But in this case we were still hoping that he was in some air pocket five stories below ground level. So it was a very strange month or so until the mayor finally said, This is no longer a rescue operation; it’s a recovery. Actually, Chief Dan Nigro [see page 1] made that transitional decision. And then we started figuring out how to plan a funeral with no body, and the things that go along with that.

  The first time I ever publicly spoke about Glenn’s situation was just days after 9/11, to a group from Holland & Knight, and I think in some ways it was meant to be comforting for them, and a kind of connection between our family and Glenn’s colleagues, that we were in this together in many ways. And certainly it was comforting for me.

  Glenn had worked at this law firm for more than a dozen years, and I knew by name the people that he worked for and the kind of business he was working on, but I didn’t know his colleagues. I know many of them very well now. These were the last people he was with, the only people who could give me information about what his last minutes may have been like, or provide any of the pieces of the puzzle that was wide open to me: what he did, or what he was thinking, so that maybe we could figure out how to get him back, for it was not determined that he was dead yet. They thought my brother was wonderful—every day he’d try to go out of his way for somebody. They told us stories of the friendship that came with working with him. It was great for Carolyn and me to hear. It gave us strength, and comfort. Over the years since 9/11 Glenn’s partners have been nothing less than filled with compassion and altruism and generosity, and they have been extraordinary in helping us with this traumatic event and this loss.

  A few days before it was announced that this was no longer a rescue operation, I got a call from my uncle Lenny in Florida, the uncle who had been a police officer. He advised that we really needed to start thinking about this, that Glenn was not coming back, that we should plan a funeral and prepare our parents—that we had to be realistic. Glenn was not going to make it; none of them was going to make it.

  I said to him that I appreciated his advice, and I understood, but until the authorities officially told me that it was over, I had no reason to rush. And he respected that [while] being a good uncle and preparing me for the inevitable. I’m grateful for that.

  A few days later Mayor Rudy Giuliani and the fire and police commissioners said that no one was going to come out alive anymore. On October 14 we had a memorial service for Glenn in the Jericho Jewish Center, just a little more than a month after he was lost. It was the temple where all three of us, my brothers and I, had our bar mitzvahs. My parents still live in Jericho, and so there were many people in the community who came, friends of our family. It was the right place. We sought the advice of my cousin, Debbie Stein, who is also a cantor in East Hampton, and my mother’s brother, who is an ordained Orthodox rabbi. We had to face the prospect of, Do you have a funeral without having a body? And if so, how do you do it? So it was a matter of religious law and customs to address now. The ser
vice was led by the cantor we all grew up with, who did a great job. There were about six hundred people there, and there would have been twice as many had we not asked the law firm not to overwhelm the building. There was no way we could accommodate everybody who would want to come. Ten days later Holland & Knight was going to have its own service in the city, but all the people closest to Glenn came, and all the senior people from the firm, and it was really very special that we had them. Someone from the firm spoke, some of his best friends. Some from the Fire Department where Glenn volunteered spoke, and, of course, family members spoke. It was beautiful.

  We decided to follow what we had learned from the example of families from the Holocaust, which was to fill a pine box with possessions of Glenn’s that represented different elements of his life. Law books, Cub Scout hat, toy fire trucks, an army truck, some stuff from his bar mitzvah, a lot of his karate belts—about two dozen different things. My son Justin was just four years old, and we had him draw some pictures for his uncle Glenn, illustrations of what Justin’s view of this event was. We had been counseled by a professional, who advised us that it was a great way for very young people to handle dealing with this kind of trauma.

  Ten days later Holland & Knight had a memorial service at a beautiful, very old synagogue in Manhattan. I also gave a eulogy at that service. There were hundreds of people from the firm there, including people from their other offices. And there was a choir. The service was very moving, and both services were so rich with such great tributes to my brother.

  We sat shiva, the Jewish tradition of sharing grief in the home, at my house in Mahopac. This, by the way, was contrary to one of my Orthodox uncle’s points of view, who felt that the custom is such—or maybe the religious law was such—that without a body you can’t properly have a funeral, and therefore you can’t sit shiva, which I respected. And so he did not attend, which was okay. We needed to go forward with something, and we went forward with what we felt was right.

  We sat shiva for several days, and hundreds of people came through our house to express their love and support and offering, asking, “What can we do?” Over the course of two months, September and October, family members were flying in from all parts of the country, and it was just an extraordinary outpouring of love. And this love was so needed, so important. Again, it was not just a normal death but something that the whole country and the whole world was thinking about. And people who were directly affected, either because they were family or friends or colleagues of somebody who died or was thought to be dead, this love by others was connected to the funerals, wakes, or services.

  To this day I am amazed at my parents’ strength. It’s not a forced or a false sense of strength. They’re not, and were not, trying to be stoic. It was just them, the way they are. There were times they would break down and cry, and there were other times when they could be part of gallows humor that sometimes eases the pain. You know, this was their baby, the youngest of the three. This was the one who still hadn’t gotten married, who hadn’t had children yet, and who had barely gotten to live his life. And so it was and remains devastating for them. It would be that for any parent, I am sure, and yet they attended all the services—the park dedications, the service at the bronze wall, and the tributes on Long Island. If there’s something to be done where Glenn is being honored, and they are able to be there, which is more difficult now because it’s ten years later and they are both facing health challenges, they gather the strength to do it. And they have found ways to continue on, to enjoy their grandchildren, to go out for a meal.

  You never know how you’re going to handle these things. I think I deal with Glenn’s death in a very different way sometimes than they do. I spend a lot of time trying to get national recognition for his heroism, using his story to inspire others to do good. That’s a very public endeavor, whereas my parents chose to deal with things a little more privately. You have to do whatever works for you. They are very supportive of everything that I, his law firm, and the Jericho Fire Department have done in Glenn’s honor.

  In late March of 2002, they found Glenn’s partial remains. There was a period of time there when they really weren’t finding many more remains, but then, when they removed what had been the makeshift ramp to get trucks up and down to the site, they discovered more. Many of them were first responders, and that’s when they found Glenn. I got a phone call from someone in Glenn’s fire department saying, “Look there’s nothing official, but we got a phone call from Ground Zero last night from somebody who has a connection to the Fire Department, who said that they found Glenn.” That’s an extraordinary call to get. At about ten or eleven o’clock that night my doorbell rang, and it was the Police Department giving me the official word. We did not have to wait to identify Glenn’s partial remains through DNA or his dental records. The fact is, they found a portion of his body that had his wallet, and in the wallet was his Jericho Fire Department credentials.

  They found more of Glenn in the subsequent days, and the additional remains were with the medical examiner. Interestingly, it was almost as if there were two case files, and it took some time for them to realize that the remains in Glenn A were linked to Glenn B. We now had to make a decision as to whether to have those additional remains go to the site of the memorial at Ground Zero, where other remains, both identified and unidentified, would be held, or whether to go through the process of returning to the cemetery.

  Just when you feel that you are getting through it, you get another notification. I knew it could be coming for two reasons: One, they continued to advance the technology, so that it was now possible to identify remains that they couldn’t identify before, and second, because you had to make a decision when you filled out the paperwork initially, whether you wanted to be notified. And we did want to be notified. Our view was, I think, that we wanted to make Glenn as whole as we could. And when his remains were then found we had another decision to face: What do we do with the pine box with his possessions in his plot? Dig it up, take it away, and put the coffin with his remains in it? Do we put it on top of the first coffin? What would the cemetery allow? Again, this was a highly unusual circumstance, and in the end the cemetery worked it out so that we could open up the gravesite, leave the first box in place, and bury Glenn’s remains atop the box. That’s the way it stands now.

  Glenn’s colleagues at Holland & Knight later worked very closely with Chief Harry Meyers of the FDNY to sponsor a beautiful bronze memorial wall on Liberty Street. It honors the 343 firefighters who gave their lives on 9/11, and it also honors Glenn. I know that it wasn’t an easy process to get things going there back then, just in terms of various city regulations, and particularly in the face of the difficulties across the street at the official memorial at Ground Zero. I went out to the studio in New Jersey where the clay modeling of the memorial was being finished. That’s when it became very real for me. To see it up on a wall in this studio in clay, essentially being born, was when it hit me just how significant and magnificent it was going to be.

  The most memorable thing to me about the dedication of that memorial wall was some of the family members—mothers, in particular—were coming up to me and our family, thanking us for giving them a place to go. There are one hundred twenty-eight firefighter families with no remains at all, and Ground Zero is their burial place, their cemetery, and just across the street is this beautiful memorial. I don’t know that I or our family deserve any thanks for that, but if Glenn served as the inspiration, then that’s very gratifying.

  That memorial wall is now part of the walking tours given through the Tribute Center on Liberty Street. Together, the Tribute Center, the memorial wall, and Ground Zero itself tell a very important part of the story of what went on that day. Every September 11, which is always a very bittersweet and full day for me, I have various responsibilities, but I always pay my personal respects to Glenn and all the others by attending some of the ceremonies in the morning and getting back there at night, whether it
’s twelve midnight or two in the morning, to just kind of “degrief.” It’s usually a very stunning scene to see late at night, with the wall all lit up with sometimes as many as a hundred people standing there. There’s usually a long row of candles on the ground, stretching all fifty-six feet of the memorial, artwork that children have left about 9/11, and firefighters standing at attention—and all kinds of flowers. In some ways it really brings you back very immediately to the events of 9/11.

  I also wanted official recognition of Glenn by the United States government, which initially was not forthcoming. He went into the World Trade Center as a firefighter. He was part of the rescue operation, and yet the United States of America seemed to have a problem formally designating him as a first responder. I also wanted a lasting recognition of his inspirational act and the actions of so many others, first responders and non–first responders, at the scene—not one that would be sponsored for just a few days but for months after, to help rebuild the city and the country and our national spirit. To me that was the best thing that I could get involved with if I was going to get involved with something to honor my brother, because it directly reflected the way he lived his life—not just as a firefighter, but as an attorney, and as an extraordinarily good Samaritan in his everyday life.

  I got a phone call one day a few months after 9/11 from a friend of twenty years who lives in California, David Paine. A lot of native New Yorkers who have moved elsewhere felt a little disconnected: This tragedy happened in their city, even if they were now far away. David wanted to do something, and explained that what had moved him most was how people had responded. He was aware that the New York Mets had donated a day’s pay to the New York Police and Fire Widows’ and Children’s Benefit Fund. David suggested we make 9/11 a day of service. It was a lofty goal, but it seemed right. We were all aware of what was going on around Ground Zero, how everybody was pulling together in a way that had never been seen in our country before, with the possible exception of Pearl Harbor. David had already been doing some work on it, and we put our heads together. Now, a decade later, September 11 is a national day of service in the United States, with millions of people participating. It’s one of those really wonderful examples of how a simple idea can turn into a major thing.