Tower Stories

by Damon DiMarco

  I saw what was going on and said, “Are you guys going to evacuate?”

  At first, she thought the explosion was in her building, but I was watching it all on TV. I said, “No, no. You’re the Tower without the antennae, right?” Just to be clear. “No, it’s in the other building. Are you evacuating?”

  “No.” Still very poised. Kristy had nerves of steel.

  “Why aren’t you evacuating?”

  She didn’t know. But then she told me that an announcement came on saying that everybody should relax. The fire was in the other building and it was being contained, the announcement said.

  I thought, contained?

  She said she wanted to wait for more instructions, and she wanted to call her dad to let him know she was okay. “I’ll call you back,” she said, and hung up the phone.

  I’d known Kristy since I was twelve. We grew up together. When we met, she went to a Catholic school and I went to public school in Huntington, Long Island. We became very good friends. Like best friends.

  We talked about getting married and having kids when we were in ninth grade. We went to proms and dances together but we weren’t “boyfriend and girlfriend.” Kristy always thought that if we got together too young, we’d never last. She always said, “After college.” As if she had a crystal ball. “After college, we’ll get serious.”

  We went to college and wrote letters to each other. We called each other all the time; she was in Dayton and I was in Providence. It was a … you know, it was a healthy relationship.

  After college, we were together a long time. Eight years. Engaged for a year. Then married last June, 2001.

  Ninety-four days. That was the duration of our marriage.

  Kristy had worked at the equities desk of Sandler O’Neill and Partners since ’93, ever since she graduated college. She loved that job. She loved the people there. One of the drawbacks to a job in investment banking is that you spend a lot of time with your colleagues; the people at Sandler were together all the time. There was very little privacy. If Kristy had a doctor’s appointment, she couldn’t hide it. Everyone was right there, everyone knew about it.

  But they were like a family. They were all so close, such a special group. They really enjoyed each other’s company and got along well. When you work that closely with people, tensions are bound to get high and relationships get strained. But Kristy’s equities group remained close friends throughout. How often do you see people stay at the same job on Wall Street?

  Kristy was there for eight years, and she never wanted to leave.

  When we were preparing for our wedding last June, we reviewed the guest list and I said, “Wow, there’s a lot of Sandler O’Neill people here. We’ve got to cut it down.”

  We ended up inviting ten, and every person we had to cut from the list was a major sacrifice.

  When she called back, I said, “Look, I’m watching this on the news. When you go downstairs, don’t go outside. I can see debris falling off the first Tower.”

  I didn’t imagine another plane coming in. Who could have possibly imagined that? The first plane hitting defied everything.

  I was hoping Kristy and her group would leave soon. I looked at the fire in the North Tower and got concerned. I’d just watched a TV special two weeks before where a fire in a Californian suburb spread too rapidly to be stopped.

  “When you get downstairs, stay low,” I said. “Go into the subway and call me. Call me when you get down there. What does it look like where you are?”

  She said, “All we can see is black smoke.”

  I was on the phone with her, watching the TV, when I saw the second plane hit the South Tower. Kristy was working on the 104th floor.

  The phone went sssssshhhhhhhh. Then it came back in.

  She said, “We’re going down now.”

  I said, “I love you. Call me when you get downstairs.”

  But the phone went dead. And that was it.

  We went for a walk the night before, on the tenth of September. We talked about … everything. I guess it’s kind of strange to have that kind of talk the night before she passed away.

  The subject of her job came up, and she mentioned how a lot of our friends who worked on Wall Street were struggling and looking for new opportunities. But Kristy said she felt fortunate. Sandler O’Neill was a great place to work. “It’s secure,” she said. “I love everybody I work with.”

  She told me this on that Monday night.

  Also that night, the subject of Sandler O’Neill’s lease came up. Kristy told me the firm might move out of the Trade Center in January or February. I hadn’t heard Kristy say anything about it until that night, so I said, “You never told me this.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “No big deal.” Which was a typical response from Kristy because she took everything in stride.

  “Well, what do you think about it?”

  She said, “Well, to tell you the truth, I’m sick of the whole Trade Towers thing. The elevator systems are inadequate. Like once you’re up in the office, you’re up there. You can’t go down.”

  I said, “What other 110-story buildings do you have to compare the elevator systems to?”

  She said, “Well, anyway, I wouldn’t mind moving.”

  So there was talk of them moving to Midtown. But not fast enough, I guess.

  I’m a musician and I’ve always traveled a lot. But Kristy was very patient. She held on to our relationship, saying, “I have no choice. You’re the one I want to marry.”

  Music was something I did in junior high, high school, and college. Early on, the Bogmen had interest from the manager who handled Miles Davis and Cyndi Lauper. He said, “Look, I’ll pay your rent, I’ll get you guys a studio. We’ll get a record deal with Warner Brothers.” So we signed a full-time contract with him, but it didn’t work out.

  After that, we toured around the East Coast without representation. We played here in New York a lot. Within that year, we became the biggest unsigned band the city had to offer. Then we signed a deal with Arista Records in 1994, and ended up having a long four- or five-year relationship with them. We put out two albums plus a live album, did a little bit of MTV, toured some, had some success. Then the group broke up about two and a half years ago.

  Why did we do it? It just got old. It wasn’t fun anymore for us. It’s so hard to keep a band together.

  But here I had this relationship with Kristy that was so easy. She encouraged me to keep going, to work through it. She wanted me to do whatever made me happy.

  The last year I was with the Bogmen was not a good year for me. I was pretty miserable. But she supported me emotionally through it all.

  It didn’t hit me right away, what had happened. I thought that the fuel tank had exploded from the first plane and spread to Tower 2—that’s how it looked at first from the angle of the news camera, and that’s what the commentator said had happened. So, thinking that the explosion had only hit the edge of Tower 2, I tried to convince myself that she was okay. I kept thinking, she can get below that. From 104? She can get below.

  But then they replayed the second plane’s attack from different angles and it began to sink in. I kept dialing her number, but the line was dead.

  That’s when I realized there was no chance. Nobody who was up that high could have gotten out.

  I knew early that day that it was over. I just hope and pray, like all the family members of people who were in there, that it was painless and quick.

  Whichever version of an afterlife you believe in, you have to believe those people are in a special place. I believe Kristy is because she, as much as anyone, deserves to be.

  Let me tell you a little about Secret Smiles. It began with Kristy’s best friend, Meredith O’Neill Hassett, who’s a schoolteacher in Harlem. Her father is Tom O’Neill—that’s how Kristy got her interview at Sandler right out of college.87

  In ’98, Meredith felt really bad for one of her outstanding students. The boy’s mother was a sing
le parent on welfare who didn’t have a refrigerator, a stove, and lot of other necessities. This woman was a very caring mother who worked very hard for her child. She’d try to get a part-time job somewhere, at the Gap, for instance. But the way the system works, her salary would get deducted from her welfare, and she’d make less money than if she stayed at home. It’s a paralyzing system.

  Meredith saw the poverty this woman was in and the commitment she had to her son, so she raised some money. I think Meredith may have contributed some of her own; Kristy did, too, and so did Tom O’Neill. They ended up buying necessities for this mother right before Christmas. Secretly. Meredith wouldn’t stand to have the mother know that she was behind the gift. Instead, she sent Kristy, Kristy’s sister Kerry, and me uptown to the woman’s apartment two or three days prior [to] Christmas.

  Since we were strangers, we could pose as representatives from a bank without being found out. And we told her what was being delivered. We said, “Congratulations, you won a raffle.” We met Meredith’s student, who was so happy to receive the gifts.

  Well, the mother stood there in disbelief. All this went on as Meredith waited in the car outside the apartment, anxious to hear about their reaction.

  The following year, Meredith and Kristy thought, why not start this as a charity? And we’ve been doing it ever since, always donating anonymously. It was, and is, such a beautiful thing.

  Kristy has four sisters, three of whom live far away. They all drove to New York as soon as possible—they had to, because the airlines were grounded after the eleventh. They wanted to support one another and their father, Stu; Kristy’s mom had passed away eight years before.

  The days that followed September the eleventh were long and filled with rumors. Out of concern for each other—and since we all hoped for survivors—family members from the firm called each other, asking questions. “Did Frank get out? Did Bruce get out? Where’s Craig? Where’s Stacey?”

  All these people. Confused. Ridiculous. It was, and still is, a true nightmare.

  Survivor lists circulated through different hospitals and somebody put Kristy’s name on one of them, as well as two other people from her desk. This created a painful sense of false hope.

  I remember someone calling me more than a week after the attacks saying that they’re all still alive, in a hospital somewhere in New Jersey. I had to hang up the phone.

  Including Kristy, nine people who were at our wedding passed away in the Towers. Everybody at her desk. Gone. Including Stacey McGowan, who was one of Kristy’s bridesmaids.

  And it really made me angry, prolonging everything.

  There’s no blueprint for this kind of tragedy. People were and are simply devastated.

  It’s funny. Kristy went to Meredith’s school one time and read children’s stories to Meredith’s students. Unexpectedly, that mother arrived—the one we’d helped out by posing as bankers—and she noticed Kristy, who was hard to miss because she was so beautiful. Looking at Kristy, the mother said to Meredith, “I know that woman. She looks familiar.”

  Meredith played dumb. “Oh? Really?”

  Meredith and that mother eventually became friends. The woman attended Meredith’s wedding in October of 2001. Even after Kristy’s death, she still had no idea that it was Meredith and Kristy’s charity who had delivered those items.

  I played piano at parts of the wedding, and the woman kept saying to Meredith, “I’m telling you, I know that guy from somewhere.”

  Good Morning America produced a segment on Kristy and Secret Smiles, which aired on Christmas Eve of 2001. It was set up so that the mother could finally meet Kerry and I. So now the secret’s over.

  The mother looked at me and said, “I knew you! I recognized you!”

  I just wished Kristy had been there. She would have loved it.

  The Bogmen reunited to play a benefit concert for Secret Smiles in memory of Kristy. We performed two nights at Irving Plaza. Gordon Gano, the singer/songwriter for the Violent Femmes, did the shows with us. We’re all friends who go to the same bars.

  Gordon and I wrote a couple songs together with my brother, and I put a CD together with some musician friends in memory of Kristy. I wrote the lyrics to one song, “You Make Me Happy,” for Kristy.

  The band hadn’t played together for two and a half years, so we were originally going to perform one night. In doing so, we set a high ticket price. But the first night sold out so fast that we added another. The Bogmen raised $100,000 from those two nights, and all proceeds went to Secret Smiles.

  We’ve parlayed Secret Smiles towards what happened downtown. We’re getting the word out and have done some press. We have a website now, at www.SecretSmiles.org, and we’re still very un-bureaucratic. We’re public, but small. We act quickly to get relief right out.

  We’re not just helping in Harlem, either. We’re in Long Island and the tri-state area as well—wherever we feel we can help. We’re working hand-in-hand with Safe Horizon and some other charities to find out who’s really the neediest of the needy, and we’re focusing on that: the window washers, restaurant workers, and the receptionists from the Towers, and their families. The lower-income households who may have lost earners.

  I think about Kristy all the time. Of course I do. She was filled with happiness and virtue. Life is hard without her. But the mourning process isn’t focused. When a group like hers gets taken out … it doesn’t make grieving any easier. I think it actually makes it harder. I know the saying is that “misery loves company,” but it doesn’t pertain to this situation. It just doesn’t.

  I talk to family members of people who worked at Kristy’s desk, and it’s very difficult because the losses are inconceivable. How could so many innocent, young, and talented people be gone? It’s different for everybody. I’ve talked to some widows—many of whom have kids. They have to step it up for their kids, and they’re doing it. This takes a tremendous amount of strength.

  I don’t have any children. I often wish Kristy could have left more of herself behind, an extension of her.

  I ran around for the last three and a half months, not sure how to approach each day. I didn’t sit at home all day crying. I went out a lot and kept moving, doing what I had to do. I planned the shows, worked on the CD, the charity. I started a new job.

  But dealing with paperwork and certificates is hard because the process is so cold. I’ve been down to Pier 94 probably eight times now, to surrogate court three times, to Worth Street four or five to visit FEMA, HRA, the Salvation Army, the Red Cross.88 I get all these letters from Kristy’s company saying, “Make sure you register for this, and make sure you call these people.” Meanwhile, there’s a lot of people out there trying to milk the system who weren’t even involved in September 11. It has a dehumanizing effect, which I really don’t like.

  I kept busy, but I hated coming home. I dreaded it. I moved to another apartment three weeks ago in early December 2001, and it’s helped. I dreaded the other apartment. I slept on the couch for three months with the news on, waiting for the next catastrophe.

  Terrorists piloting a plane to hit American targets is like a midget hitting Mike Tyson in the face and knocking him out. I’m still wondering where our intelligence was, where our defenses were. For two planes to hit the Towers? And another to hit the Pentagon? It’s as if our nation’s biggest targets sat defenseless.

  If we sat around a think tank and wondered, “What would someone do if you were an enemy of the United States?” we’d probably come up with this scenario.

  People believe what happened that day was inconceivable. I don’t. I believe that our government failed Kristy and all of those people. It’s the government’s job, first and foremost, to protect its citizens. And on the eleventh of September, it simply did not do that.

  Things are a little better now, although nights can be rough. It’s hard to fall asleep, and my dreams are often difficult. I’m not a pill person, I’m not into medication. Still, the loss of Kristy causes
a pain that comes in waves, and it’s difficult to control the tempo of those waves.

  Sometimes when I wake up, I still smell the fumes from Ground Zero through the bedroom window and I think, this isn’t really happening. Or, I’ll see Kristy again, she’ll come back. Or, this is just a dirty joke someone’s playing on me.

  But then I always realize it can’t be changed. Like so many others from this catastrophe, my life has changed, and this, unfortunately, is the new world.

  I guess I have to do something to make a difference. Kristy did. I can’t just stay in bed and do nothing. Some days are really bad, but I get up every morning and try to get something done.

  Kristy was loved by so many people. She’s sorely missed, and she always will be. Her friends and family miss her beyond belief. But what I truly find amazing about Kristy is that, even after her death—because of her work with Secret Smiles—people who never even met her feel her presence. And those people miss her, too.

  The following lyrics have been excerpted from the CD produced by the Bogmen, Gordon Gano, and the Knockout Drops for the Irving Plaza benefit, Kristy’s Smile.

  “You Make Me Happy”

  Walked through the sunbeams from your eyes

  Cracked up and laughed all alone

  It’s not just me on this island

  You’re with me now to the stone.

  You make me happy

  You make me happy

  You make me happy

  It’s just a brief separation

  Close your eyes, grab onto faith

  Rock away all of your demons

  Faith is much harder to face

  It was too early for sundown