ERIC GAY / ASSOCIATED PRESS
A mourner kneeled at Ground Zero at New York's World Trade Center during today's ceremony. "They were our neighbors, our husbands, our children, our sisters, our brothers and our wives. They were our countrymen and our friends. They were us," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said of the victims.
Lives lost, The scar in the ground has been filled in and, except for a small patch of bare earth, grass is growing again in a field in Shanksville, Pa., where United Airlines Flight 93 fell from the sky one year ago today.
lives remembered
Hawaii families refuse to dwell
Those who died
on tragedy, but take comfort
in how loved ones lived
Where were you when you heard?By Craig Gima
cgima@starbulletin.com
Each time she visits, Laura Brough finds comfort in seeing how nature and time are helping transform the crash site into a place of peace and even beauty.
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But while the earth is recovering, it will take more than just one year's time to heal the scars in Brough's heart.
Her mother, Georgina Rose Corrigan, was on the plane.
"I don't think I've had time to grieve properly," Brough said before she left for today's ceremonies in Pennsylvania. Brough has more responsibilities now because her mother, who lived with her and helped raise Brough's two children, is not around anymore. There are constant reminders as well; an item on the news or a conversation at a nearby table during dinner can bring up dormant memories.
"It will be in the history books. My children will have lived through it and their children will read about it," said Brough of Hawaii Kai.
Today, as Hawaii remembers the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, families directly affected by the tragedy are still recovering, still experiencing emotions of grief -- anger, denial, depression and acceptance.
The hurt is still there, but some of the pain has been replaced by a sense of mission --that it is more important to remember their loved ones for how they lived and not because of how they died.
"I think the focus that we have is not even to think of her as part of Sept. 11 as much as we can," said CarolAnn Hale, whose 26-year-old daughter Maile, a vice president of Boston Investor Services, was attending a conference at the Windows on the World on top of the World Trade Center.
"We think it's a danger to be swept up as a victim of 9/11 and lose track of the wonderful people that they were."
Hale says the lesson that she has taken from the experience is the importance of helping others.
"When it first happens, you're just overwhelmed with anger and despair, mainly that the world can be populated with such evil and people like this. And all the things that have happened since give you faith again in human beings and the human spirit," she said.
Kaiser High School students planted a tree and put up a plaque for Maile and invited Hale and her husband to the dedication.
"It's an amazing thing. There's always a lei or something," Hale said. After prom night, students left their leis and flowers at the site.
Kuakini nurse Charlotte Keane, whose brother Richard died in the World Trade Center, sees the flags that people have put out as a tribute to her brother.
"Flags are like lighting a candle to me. It's like remembering what a huge loss it was for so many people," she said. She remembers driving by the Queen's Medical Center and "Queen's had a thousand of them (flags) outside. I just started crying, I was so grateful."
Susan Lee Yoshinaka says, "What I've discovered is that there are many, many people who are mourning, not just those who lost loved ones." She is the mother of Punahou School graduate Richard Y.C. Lee, who died in the World Trade Center.
"This is an American tragedy. It's not just ours. It's been felt all over."
Dean Pitchford, whose sister Patricia Colodner was an executive secretary for Marsh & McLennan in the World Trade Center, said he believes everyone is coming to terms with what happened on Sept. 11 in their own way.
"These preparations that people are making, the concerts and lighting a candle, that's all stuff that they feel they have to do, too," Pitchford said. "Not one of them is more or less correct. Every one of them is a struggle toward making peace."
Rose Lee and other family members flew to New York from Hawaii to be with her daughter Lissa Collins, a Leilehua High School graduate who lost her husband Michael in the attacks.
AYUMI NAKANISHI / ANAKANISHI@STARBULLETIN.COM
A kukui tree planted at Kaiser High School is a memorial to Maile Rachel Hale, 1993 Kaiser graduate, who was one of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.
"She's having a hard time," said Rose Lee. "There are reminders all the time. Every day you pick up the paper, every little town is having some kind of ceremony."
Lee said she is very grateful for her daughter's neighbors.
"It felt like there they were from Hawaii. They're so supportive."
Today, Lee and her daughter were going to attend the dedication of a rose garden at a local church. The garden is for all the families in their New Jersey community who died on Sept. 11. They may also go to the Cantor Fitzgerald ceremony in Central Park. Collins worked for the company, which lost 658 employees in the attack.
Lissa Lee Collins was not planning to attend a private ceremony for family members at Ground Zero. She hasn't been there.
She just can't bring herself to go.
This summer Charlotte Keane visited Ground Zero, where her brother died.
KEN IGE / KIGE@STARBULLETIN.COM
Jonathan Inganells, a seventh-grader, pounded a cross into the ground at Hawaii Baptist Academy yesterday. Students at HBA spent the afternoon placing 366 crosses on a grassy hill on campus, spelling the word HOPE. Each cross bears the name of a firefighter or police officer killed on 9/11. The Rev. Rob Lockridge guided the students’ efforts. Each student picked a firefighter or police officer and will pray for that victim’s family throughout the week.
"You feel like it's holy ground," she said.
While in New York, she bought post cards and cheesy souvenirs like snow globes with the Statue of Liberty and the New York skyline with the World Trade Center.
"Because while it was standing, he was still alive," she said. "I see movies and when they take place in New York I just find myself looking for him."
Today Keane planned to attend the Requiem concert at Kawaiahao Church. Mozart's music is being played in 20 different time zones at 8:46 a.m. Hawaii is one of the last sites where it will be performed. It's an appropriate and peaceful way to remember, she thinks, because her brother loved music.
"One day could be good, one day could be bad. I kind of deal with what comes at that time," said Aikahi Park resident Ian Pescaia, the husband of United Flight 93 passenger Christine Snyder.
It's gratifying to see how much she was appreciated by people, he said.
She worked for the Outdoor Circle and fought to save trees. There's a tree with a plaque outside their apartment. There's also a bench and trees planted for her on Magic Island. But he's only been there a few times. He prefers to visit her grave at a local cemetery.
Pescaia wasn't sure what he was going to do today. He may go to the ceremony at Punchbowl. He may participate and sit with the other family members who lost loved ones. Or maybe he'll just sit in the crowd, alone with his thoughts.
Helping their two children is a priority for Hawaii Baptist Academy graduate Laurie Miller Laychak, who lost her husband, David, in the attack on the Pentagon.
COURTESY OF RUDI WILLIAMS
The children of David Laychak left a card with a picture of him in the middle of a large red heart with the words, "We miss you and love you Daddy."
"Their dad was the type that put them to bed at night and played with her (daughter Jennifer, 8) when he got home from work and it's very hard for them," said Laurie's father Jack Miller, who lives in Kailua.
The family was in Hawaii in July, and Jennifer celebrated her eighth birthday at Hawaiian Waters Adventure Park.
Son Zach, 10, is involved in sports and Jennifer has gymnastics.
"They have activities they have to go to all the time and they play with the neighbor kids and are back in school," Miller said.
This week has been difficult, Miller said.
The family is scheduled to attend observances at the Pentagon today, and tomorrow there's a service at Arlington National Cemetery where remains of victims will be placed at a new memorial.
"We're happy people are remembering, but on the other hand it's tough to have to go through that again," said David Laychak's brother Jim.
CarolAnn Hale says Sept. 11 has made her realize how important it is to be close to and nurture those you love.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Students watched as the U.S. flag was raised during a Sept. 11 memorial ceremony at Maria Ulloa Elementary School in Dededo early this morning. Guam residents began the nation’s commemoration of the first anniversary of Sept. 11.
She said she has a "renewed resolve to reach out to others and to be there for others just as they were there for us and that's the way we can honor Maile."
At the same time, she says she has to guard against being overprotective about her other daughters.
"You want to call them, talk to them all the time or every day. You have to be careful you're not becoming a pest," she said.
The family is renting a house on the East Coast today. Maile's sisters and their families live in the Northeast.
"I think we'll just be together and enjoy family," CarolAnn Hale said. "These were the kinds of things she (Maile) loved, everybody getting together and talking story."
Dean Pitchford said he took a giant step toward healing when he went back to New York and saw the city coming back to life and his brother-in-law and niece and nephew returning to a semblance of normalcy.
The family also took a vacation in Hawaii and Pitchford took his niece and nephew to the places where he and their mother grew up -- "where we hung out at the Kahala Mall, and where we walked, and how we went home, and where our house used to stand, and where she went to high school, and where we went to the beach to swim. And we swam in those beaches with them, and it was a very healing process," he said.
"Warren (Patricia's husband) said it was the best vacation of his life, the most healing time in his life."
His nephew, who is now 3, recently asked to go to Ground Zero, Pitchford said. "He wants to go see where mommy was hurt."
Susan Yoshinaka and her son Alex were going to the 8:26 a.m. anniversary ceremony at Ground Zero and the Cantor Fitzgerald ceremony in Central Park today.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
A New York City firefighter played taps today from a ledge above Ground Zero at the World Trade Center on the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Thousands of mourners gathered to pay tribute to the victims throughout the morning and into the afternoon.
Yoshinaka lives in Battery Park near Ground Zero. It's been good therapy, she says, to watch the city come back to life.
"The mourning process is like a cyclical thing. I don't think it will ever end, but neither will it deter us from our trying to live the best that we can."
When Yoshinaka returned home to New York City after her son's service in Hawaii, "for the longest time I refused to wear the patriotic pins."
It may been out of anger, she said. Her son was dead -- taken away from her; he didn't give his life by choice.
"I refused to think of him as being sacrificed for his country," Yoshinaka said.
Yoshinaka is over that anger now, in large part because of her grandson Zachary, who will be 3 next month.
Helping to take care of him has helped her through the grieving process.
You can't be angry or sad around a 2-year-old, she said. "It's unfair to him. He's just a child," she said.
"Nothing makes okay my son's death," Yoshinaka said. But when Zachary grows up, they'll tell him that his daddy died a hero.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kathy Trant held her son, Alex, at today's ceremony. Kathy's husband, Daniel, was an employee of Cantor Fitzgerald at the World Trade Center a year ago when he died.
BACK TO TOP |
More than 3,000 people died in the Sept. 11 attacks, including a handful of people with ties to Hawaii. They were mothers, sons, sisters, husbands, high school classmates and, whether or not we knew them, their deaths have touched us. Remembering those who died
Over the next few days, the Star-Bulletin will give you a glimpse into their lives.
RICHARD "DICK" KEANE
Eldest son helped others
through everything he didThe eldest son in a large Irish Catholic family, Richard M. Keane started out to be a priest. But his sister Charlotte, a nurse at Kuakini Medical Center, thinks he was just too darn funny.
"They told him, Richard, you have a calling, but it isn't the priesthood."
Her big brother had an amazing sense of humor, Charlotte Keane says. Stories about the most mundane things became stand-up comedy routines.
Even though Keane didn't become a priest, Keane believed in helping others. He drove several blind women to church, coached sports, ministered to the sick and sang in the choir.
His job at an insurance company involved helping injured people recover. He usually worked in Connecticut, but there was a meeting on Sept. 11 in the World Trade Center.
When they found out he was missing, friends told the family stories of how Keane helped someone find a job or gave money or helped them move.
"Things my sister-in-law didn't even realize he was doing," Charlotte says.
His prayer card read, "hellava guy." When people thanked him for his help, "he'd just say, 'I'm a hellava guy,' and laugh it off."
Star-Bulletin staff BACK TO TOP |
Where were you when you
found about the terrorist attacks?
Carlson Yacapin
Nanakuli; age 42
"Kapolei on the bus. A friend of mine told me. I thought 'Devastation.' Just blew me away -- two super jet airliners slamming into a 110-story building."
Chris Childress
Kapolei; age 26
"My girlfriend who actually lives in New York -- she lived 10 blocks away from the World Trade Center -- she called me up at 5:30 a.m. Hawaii time. She wanted me to call her friends and family. She couldn't wake her parents."
Keith Kashiwabara
Kunia; age 42
"My wife woke me up about 6:30 because it was on TV.
"She woke me up almost crying. She couldn't believe what was happening. I was scared. I guess I thought it was war, and thought 'here we go.' I thought we were going into this big war.
"It was pretty frightening."
Charlotte Meyer
Waimea, Big Island; age 49
"I was at my dad's house and the president of the company called and said turn on the TV and there it was, the World Trade Center in flames."
Jory Paik
Moiliili; age 26
"They paged with a text message about the World Trade Center and to come in to work (at Verizon).
"When I read it I thought 'What's going on?' so I turned on the TV.
"I woke up all my roommates and I had three minutes to watch it and then had to get ready to come in."
Elissa Tajon
Kahala; age 31
"I was in bed. We had a relative call us from Texas. They told us to turn on the TV and see the news."We were confused and I think frightened."
Question asked by Star-Bulletin
reporter Leila Fujimori
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