Sharon couldn’t stop thinking that she’d come home one day to find her brother eating a peanut butter and banana sandwich in the kitchen–or that Ronnie, a fitness nut, might walk in the door and say, “C’mon sis, we’re going for a run around the track.” She imagined him safe, trapped in a pocket underneath the rubble. “He spent 16 years in the Marines,” she says. “Ronnie could eat rocks and survive.”
But yesterday, Sharon finally realized he was gone when she made her first visit to the only graveyard her brother will likely ever know. Sharon was among the more than 9,000 mourners of World Trade Center attack victims who gathered for an outdoor memorial service held at the perimeter of the wreck site. For many in attendence, it was the first time they’d breathed the chalky, acrid air still wafting from the wreckage, the first time their shoes and pant legs were smudged with the gray ash that dusts the downtown streets, and the first time they witnessed firsthand the horrific magnificence of the crumpled steel, burnt-out building carcasses and the acres upon acres of smoldering rubble. Most families will never have a body to bury, and for some the trip to the site brought them one step closer to a sense of closure.
“It doesn’t put a lid on it, but it definitely put some things in order,” says Jeff Filipov, who traveled from Concord, Mass., to attend the service. His father, Alexander Filipov, was on board American Airlines Flight 11 when it struck the north tower.
The service was simple and included brief remarks from a diverse assembly of religious leaders, while Mayor Giuliani, Gov. George Pataki and Sen. Hillary Clinton sat silently on stage throughout the service. A star-studded cast, including Andrew Lloyd Webber and soprano Renee Fleming performed. But many mourners say their eyes were trained not on the stage, the performers, or the two giant screens simulcasting the event. Instead, they spent the ceremony gazing at the Ground Zero backdrop, just beyond the stage.
It was a crisp day with a cloudless blue sky, much like September 11, but with a fiercer autumn nip. There was just enough wind to keep the American flags posted on rooftops and carried by family members waving. Throughout the service, firetrucks at the recovery site continued to shoot arcs of spray over the smoldering wreckage, sending occasional mist clouds drifting over the site. At one point during the ceremony, a jet silently sliced through the empty sky far off in the distance, a haunting reminder of the day that brought them here.
As Jeff Filipov stared out over the wreckage during the service, he thought mainly about what his father would have thought of the debris. “He was an engineer and he loved to build things,” says Jeff, as he surveys the remains. “This one’s pretty big and it came down. He would have been upset with that–the fact that all this stuff got destroyed, at the mess.”
For many the smell was as disturbing as the view. Some mourners buried their faces in scarves, and a few wore surgical masks. “The worst is that you can taste it,” says Christine Laurent, 23, whose cousin, Adrian Scibetta, 31, worked on the 101st floor of the north tower at Cantor Fitzgerald. Denis Warchola, a retired firefighter who lost his younger brother, Lt. Michael Warchola of Ladder 5 in Manhattan, recognized the scent. “I don’t even want to tell you what it reminds me of. People say it’s the smell of the burning cement, but to me, it’s a deeper smell than that.” Warchola’s brother was killed on the 11th during his final shift before his retirement began after 24 years with FDNY. He had planned a trip to Australia to celebrate.
During his remarks at the start of the ceremony, Cardinal Edward Egan observed, “We have hardly any tears left to shed.” But those with reserves unleashed them. “I’ve been unable to cry as much as some,” says Jeff Filipov, “but today the waves of that came through, and I was able to cry. You’ve got kids just standing there and you don’t know whether they’ve lost a parent. You can’t control it.”
The collective grief in the crowd was comforting for many. “You can look into these people’s eyes and see the same loss you’re feeling,” says Julie Boryczewski, whose brother, Martin Boryczewski worked at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 104th floor of Tower One. Martin was an avid fly fisher who’d just bought Julie her own fishing gear. “He still needs to finish teaching me,” she adds.
For some, the memorial service was just a brief pause in a long work day, and one more memorial in a seemingly endless string. When the 24-hour recovery operations at Ground Zero were halted for the ceremony, New York Fire Department Battalion Chief John Podlucky drifted over to the service in his bunker gear and fire helmet. His black fire jacket was gray with dust from the site. Dozens of men were killed in the firehouses he supervises, and he’s attended more funerals than he cares to count. “The toughest ones are the ones with orphans,” he says. For him, closure is a long way off. “That’s a tough word. I don’t see it coming for a long time.”
But some mourners found themselves one step closer to accepting the reality of their loss. More than an hour after the service ended the sun began to set, basking the wreckage in a golden glow. The crowd had dispersed and clean up crews were beginning to sweep the streets and break down the chairs, but Sharon Henderson was still sitting in a plastic folding chair, clutching a bouquet of purple flowers and looking out at the 16-acre graveyard. “It makes you realize there’s just no way he made it out,” she says of her brother Ronnie. She realized it was time to end her daily calls to the engine 279 firehouse. “I can feel his presence here.”
