A Decade of Hope

by Dennis Smith

  At Marsh, Barbara was the office manager. She was the aviation administrator and tied up all the policies and contracts that they had, and so she was crunching numbers. There were times of the year when they were really working lots of hours, so she didn’t have a lot of free time for travel and leisure. But that was the plan. She had been with Marsh for almost thirty years, and she was now ready to start traveling.

  She worked in the corporate office on Forty-forth Street and Sixth Avenue and just happened to be visiting the Marsh offices at the World Trade Center on September 11. They had planned to bring together all the administrators from all the different departments within Marsh—aviation, general insurance, property, and casualty, whatever they were, the people who had the numbers, I guess. It was a nine o’clock meeting, and all the managing people were gathering at the North Tower, on the ninety-ninth floor. Barbara was never the type to be late, and normally she would have been the first one out of the house, taking the six o’clock bus from Staten Island. In this situation, of course, she was only going to the Trade Center from our first night in Brooklyn, and now that we were living in Bay Ridge she did not have that long a commute. I had to go to Staten Island to work, so I was the first one out. I worked for a hotel company there, and we were getting ready to open up another hotel that Hilton had bought. The Inn had scheduled a Fire Department inspection that morning. The Fire Department guy wasn’t coming until 9:30, but the Fire Department is always early, so I was actually sitting in my office when the first plane hit at 8:46.

  I knew Barbara was at the Trade Center when everything happened in the North Tower. I only learned exactly where she was later on, because the company was able to confirm it. They had offices on the ninety-third through the one-hundredth floors, which is directly where the plane hit. Marsh & McLennan lost 295 employees and 60 contract workers—everyone who was present in those offices that day.

  When the first plane hit, I left my office and went to the site of the inspection to meet the fire inspector. By this time, the second plane had hit and all of Staten Island was in turmoil, as no one knew what was going on. I tried to call Barbara on her cell phone. After the first plane, all I was able to get was her voice mail. From then on, though, I kept calling and got nothing. Word spread like wildfire that Ray’s wife was down there, and of course people I know kept calling: Ray, did you hear anything, did you hear anything? And no. Nothing. So I went about my business, doing what I had to do, though it’s not as if I was even able to get off Staten Island, since everything had been shut down by 10:30. I could not go anywhere. It was just a waiting game. There was no communication.

  Barbara was very close to my mother, who lived in Bay Ridge. She was about eighty-one at the time, and so I wasn’t going to be saying anything before I knew something concrete. I knew that if there was a way for Barbara to contact me she would have. I had an open mind; I didn’t know what was going to happen until I went home. Actually, I thought that she was going to, somehow, get home that night. I really did. My best friend, who worked in the World Financial Center, took the ferry over and came to my office, just because he wanted to be with me. He had lost a cousin, and they lived on Staten Island. The owner of my company was very supportive, and we did what we could. He said, Come on, we’ll go out to dinner. I still had possession of the home in Staten Island that we had moved out of, so I went there, as I couldn’t get over the Verrazano Bridge to Brooklyn. My buddy stayed in Staten Island with me, and since there was no furniture, we slept on the floor.

  I kept thinking, She will find a way, just stay positive. I kept listening to the news, hearing the reports. But no word anywhere.

  When Barbara didn’t come home that night, the harsh reality was setting in that I shouldn’t expect her to come home. Relatively soon afterward—when I had to start filing paperwork, when I had to go down and get the death certificate and give them an authentication confirming that Barbara Habib was at the ninety-ninth floor of the North Tower—it got more and more real. Looking back, I saw that the contact of the first plane had been between the ninety-second and ninety-ninth floors of the North Tower, and nobody at that point or above survived. But I didn’t realize that until I received the official letter, probably within two weeks, which was the first real confirmation in black and white that Barbara was gone.

  There was a perpetual numbness that went through me from the time it happened throughout the first year. Numbness to the point that I dealt with everything, and I was prepared, since I was not going to find anything worse. I dealt with all of the business things that I now had to face. If I became overly emotional I wouldn’t have been able to deal with it. Although there was just the two of us, I knew there was a lot involved in tying all the ends. And so I was taking one day at a time. Whatever happened I was going to just go through it. I went to work that day and every day after. The worst time was when I was not active.

  When Marsh had a memorial service at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, maybe a month or six weeks afterward, I’ll never forget, that was the one day that was the most emotional for me. I tried to keep it together, but being in the church with all the Marsh people, and people making speeches and seeing everybody, walking out of there was the most emotional I got. My buddy’s wife was with me, you know. And a few other close friends were with me and . . . you know . . . Yeah, that was bad.

  The funeral that I put together was the most personal experience of all. I gave the eulogy. Her friends, her company, were there in force. It was attended by well over three hundred people, half of whom I didn’t know. Mary Ann, my buddy’s wife, gave a eulogy, and her oldest brother spoke a little as well. It was a full high mass. The Daughters of St. Paul were there, a group of nuns that Barbara and I had gotten to know through my employment in Staten Island. They had a convent there, where we went. They sing like angels, and they sang the mass for Barbara. They put together that mass card for me, and I could see they were heartbroken as well.

  The day I had my mass for Barbara it was hot, and my mother was in attendance and had an episode of chest pain. She turned pale as a ghost, but it passed, and she was fine. She hosted people at the house after the service and cooked all the Middle Eastern stuff that she did so well. The day after the Mass, my mother suffered a major heart attack, and so my time was spent dealing with all these things going on with Barbara, and also dealing with my mother being in the hospital—alive, but barely.

  At that point, I hadn’t attempted to go down to Ground Zero at all. The first time I went to the area was when they were having a memorial service and the city invited people down. It was a Sunday, might have been October 28, and I’ll never forget that day, because it was the day that my mother was actually going through quadruple bypass surgery. So when they finally decided to do the operation, it ended up being the same day that I went into the city for the first time.

  It was supposed to be a memorial interfaith service. Andrea Bocelli was singing, and they were going to have a Muslim leader speaking too. But the thing that hit me so dramatically was the crowds of people hawking their wares. It was upsetting because, Hey, folks, this is not a tourist show. This is where a terrible thing happened. It offended me, and it got me a little bit angry. But you know, I’ve come to accept a lot. Giving tours as I do down at the Trade Center, I now see that it’s a major attraction for tourists coming into the city. So I aligned myself with that.

  But the first time going to the site, it was emotional. We sat there among people who were obviously family members, and I got to talk to a few people and asked, How are you holding up? But I wasn’t the type to really share too much. I remember the smell of the burning steel was still pretty clear.

  It was a tough day overall. Thankfully, my mother survived. The operation was a success, and she went through rehab, and is now ninety-one years old and still going strong. I had a good strong foundation with my parents. My father passed away thirty years ago, but I saw what my mother went through raising five children and watched her work ethic
. My father was a worker, and maybe we never really got along when he was alive, but I think I’ve become more like him than any of my brothers. He was always the hardworking type, and that’s how I am because I continue to work. In the long run we don’t know how we are going to turn out, but our parents will be the major factor.

  I was amazed that there were so many women whose husbands had passed away on 9/11, and a lot of them were just emotional basket cases. They were, I can’t go on, I just can’t, I can’t do it. And what do you say? Okay? Take your time, whatever it is. Marsh was phenomenal in terms of support. Marsh and the city were like rocks of Gibraltar. They were there for all of us and made the process easier. Whoever would think that you would have to file for a death certificate? Marsh did that all under the tent on Pier 94, I think it was December 16. There were organizations like the Disney Foundation and so many others that were there to offer you Christmas gifts.

  But still, it all took its toll—Barbara, and then my mother. I was down to 157 pounds, very light for me, a mess. But again, I worked every day, so that shell that I had was not often pierced, except at times when I had to sit around and dwell on it. I hadn’t really talked about what happened to anybody, except to my best friend. But then I met someone, eight months after everything happened. She was someone I could talk to about it, and we wound up developing a pretty strong relationship that lasted right up until recently.

  When I started this relationship, I had to open up again. I had to live life again. I wore my wedding ring for the first eight months. When I met this person and followed up and asked for her phone number, she had noticed that I was wearing a ring. She said to a mutual acquaintance, This man’s married. What nerve does he have to ask for my number? So, there was a bit of a lapse until I was able to actually get her number, as my friend had to explain what had happened to me. When I started seeing her, I was unaware that she already knew about Barbara, but when I took her out to dinner for the first time, I didn’t wear my ring. And I did tell her about Barbara.

  Everybody handles his grief in different ways. That’s how I handled it: I just went on. If Barbara and I had had children it might have been worse. There are pros and cons for getting your life back together. All I know is what gave me the most strength during that period was knowing that during our time together Barbara had given me strength. According to my buddy’s friend, Barbara had gone through a marriage that was not good. She was also very close to her mother, who had passed away. All that had happened in the year before we met, and she was pretty much down in the dumps and not going out. Actually, that night of the oldies concert at the Garden, Mary Ann had to convince her to join: Come out with us Barbara, come on, come out, just get out. And, luckily, she came out, which is why we were able to meet. Although Barbara had gone through a tough time, so many people told me that when we started dating, and eventually got married, that she was at the happiest in her life.

  And then there is fate. I’m a big believer in fate. Why did I go that night? Who knows? Why did they have the concert that night? Why did Barbara go? What if she’d decided she couldn’t go? But we were there, at that fated moment, and we locked eyes. That locking of eyes, a ten-second glimpse with that little gleam, gave me the green light to say, you know what, pursue it. So if fate brought me into her life for that period of time, it turned out to be good—good for her and good for me. I’m happy with that. If I die tomorrow, that’s probably the best thing that I did, that I was there to bring her out of an unhappy life, and I was able to change it by making her happy.

  I have a letter that is important to me, even though I never got to meet the woman who wrote it. It says, “Dear Ray, You don’t know me, but I worked with Barbara for many years before. When she told me that she met someone I thought it could not have happened to a nicer person. And I hoped it would work out for her. And so I was overjoyed when she wrote about your marriage and the plans for the new condo. I don’t remember a time when I knew her that she was as content. You made her very happy, you know.”

  I started at the Tribute Center in 2007—my training class was that January. I didn’t know anything about the Tribute Center or the important work it does until I received an e-mail from Lee Ielpi [see page 98]. He must have had a list of the family members, and it was actually the second one I received. The first time I don’t think I paid much attention to it—fate closing doors. I don’t want to be identified as having lost somebody from 9/11. That’s not my identity; that’s not me. It never will be me, but it is something that I’ll accept. Sometimes I’m introduced to people with the comment, Well, you know, he lost his wife on 9/11. Hello, excuse me, is that necessary? But that’s what it has brought. Somehow people want to touch or be close to everybody who lost anyone there. But I don’t think that any one person’s death is more important than another’s. If you died tomorrow in a car crash, you wouldn’t get this same type of attention. But the reality for 9/11 families is that you do, because this was such an unbelievable attack, unusual and historic.

  But I read Lee Ielpi’s second e-mail more closely, and I said, Okay. You know, I believe in volunteering. When I was a teacher for ten years at Bishop Ford High School I volunteered for the local ambulance corps. I did my four hours a week. When I got a nine-to-five job, I stopped doing that. After Barbara died I was just working and active with tennis and with my tennis club, administrating and doing all these other things for the club, but here was a chance to get back into volunteering. When I decided to leave my company after everything happened, because I just didn’t want to work those crazy hours involved in real estate anymore, I was looking to volunteer somewhere. But the things I looked at never worked out to be anything meaningful. Tribute looked as if it was going to be meaningful, so I accepted the invitation.

  I went down and was interviewed by the volunteer coordinator, who said, We’d love to have you join us, and I then went through the training class. There are leads and supports who give groups of twenty to twenty-five people an hour-and-a-quarter tour throughout various stops around the World Trade Center site. The lead does most of the talking, giving an introduction, telling a little bit of the factual background, why they built the buildings, what had happened that day, and so on. And then the support person speaks for about five minutes, giving his or her personal story. For the first year I was just a support person, getting a feel for what this organization was all about and giving my five-minute speech about Barbara. I talked about where I was that day, and how I first tried to call her. I didn’t go into any gruesome detail, except I did mention that I was one of the lucky ones who was contacted by the coroner’s office, which actually identified positive remains of Barbara. So there was proof that she was dead and not missing somewhere. The whole purpose of the World Trade Center walking tours is different from what you might get on a double-decker bus tour, in that you hear a personal story, a true account from people who were there, whether they survived, whether they worked on the rescue effort, or whether they lost somebody. It is those personal stories that have drawn people in and bring them to listen very intently and identify with others who went through it. This is the education that Tribute’s cofounders, Lee Ielpi and Jennifer Adams, always talk about.

  The first stop is right outside the firehouse of Engine 10 and Ladder 10, on Liberty Street, just opposite the actual World Trade Center site, and then we move on to the firefighters’ memorial, the beautiful bronze plaque that depicts a reenactment of the day’s events. Then we go into the World Financial Center, where everyone sits down in one of the buildings and has a great view of the actual site itself, and we talk about the day of September 11. And this is where we introduce the personal story. Most of the people who are on those tours are not native New Yorkers but visitors from all over the country, and all over the world. Many relate their own experiences on 9/11. And then we walk all around the site, pointing out what occurred at different times of the day.

  After doing the tours for a year as the support person, I sa
id, You know what, I could take the lead, and the Tribute Center pushed me to do so. I prepared my presentation, and they worked on it a little bit, and then I did my first tour. And I think I did a pretty good job. I’ve now completed four years at the Tribute Center, doing maybe three tours a month, both lead and support, and I’m happy to have that flexibility. Tribute does four tours [a day], Monday through Friday. So that’s eighty people a day, Monday through Friday, and weekends are packed. That’s a total of around a thousand [people] a week. There have been over two million visitors in all so far. If I wasn’t part of Tribute, I don’t think I would know as much as I know. When you’re doing a walking tour, you have to know what you’re talking about, almost every aspect of it. Although I’m no expert, at least I know what went on.

  I’ve heard some of the support people, when they come and tell their stories, like the miracle on Stairway B, and the firefighters who were trapped there [see Jay Jonas, page 52]. Visitors keep telling us we must tell people to never forget. Some actually say they’ll never forgive. I don’t add that.

  Do I blame somebody for Barbara’s death? You know I’ve never really looked at it that way. I believe I’m a good Catholic. I went to Catholic grammar school, Catholic high school, and I even taught at a Catholic high school for ten years. Do I believe that there’s a reward afterward? Yes. Do I try to go to church every Sunday? Yes. If I don’t, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. So I follow the Golden Rule. I don’t hurt people. You treat people nicely, the best you can. I’ve been ingrained in the traditional faith.