On the way out, the weather turned chilly, and brought more release. While most of the audience went north on Church Street to the buses, some moved south past 5 World Trade Center, a squat metal outlying structure on the north side of Ground Zero whose partially sunken middle reminded one family member of the federal building in Oklahoma City. This building had been fully evacuated, but behind it, the family members knew, were the towers, or what little was left of them.
Through the wreckage, a visage in the dusk: a weary firefighter making a slow 100-yard trek from the rubble, his hands full of tower stones. A crowd gathered, as weeping family members took bits of the place where their loved ones had perished. They could also receive a city-issued urn of ashes, but this was more spontaneous and heartbreaking. Soon, an impromptu ritual began. The somber firefighters carried flowers from the survivors to a makeshift shrine in the distance, far beyond where it was safe to go, then returned with the precious stones.
I had seen bits of such stone before; in fact I have them on my bookcase. They are from the Berlin Wall, tokens of victory and freedom. This time, in this place, they were symbols of mourning, borne forward from the Old Testament.
A woman asked a firefighter to point out the cross. It has become part of the lore of Ground Zero, a metal beam that survived, in the shape of a cross, and preserved by workers. But it’s over in what they call “the pit”–and not visible to the crowd. What they can see, and remark on, is how much more vast the damage is than they imagined.
“The devastation is 100 times greater than you see on TV, where you never even see the other buildings damaged,” said Nina Barnes, in a remark whose truth is not diminished by its repetition. Barnes and her family are cousins of Durrell “Bronco” Pearsall, a 34-year-old firefighter from Rescue 4 with no wife, siblings or living parents. On Friday, as next of kin, they were notified that Bronco’s body had been found, with seven others, in a shaft, remarkably intact.
Now, as they leave the area, a meaningful coincidence: A firefighter, wearing a blue jean jacket over his uniform, tells Nina that he is the one who found Bronco. The family, two kids in tow, wearing FDNY caps, walk over to Broadway with a closure beyond that of all but a very few. The service for Bronco, “our hero,” scheduled for mid-November, can now be moved up, and called a funeral.
Deputy Chief Edward Kalletti, back on duty, is still savoring the program: “It was purely memorial, not political–that was the nice part.” The site is closed for 24 hours, but plenty more work remains. “Fires are still burning down there,” Kalletti says. “I knew more than 150 of the guys, and we’ve got a lot more to look for.” The department has held 200 funerals, with 140 to go. About 80 bodies of firefighters have been recovered.
I check back in with Patricia Thompson, widow of Philip Haentzler, who worked for Kidder Peabody in the north tower. She came to Ground Zero with three friends (each family received five tickets) and a Bible, deeply uncertain about whether she had made the right decision to return.
“This is almost a retraumatizing experience,” she told me shortly before the 2 p.m. service began. “I think of Philip on the 101st floor, and now I’m having these questions: Did he know what was happening? Did he suffer? It’s nearly two months and it feels like yesterday. My heart is broken, and being here makes me feel what I feel every day, only more intensely. I can’t figure out where I am. I’m very displaced.”
Afterward, it’s not quite accurate to say she is glad she came, because she’s not glad about much of anything these days. But she thinks she made the right choice to return. “To be here and to pray for him–being together with so many other people. It makes a difference.”
Greg Hrycak feels the same way. “Just to see what evil does,” he says, his voice trailing off as his eyes move across the scene. But then, a moment of certitude: “This is not where he is,” he says of his father Marty, who worked for the New York State Department of Taxation in Tower Two. “He’s in a better place now.”
As I left the secured area, I turned back for one last look west, and saw all the way across Ground Zero a banner hanging from the World Financial Plaza: WE WILL NEVER FORGET.
