Just posted online, a moving account of how one Catholic mother of four dealt with the death with her husband on 9/11. A fine reporting and writing job by Kerry Weber:
As Patty Fallone and a friend walked down Park Avenue in New York on a sunny September morning, they were stopped by a stranger. “Did you hear about the plane?” the man asked. If his face hadn’t been so serious, his comment could have been the opening line of a joke. Neither woman yet knew about the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, so when the man conveyed the news, it took a moment for its significance to register. Patty looked south. Beyond the Met Life building a few blocks away, she saw smoke rising from the midst of Lower Manhattan.
“Oh my God,” she said knowing, without yet being told, “My husband is dead.”
Patty was certain that, if the emotions she felt at that moment were reflected in her face, her expression would be seared into that stranger’s memory for the rest of his life.
Suddenly, Patty's world moved in slow motion. Patty, who was then 35, stepped off the curb, unthinking, into the street, cars whizzing past; her friend pulled her back onto the sidewalk and led her inside. From her friend’s apartment, Patty called St. Ignatius Loyola School where her four children were enrolled. She instructed the staff not to say anything to them until she arrived. She called her therapist, and then sat down in front of the TV. In her shock, she couldn’t quite remember whether her husband Anthony, 39, a bonds trader at Cantor Fitzgerald, worked in the North or South tower. I want to find his body, she thought. Then, as she watched the second tower fall, she no longer felt that need.
Read the rest here.
Tim Reidy
