DEP Invoice or Financial Record, September 30, 2001

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

a ea ___ ■ Mary DiBlasc Blaich for The New York times

Some 300 people gathered in Clove Lakes Park to mourn those missing at the trade center.

He tries to block that out, to keep working. But almost everyone coming through the deli’s doors has lost someone. His employees, most of whom are Sri Lankan, wear pins memorializing his brother, who was 30. The Ogrens’ father was a firefighter, too; as in many Staten Island fam­ ilies, it was a tradition. The borough’s concentration of loss feels like a reproach to some survivors. Roni Petersen’s husband, John, a lieutenant with Engine Company 151 in Tottenville, came back; the husband of the woman on the next block did not, nor did seven other firefighters from Tottenville. Mrs. Petersen wonders why she was lucky: “The fact that John’s here and all these people are dead — I feel terrible.” Some cope with loss; others search for scape­ goats. On Saturday, around 20 residents protested outside the National Wholesale Liquidators store in Westerleigh, citing rumors that its employees had celebrated as the World Trade Center burned. Employees, some of whom come from Mo­ rocco, Guyana and Pakistan, said there had been no celebrations. The store’s owner, Scott Rosen, and Guy Molinari, the borough president, said the same. Nonetheless, another protest is planned. “There’s all Arabs in there,” said Marie Tritta, a Westerleigh housewife and protester. “They shouldn’t be in this country.” And some seek comfort, still, in the borough’s insularity, its very ordinariness. “Staten Island doesn’t have any strategic importance to the rest of the world,” said Vitaly Korobov, a West Brighton resident. “No one is going to attack it.”

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