2,996
In May a budding writer and blogger named D. Challener Roe realized that he couldn't name one Sept. 11 victim other than Todd Beamer, the passenger who helped roll the hijackers who planned to fly United Airlines Flight 93 into the nation's capital.
"As one of the millions who pledged never to forget those killed on 9/11, I realized I hadn't kept my promise," he wrote by email Sunday from his Raleigh, N.C. home. He thought of writing something about each of those who died, but decided "I'm not that good a writer." But why not put out the call for an army of volunteers?
That's the origin of The 2,996 Project, an effort to enlist bloggers to celebrate the lives of those who died in the terror attacks of five years ago today.
"It's about making them real to those of us who have never heard their stories," he wrote on his site. While word of his project spread with help of some conservative bloggers, he sought to avoid politics in his project: "Grief," he wrote, "is non partisan."
Today, all 2,996 posts should be online, posted on mom and pop sites around the country. There are memorials from a family of fundamentalist Christian home schoolers in Virginia, and from a mad-about-martinis mother in Colorado. Two boys, ages 4 and 6, wrote tributes. So did bloggers with the names Web Loafer, Bookworm and the Kept Woman.
The Kept Woman pulled the name of Robert A.Vicario, 40, who worked at Cantor Fitzgerald. She wrote it in the form of a letter to Vicario's daughter, who was four months old:
Keep his light alive by indulging in his love for all types of music, learn to cook Italian food, tell stories and laugh, make the most of everything you do by smiling and remember how much he loved you and how blessed you are to have had him hug and kiss you for those very short four months that you did.
Valerie from Michigan wrote in her The Unseen Wounded blog about Martin Coughlan, 54, a carpenter from Tipperary, Ireland. He'd been working in the south tower. The job of doing justice to man unmet came easier with the discover of this poem from an Irish tribute page:
Martin John Coughlan was my father.
But, he wasn't just my father because I just so happened to be born.
He was my father because he... cared about me. raised me. Loved me.
Picked me up from dance class never being a second late.
Encouraged me. Gave me someone to look up to. Made me laugh.
Gave me everything I ever needed, even when I didn't deserve it.
Taught me. He was the best father anyone could ever have.
There isn't a day that goes by where I don't think about you Dad. We all miss you!
(Denise Coughlan, daughter, 20 Oct. 2002.)
From the comments left on Roe's site, a lot of those willing to profile one of the 2,996 didn't know where to start. So he and guest bloggers created a list of resources, from The New York Times' Portraits of Grief and the Village Voice's bulletin board, which allowed families to search for loved ones, to tributes published by Marsh & McLennan and Dartmouth College.
The list of the 2,996 can be found here. The first name I searched for was that of Jeff Hardy. A memorial wasn't up Sunday, so I made a pass at remembering him. (It's been posted since. Here.)
He was a year ahead of me at Pomfret School, a big blond bear who played ice hockey and bass guitar. We wasted time together working at the Tuck Shop, a snack bar that served awful food. He came from a musical family - his father ran the Aspen Music Festival for 28 years. His older brother Jack Hardy is the singer-songwriter who started the Fast Folk movement.
Jeff was the head chef on the 101st floor of the World Trade Center's north tower. He'd cook breakfast and lunch for Cantor Fitzgerald bond traders and then make it home to Brooklyn in time to cook for his two sons and wife, a public relations exec. If the Mets were on TV, life couldn't get any better.
His brother Jack told the Rocky Mountain News, "He was the most gentle soul I knew."
I looked for another of the 2,996, David Retik, the first cousin of my friend. His wife, Susan, was from Cheltenham. Her family still lives here. She and another woman from Boston have created a foundation to help Afghan war widows. David Retik was on the first plane, American Airlines Flight 11. The blogger who got the job of profiling him describes herself as an author and mother. She writes how she struggled to do justice to a man she never knew, how she spent two weeks just thinking about him "wondering about him. Wishing that I could have even briefly, a glimpse into his life and know a bit about the man who set off that morning thinking it was just another day."
Then she studied a photo of his family, from a magazine her mother had given her, and she found her way in:
They are lovely, all of them. Well...I doubt your son would want that label but I'll give it to him anyway. Your daughters have their mother's gentle smile. And the youngest looks so much like her, it makes my heart ache a bit. Not because that resemblance is a sad thing, but because you never got to experience it.
I looked for the post on Garnet "Ace" Bailey, who played for the Boston Bruins when I was growing up. He was one of two scouts for the Los Angeles Kings heading from Boston to Los Angeles. Candace, an Oklahoma City blogger, got the task of remembering him. She writes of his playing career and his front-office work, as well as his good nature and the way his autograph looked like a smile. His legacy, she wrote, is Ace's Place, a playroom at Boston's Floating Hospital for Children. His widow, Katherine, told ESPN recently, "It's always been important for me to hold onto Ace and hold onto him tight. You don't forget about it. It doesn't go away. Ace had such an incredible spirit. He had this intense need to make everyone around him happy. His spirit is here."
For some of the bloggers, it was not so hard to picture what happened that day, or to peer into the lives of those who died. Plus Size Diva writes that she used to work as an investments accountant at Carr Futures on the 92nd floor of the WTC. Carr Futures lost 69 persons that day. She'd moved to Chicago, but had hoped to visit old friends on a New York trip shortly before 9/11. She had procrastinated, and could only speak by phone. "Even now I look at the pictures of the victims, in particular the ones that I worked with and still can not find any words to describe it." And so she just posts pictures of six friends.
I found one more with a personal connection. Simply Left Behind turned his blog over to a friend, Mike McFinn, who lost his brother Billy, a lieutenant with the NYFD's Squad 18. It begins:
Billy was a skinny, small kid. Not one you would look at and think, "That kid will be a hero someday." ...
After Billy survived the altar boys without getting excommunicated, and survived the Boy Scouts without getting burned or frozen to death – not to mention the construction in the neighborhood, high school loomed in his future. ...
It was at Hunter that a certain young Anne Golden caught his eye and he began spending more time with her, and less time carousing with the boys. I first met Anne when I got on a SIRT train one day and Billy introduced us. He later asked me not to say anything to our family about her, but when she showed up at a Sunday dinner, I knew it was serious. I was nice and did not torture her, as Billy and I did with great delight when ever one of our sisters showed up with an unwitting victim. ...
Billy was appointed to the department in 1984 and got married in July of that year. Billy was sent to Ladder 11 and Engine 28 on East 2nd street in lower Manhattan as a probationary firefighter. I don't know if it was the Fire Department, Anne or both that changed Billy, but the Billy who walked out of the firehouse was not the same Billy that walked in. Where as I do not care if somebody likes me or not, Billy made an effort to win over all he came to know. ...
Billy never talked about the dangers of the job, and spoke only in passing about the fires he helped put out. Most of what he said about the fires he went to was confined to how much fun he had playing on the roofs of burning buildings while chopping holes in them. If this did not make our mother sufficiently nervous he would start talking about the joys of leaping from roof to roof. These were not the best stories however. The best stories were about what took place when they were not fighting fires. The best action happened while waiting for the alarm bell to go off. ...
On September 11th 2001 Squad 18 was in temporary quarters on Lafayette Street while repairs were being made to the firehouse on West 10th Street. They were scheduled to go to Randalls Island for training, but we all know what happened next. ...
Sean is a cadet in the N.Y.P.D. Academy now. He is going to join another blue line while he waits for a firefighter test to come up. The niece and nephews who delighted in the noisy toys are mostly grown now, the drums and super soakers lie forlorn and forgotten in basements and garages. Our family gatherings are much too quiet now. The picture of a beloved young firefighter hangs on the wall telling us why.
You mentioned so many people. Thank you for recognizing each and every one. God Bless America.
As a member of the 2,996 Project - thank you for your kind words. Some have said this was politically motivated, and I can assure you nothing is further from the truth. Most of us went out of our way to not mention politics or our personal beliefs. This project help me to put a face to a name to a life - instead of just seeing the numbers. We all lost far more than we know that day...and I am just beginning to realize just how much.
Ponder, you are absolutely correct - the number 2996 is no longer an abstract political point - for those who volunteered to remember the vicitims - the number now has a name, the number now has a face. In Memory of Marcello Matricciano - WTC, Cantor Fitzgerald