THETRIBECATRIB Vol. VIII No. 2 OCTOBER 2001 HITTING HOME The story of terror, crisis and caring in our own backyard. A SPECIAL ISSUE CARL GLASSMAN 2 THE TRIBECA TRIB OCTOBER 2001 3 ANOTE TO OUR READERS This month’s Trib looks different. Like our community, it has been transformed by the cataclysmic events of Sept. 11. While we have provided the latest and most important information available at press time (see page 47), this issue is less a newspaper than a kind of family album, a chronicle of who we are as a community and what we faced in the wake of last month’s horror. As we go to press, a cloud both metaphorical and real hangs over us. Many remain displaced; the livelihoods of our businesses are threatened; the near future of our schools and their programs is in doubt. We worry about the very air we breathe. Worst of all, not a few of us bear the loss of friends, family members, co-workers and neighbors. But the news is not all bad. This month, we also want to remember that in difficult times, our neighbors came together in countless acts of courage and kindness toward the rescue effort and toward each other. It is a privilege to be a community newspaper in such a community. Next month, the Trib will look the way it used to. Though none of us in Lower Manhattan, I suppose, will ever be quite the same. Carl Glassman, Editor THETRIBECATRIB VOLUME 8 ISSUE 2 OCTOBER 2001 Trinity Church Wall Street PUBLISHERS CARL GLASSMAN AND APRIL KORAL Shares the Grief EDITOR CARL GLASSMAN ASSOCIATE EDITOR And Hope of Our Community RONALD DRENGER COPY EDITOR JESSICA RAIMI Please Join Us for Worship CONTRIBUTORS Sundays at 3 pm OLIVER E. ALLEN, COURTNEY DENTCH, JOHN DELLAPORTAS, KIRA GLASSMAN, until further notice at ANNE KADET, PAMELA MARIN, The Roman Catholic Church of LIZANNE MERRILL, KELLY MONAGHAN, JIM STRATTON, JEANNE C. WILKINSON Our Lady of the Rosary and ADVERTISING Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton DANA SEMAN DISTRIBUTION 7 State Street, across from Battery Park TULLY JEWETT THE TRIBECA TRIB Published monthly (except Aug.) by The Tribeca Trib, Inc. 157 Chambers St. 5th Floor New York, N.Y. 10007 (212) 608-5990 fax: (212) 571-1267 For further information, [email protected] visit www.trinitywallstreet.org Subscriptions: $40 for 11 issues. Unsolicited material should be addressed to the editor and or call 917-488-0792 include a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Appropriate care will be taken, but The Tribeca Trib assumes no responsibility for its return. 4 HITTING HOME THE TRIBECA TRIB OCTOBER 2001 THE FIRST HOURS 5 TEXT FOR THIS SPECIAL ISSUE BY RONALD DRENGER AND CARL GLASSMAN PHOTOGRAPHS BY CARL GLASSMAN (UNLESS OTHERWISE CREDITED) EDITORIAL ASSISTANCE BY APRIL KORAL, JESSICA RAIMI, ANNE KADET, PAMELA MARIN, BARBARA ARIA AND BRENT SHEARER Seconds after Ameri- can Airlines Flight 11 explodes in Tower One, flames shoot from the gash in its facade and the first clouds of smoke billow skyward. Greenwich Street was full of life on election morning, Sept. 11, with parents dropping The First Hours off schoolchildren, The First Hours electioneers out in force, and people strolling to work. The Where were you? What did you do? Who, God forbid, did you know? In the homes, crash of a Boeing 767 into World Trade schools and businesses closest to the carnage, the horror of September 11 left Tower One turned all eyes to a Lower Man- countless stories to be retold for years to come. Here are just a few. hattan skyline that was to be tragically changed forever. lenn Linder, 32, was in his apart- store’s owner, Jeremy and Julie Johnson rushed “I can’t tell you what I saw. I didn’t see any- ment at 40 Harrison Street when in to pick up their spaniel, Luke. thing like bodies. I saw shoes, I saw dust, I don’t he heard a rumbling. Soon the “They called to say everyone has to pick up know how many inches. My feet, my clothes, phone rang and a friend asked their dogs, and I ran from 50th Street,” said Jere- you couldn’t see.” how he was. “What do you mean, my. He told policemen on the sidewalk he was Urosevic was telling her story the day after, GhowG am I?” he replied. getting his child from day care. “He’s like our on Greenwich Street outside Independence “Go look out your window.” child,” Jeremy said. “We had to get him.” Plaza. Still dazed, she fought back tears. “Hon- Linder rushed to his terrace and saw the ❖ estly, I would like if I lived somewhere else, at tower burning. He stayed there most of the day. Daniela Urosevic returned to her apartment at least I wouldn’t have to face this when I come “I thought, ‘We’re at war.’ And I stood there Rector and Greenwich streets after the second back, to see how everything is different.” wondering how many people had been lost.” plane struck. When Tower Two fell, ash and She looked back at the smoke billowing sky- ❖ debris turned the sunny morning into night. ward. “I can’t believe what I see. I’m just staring As always, Tuesday was Greenmarket day at Maybe it was a third plane, she thought. People at it. I can’t believe it’s the same place. I’m the World Trade Center. Tom Strumolo, the mar- rushed into her building to escape the dust and somewhere else.” ket’s manager and a Tribeca resident, was run- smoke. ❖ ning across the Brooklyn Bridge to the scene of “I didn’t know what was going on. I can’t go A squeal, then the muffled sound of crying the inferno when the first tower collapsed. The outside, I can’t open the windows, I can’t escape. broke the eerie quiet of early Tuesday afternoon farmers were a block from the site, his wife two And the smoke is going all the way in our build- on Hudson Street, just below North Moore. blocks away. He tried to phone but his cell, like ing. We couldn’t breathe.” With no running Tribeca resident Epp Hardy, a manager at Win- so many during those terrible minutes, went water, Urosevic dipped a towel into the toilet and dows on the World, had just run into a co-work- dead. He turned back toward the Brooklyn side placed it over her face. Bits of ceiling were er. Each was ecstatic to find the other one alive. as a man rushed by him. falling around her. When light finally began to After a long, tearful embrace, Hardy talked of “They won’t let you off on other side,” Stru- filter through the dust, she decided to make her running to the scene after the planes struck. molo told the man. way toward Battery Park City. “Randy [Hardy, her husband] said, ‘Don’t.’ I “I don’t care. My kid is on the other side.” just wanted to see somebody. They were trying “That did it for me,” Strumolo recalled later. to evacuate at that point. But nobody knew it “I turned around, we walked together.” was going to turn into this. Nobody. We were “You’ll have to arrest me,” Strumolo told the just looking and hoping...” cop at the barricade in Manhattan, and the two “I didn’t know what Nearby, workers who had been readying the men got through. new Issey Miyake flagship store at North Moore They paused for a moment and Strumolo saw was happening. I can’t and Hudson for a gala opening the following a look of horror appear on the man’s face, as evening sat on the steps outside the store, eating though he were suddenly comprehending that his open the windows, I lunch. They stared blankly in the direction of son in the tower was dead. Bubby’s, across the street. ❖ can’t escape. And the ❖ The police tried to evacuate The Wagging Kathrin Burmester and Joanne Mitchell Tail Doggie Day Care on Greenwich Street. smoke is going all the watched the towers burn from their apartment on “I’m staying,” Peter Perez, the manager, told the top floor of 17 John Street. When the first the cops. “I will be here with the animals until way in our building. tower fell, they heard debris fall on the roof of they’re all picked up or we have a proper evacu- their 15-story building. They dashed into the ation procedure. We’re not going to panic or lose We couldn’t breathe.” stairwell, where they met 10 other tenants rush- any dogs.” ing down. By the time they reached the sixth As Perez consulted on the phone with the CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE THE TRIBECA TRIB OCTOBER 2001 FER 6 HITTING HOME THE FIRST HOURS 7 (Left) Kathy Sussell, a family assistant at P.S. 234, and her daughter Emily, an I.S. 89 student, rush across Chambers Street following the collapse of the first Trade Tower. Fellow school worker Tara Doebele, at left, holds the hand of Joanie Abrahams, center, who follows close Gulnara Samoilova behind. got off one shot of (Below left) A dis- Tower Two as it traught Battery Park began to break City resident seeks apart (right). help from police fol- Earlier, as she lowing the collapse of arrived near the the towers. burning Towers, (Bottom) Near Fulton she photographed and Church streets, U.S. Marshall people caught in the Dominic Guadag- dust and fallout of the noli carrying away Trade Center head an injured woman eastward.