WTC security and emergency response newspaper article

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

THURSDA Y, SB.PTBMBBR 20-. 2001 One woman, in resuming her walks in the : This week, she came m again, and city, said. she tried to imagine a window' again she bought her mussels, but through which it might be possible to see, if this time, she told Mr. Rosenhek not quite feel yet, a sense of happiness. about her life, and how she had “I’m concentrating on getting to weirk on worked at 7 World Trade Center, and time, and last night my kids did their home­ how she had made it out. Mr. Rosen­ work — for right now, that’s enough,’? said hek said he realized in the middle of Alex Ander, 36, a security guard who? lives . For a City with his family in Long Island City, Queens. Some people, like Mr. Muzi, are looking for turning points within themselves/ Oth­ it all that he had been changed by the city’s crisis too, perhaps as much as she had. “I’m really more interested in peo­ ers, in tiny flickered signals of eye contact Still in Shock) that can be felt everywhere from the sub­ way to the local corner deli, seem to he seeking reassurance from others that it ple now,” he said. Dennis McFall, for the first time in many years, was writing a song lyric on the steps of the New York PubUc Picking up might be all right to emerge, just a.jMttie, back into the sun. ■ .• ;C-- Mark, the Bryant Park salad man’ who declined to give his last name, said that.in Library. A former musician, Mr. Mc­ Fall, 40, was working on the 85th floor of 2 World Trade Center —

Life’s Routine the world before the attacks, he ate a isalad nF:;rly every day in the park and 'pever thought about it at all; but ngjjEAe -«ud,‘tt doing information technology for a law firm, Harris Beach — when the attacks came. Five co-workers in the 120-person firm were lost. By KIRK JOHNSON felt entirely new and quite speciaL / “I just started writing a couple Tony;Muzi, a 42-year-old accountant at Gloria Mendelbaum, a retired tilings down, verses, expressing what HBO in Midtown Manhattan, went for a rim New York City public school English i feel,” he said. “It lets it out a little on his lunch hour this week. A man named teacher, said she had “taken some bit.” Mark ate a salad in Bryant Park? Jim . solace from Mozart — his Requiem.” And then there are the parents DeLorme, an auto mechanic and amateur Ms. Mendelbaum, 69, who lives in who have been driven back out into artist from Point Pleasant, N.J., caine into Queens, said she had tried Verdi’s die world by their children. New York to sketch on his day off. ; Requiem as well, but somehow the Diane Miller, a psychologist who Insignificant things, perhaps, especially Verdi was too intense to bear. under the dark shadow cast by the attacks Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said at lives on Manhattan’s Upper East on New York and Washington. But in a city a news conference last weekend that Side, said that if not for her 3-year- and a nation where millions of people are he would attend a wedding, and look old son, Jonathan, she would be “a trying to find the rhythm of life again after for joy there , in the symbols of a wreck.” Shielding him from the hor­ the shock and horror of last week; tiny hopeful future. ror of what has happened, she said, moments like these — each marking the ' “You have to focus on the good me^ acting as if things are normal. resumption of life, interrupted — are also things in life and you have to go,” Mr. J8o on Monday, motner and son immensely powerful. They mark, people Giuliani said. “You have to go and say, a glimpse of something beyond grief. participate in the good things.” ~ Jordy Rosenhek, 25, a salesman went to F.A.O. Schwarz, the huge toy “You’ve got to start somewhere,” W. for a wholesale and retail seafood store on Fifth Avenue, even though Muzi said as he stretched, preparing lor his supply company in Manhattan, said Dr. Miller said she quavered just run. he saw hope in the number of stran­ going past the nearby Trump Tower, There is no clean and simple answer tb gers who were spontaneously strik- because all tall buildings now fiU her the question of how New Yorkers will cbliec- iag up conversations these days. with dread. She said that perhaps if tively and individually find their way'back ? “Petrie are looking to each other she adopted the habits of happiness, to the small joys of life. Perspectives are — they’re looking to see if it’s all clouded, and many people share the sen^ right,” he said. it might eventually become real. that normal patterns might not return at / Mr. Rosenhek, standing on a street “If it wasn’t for Mm I’d be hiding Some people who did not lose a friend or a corner on Manhattan’s Upper East in my room with my survival kit,” spouse or a job feel guilty for laughing too Side and squinting into a brilliant she said. “He pulls me back into the loud in public or enjoying a deliciously cool sunny sky, described, for example. mainstream, into the world before.” night on the cusp of fail Some feei shame Jonathan, meanwhile, whohas de- lor whatever it was about America; that veloped in recent months what Dr. would fuel the unbounded, murderous ha­ tred of the attacks. Miiler said was a deep and unex­ But there is also a groping; lurching ‘ Finding a glimpse plained fondness for New York City Transit buses, was in no mood to wait . hesitant effort to find the turning poin&,-the keys, the once insignificant-seeming^ of something around for a lot of deep-thought con- : tines that might allow the first steps bdyohd versation about loss and recovery. mourning and shock, or the new habits that beyond all- “1 want to go to for a bus ride ” he shouted repeatedly from his stroller. might now make sense. In dozens of inter­ views across the city, petite talked abont small things that have become big things — eonsuming grief. moments that capture a continuity of theoW reality and the new. ! ' an eccentric customer who had been, until last week, mostly the subject of jokes. One day a week, like clockwork, she would come into the store and buy exactly $1.50 worth of mussels — no other purchase and never more than $1.50. No one asked about her life, or cared, he said.

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