Tower Stories

by Damon DiMarco

  This is a very Jesuit concept. One of the main insights of Jesuit spirituality is that God wants us to make good decisions. Not just wants—he’ll help us make good decisions.

  So how do we do it? By paying attention to those feelings. In the Jesuits, we call this discernment. By looking at our feelings and by discerning them, by asking ourselves, “Why am I acting a certain way?” We can listen to God’s voice, which essentially comes to us through our conscience.

  Let’s take a simple example. Someone cuts in front of you on the subway. You get angry. Now, you have two choices. You can punch this person in the face. You could. That could happen. That’s how a lot of people feel. Or you can let it go.

  Now, most people are smart enough to know—they also know in their conscience—that punching someone would be a bad thing to do, even though you feel it. So that’s what I’m talking about.

  Your interior life, your sense of right and wrong, can guide you. But very often, we don’t pay attention. We punch the guy who cut in front of us on the subway when, really, that person had no idea he was stepping in front of us in the first place. We do that as individuals. But we discern even less as a country.

  Obviously, 9/11 was directed at us. It wasn’t an accident; it was a clear attack. Premeditated.

  But look at what happened after 9/11. We wanted to punch someone, and we ended up punching the wrong person. That can happen when you’re angry.

  So again, I wish we’d dealt with what happened much better, in a more surgical way. Because, ultimately, our lack of discernment made the world less safe, not more safe.

  Why don’t people pay attention more? Go within more? Try to discern a bit more? Because, ultimately, God gave us free will. We’re capable of giving in to our sinful nature. And sometimes we do.

  Will that ever change? No. By which I mean, I don’t think human nature’s going to change. But I do think people can still get better and try to work with the good.

  108 On July 28, 1945, Lt. Colonel William F. Smith Jr. was flying a B-25 Mitchell bomber from Bedford Army Air Force Base in Massachusetts to Newark Metropolitan Airport in New Jersey. Disoriented in the thick fog, Smith made a wrong turn. His aircraft crashed into the north side of the Empire State Building, between floors 78 and 80. Smith and the other two soldiers aboard the B-25 were killed, along with eleven civilians in the building.

  109 “I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse: therefore choose life” (Deut. 30:19).

  JILLIAN SUAREZ

  While researching follow-up interviews, I began reading stories about the “Children of 9/11”—boys and girls who lost a parent or parents that day. Sadly, this list is long.

  The average “9/11 kid” was nine years old when their father or mother was killed. Some were infants destined to grow up having no clear memory of their parents. In a handful of cases, the child had yet to be born when the planes struck the Towers.

  Losing a loved one is always hard, but a child who loses a parent resides in a special sort of vacuum. The person you miss is always there. Always with you. Except that they’re not.

  There is no one to guide these children through the trials of being a teenager. No one to help them with math problems once the dinner plates have been cleared. No one to hug them after a graduation, or to walk them down the aisle.

  Hearing “He’s watching” or “She would have been proud of you” is never a substitute for the real thing.

  For all these reasons and more, I was grateful when Jillian Suarez, twenty-eight, consented to be interviewed.

  Jillian’s father, Ramon, was an officer with the NYPD. On 9/11, Ramon and his partner, Mark Ellis, left their assigned posts to go down and help at the Towers. Both officers perished in the line of duty.

  That in itself is a tale worth telling, a story of sacrifice worthy of men and women who wear their badges with honor. But what Jillian Suarez did with her life is more than a testament to her father’s memory. It’s a master class in alchemy, a lesson in turning lead into gold.

  It turns out that there’s a method for turning something bad into something good. And Jillian Suarez found it.

  MY MOM SAID one of the reasons she fell in love with my dad was because of his great dimples. Every picture you see him in, he’s smiling. He was just a ray of light. That’s my memory of him. And not just me—that’s how other people remember him, too.

  All growing up, I knew he was a police officer. I knew he loved his job. He loved wearing the uniform. He loved helping people, being there for people. That’s how I remember him. I was very proud of him for being a police officer.

  I remember him being gone at different hours. Like, sometimes he’d be able to pick me up from school, and sometimes he wouldn’t. But he was always there. He was very involved in my life.

  At one point, he coached my elementary school track team. He was very dedicated. I mean, he wasn’t like a half-assed coach. He was there for the kids. He always made sure, if the kids were having trouble, he was going to help them in every way possible.

  This one time I remember, I had a track meet at St. John’s University, and he had worked a double shift that day. But he didn’t go home to get sleep. He just went straight to the track meet after work.

  I remember this day so clearly because this was the day that I won my first gold medal. I was the smallest out of the group, and I ended up winning the gold medal.

  I remember my dad was so happy, he fainted. He was happy, he hadn’t got sleep, so it was all a combination of that. But he had that kind of happiness for everyone who won a medal. He was amazing with kids. It was remarkable.

  He was sort of a health nut, too. Like, he was definitely a runner. He was a boxer. Always working out. Sometimes he worked out twice a day. There’s never a time that he wasn’t able to eat whatever he wanted, no problem. He was always healthy.

  I read these stories about him later. Like, one of his old partners, Steve Rentas. He said my dad would see somebody, a colleague, eating a donut or drinking an energy drink. And my dad would say, “You know what? Why don’t you have something healthier?”

  Officer Rentas said my dad was a perfectionist about everything: His uniform. His appearance. His performance on the job.

  That sounds like him. All of it does. It fits with my memory of him.

  There’s this family story about my dad. We were living in Ridgewood, Queens, in the top apartment, on top of a furniture store. I don’t know how old I was but I know I’d been born. I was around when this happened.

  So one day, my mom and my dad were all dressed up to go to a party. And I guess my dad looked out the window and he saw a few teenagers beating up a guy across the street. So my dad gave my mom one of those looks, you know? Then he ran downstairs and across the street. He chased these kids and he caught them.

  My mom later said she didn’t know how my dad used to do that stuff. She said he must’ve had wings.

  He was a track guy. He ran, and he caught them and held them down until backup came. Like, minutes later, a patrol car came and the kids were arrested.

  That was my dad.

  So that day, this is what I remember.

  I had just turned nine on the Sunday, two days before. On 9/11, I was at after-school with a close friend of mine at the time named Ashley. She was a year or two older than me and she lived, like, four blocks away from my house.

  We sat down, but the moment I got up to pick up my books, the teachers told us, “Ashley and Jillian, your parents are here.”

  Ashley and I were, like, huh? We thought it was so weird. I mean, we didn’t have a moment of after-school. We’d just sat down and automatically got picked up.

  But then we thought, okay. This is cool. We’re gonna leave earlier now.

  I’m honestly not sure, but I think my dad was supposed to pick me up that day. But the way it happened, I remember my mom picked me up. I was wondering why my she was crying.
I thought it was just, like, her and my dad had got in an argument or something. And I thought, you know, it was okay. Everything was going to be fine.

  Ashley was going to come over because it was a nice day, as we all remember. And since we’d been picked up early from school, Ashley and I were going to go in the pool. We lived in a three-family home and we had an above-ground pool in the backyard.

  I remember I wanted to call Ashley, because I was wondering why she was taking so long and she didn’t live far at all. Then I heard my mom screaming on the phone and yelling and saying, “They can’t find them!”

  I didn’t know what was going on. All I know is I ran to my bed, I just fell to my knees, and I prayed. I prayed and prayed. I prayed that my dad was gonna come home, because I’d heard that he was in trouble.

  Ashley finally got to the house. We were so excited to go in the pool. We were splashing around and playing, but I kept wondering what was going on.

  At the time, my uncle on my mom’s side lived in the basement apartment. That’s where everyone was. I think they were down there watching the news and trying to sort out what had happened.

  I didn’t understand the seriousness of what was happening because I wasn’t allowed to watch it. I just knew that something was going on because the adults were acting very strangely. They didn’t want me to see what was going on. They were trying to protect me, I guess.

  I felt that, whatever it was, it involved my dad. But I thought, never mind. He’s gonna come home.

  Then Ashley said, “Didn’t you hear?”

  “Hear what?”

  She said, “There was a terrorist attack. The World Trade Center got hit with planes.”

  “Oh my God. My dad is probably there. Because I heard my mom say that he hasn’t been found.”

  But my friend said, “No, he’s definitely gonna come home.”

  And I said, “Yeah, you’re right. He’s gonna come home.”

  And then we just enjoyed playing in the pool. We were laughing and playing, and everything was fine because I felt like he would come home.

  Obviously, I was little at that time and I didn’t know a lot of the details. I learned all this later on.

  What happened … my dad was assigned to the transit system. Transit District 4, the Delancey Street/Essex Street subway station down on the Lower East Side. It’s a little under two miles from the Trade Center. That was his normal assignment.

  He was there that day with his partner, Officer Mark Ellis. And I guess they got word about what was happening over their radios. After that? I don’t know.

  You read some articles, they say my dad hailed a cab. Other articles say he “commandeered” a cab. I also heard that he hailed a cab, then he left it. Jumped right out and ran down there himself.

  I assume that he and his partner left Delancey and Essex together and took the cab together. But I don’t really know for sure. There’s only two people who truly know—that’s my dad and his partner.

  After that? There’s a photograph of my father. He’s down at the Towers in the rubble of Tower 1, I guess it was, and he’s helping an African American woman whose leg was hurt.

  It’s clearly my dad in the picture, and this woman is clearly in distress. He was helping her, which of course he would do.

  I think that’s the last recorded instance of anyone seeing him. People say he ran back into the building, I believe it was the second Tower, the South Tower. And that’s where they found him three months later.

  The day they found him, that’s when it really hit me. He wasn’t coming home.

  This is what my mother tells me. She was working that day on 5th Avenue in Manhattan. She was an assistant supervisor for an Argentinian bank. She told me, later, she was walking to work. She was on the street, on the sidewalk. She looked at everyone and was wondering what was going on. They were all looking up. Looking south.

  And that’s when she saw the Tower get hit. The second Tower.

  She told me she knew my dad would go there. She said she had, like, a gut feeling that he would be there. He wouldn’t not help people. He would always be there.

  Later that day, Steve Rentas’s wife called my mom. She asked if my mom had heard from my dad.

  “No,” she said. “What happened?”

  Mrs. Rentas said, “Carmen, he’s not answering his radio. They’re looking for him. They can’t find him.”

  And my mom knew right then that something was wrong. She knew it in her heart, she said, and she almost fell to the ground because even then, she had an idea of what was going on.

  On December 4, 2001, President George W. Bush awarded my dad the New York City Police Department Medal of Honor. That’s the highest award the agency bestows on its members.

  My dad was also awarded the 9/11 Heroes Medal of Valor. There’s a plaque with his name on it at the Transit District 4 precinct in Union Square.

  But growing up, I didn’t tell many people about my dad. For about ten years after it happened, I told people he passed away of a heart attack.

  Obviously, people in my high school knew who I was and who my dad was … how he really passed away, and when. I mean, they named the intersection of Catalpa and Woodward Avenues after him.

  But for people I’d just met? I didn’t want them to know. I guess I didn’t want people to look at me differently. Because not everyone knows somebody whose parent passed away on 9/11. I wanted to start over fresh.

  It helped that I got to meet people who’d also lost family members that day. My mother and I are very active in the New York Police and Fire Widows and Children’s Benefit Fund. They’re a great organization. Amazing. Like, they’re never not there for us.

  They would take us to baseball games and hold dinners. We’d get to talk with other people who were like us. It meant a lot. It especially helped my mom. She met a lot of her best friends through the Fund.

  But at the same time, I never spoke much about what had happened. I wasn’t speaking to anyone, really.

  It’s not easy to constantly go through the memorials and hear your father’s name on that list of people who passed away.

  All along, it was sort of made clear to me that my father’s shield was there if I ever wanted to be on the job. They kept it for me. And I knew I always wanted to be a police officer. I always wanted to be like my dad.

  When he passed away, I remember feeling, I’m going to be just like him.

  So I went to St. John’s University, got a BS in criminal justice. That was in 2015.

  Right after graduation, I went straight into a program to get a master’s degree in homeland security, criminal justice, and leadership. I got that in 2017. All told, I studied six years.

  Then I went to work full-time in the forensics department for the NYPD. About a year later, I entered the New York City Police Academy. That was April 2018. That’s a six-month program. It’s like a full-time job. There’s physical training, firearms training, procedural training. It’s pretty intense.

  I graduated with my class in October 2018. I remember getting my father’s badge. It’s badge number 12671, and it’s mine now. That shield means everything to me.

  At the swearing-in ceremony, the commissioner for the NYPD, James O’Neill, he said, “I know your dad is proud you’re wearing his shield today, Jillian. And so are we.”

  When I felt the confetti coming down, I felt him hugging me. My dad was there.

  Yes, I like being a police officer. I always saw my dad’s passion for his job and how he loved wearing that uniform. I want to be able to help others the way he did.

  The whole thing is about helping people and being there for people. If people need me, I’ll drop anything to help them. I don’t care what it is. That’s what gives me happiness.

  But it’s definitely tough. It’s not a normal job. It’s not about the nine to five. It’s not about, this person will be home at this time. You don’t always know what times you’ll be home. Sometimes, you don’t even know if you’ll be ab
le to make it home at all. You sleep at the precinct. It’s a lifestyle the people around you have to adapt to.

  There are times where you have to miss holidays, you have to miss birthdays. It’s tough on people. Not every person’s used to missing a holiday with their loved ones. I mean, now, with this generation, it’s sort of easy to FaceTime people. But even then, it’s hard to see your family together and know you’re not there with them.

  I remember my best friend had her baby gender reveal—and this is a best friend of mine of fifteen years. But I couldn’t make it. I had to be at work. I was so sad, because my best friend was having twins. I was so excited to see her facial expression. And it killed me inside to see it through a FaceTime call and not be there and hug her and cry with her and be excited with her.

  It just shows, you have to make sacrifices. This job is all about sacrifices.

  But it’s worth it. It’s worth it. At the end of the day, you took that shield. You took it with honor. And with honor you will carry it.

  I know my father is watching me. And I know I won’t let him down.

  GLENN GUZI

  The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) is a b-itate transportation agency created in 1921 by an interstate compact authorized by the United States Congress. It oversees a zone known as the Port District, defined as a circle whose radius extends twenty-five miles from the Statue of Liberty.

  Over its long and storied history, PANYNJ has built many iconic structures, including the George Washington Bridge, the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, the new Bayonne and Goethals Bridges, and the World Trade Center. The agency owns and operates these infrastructure assets along with a portfolio of others, including the three major airports most iconic to New York City: JFK International, Newark Liberty International, and LaGuardia.