A Decade of Hope (14 page)

Harold Levy was our chancellor then. They brought me into a room where they had been having some kind of a meeting, because there was food out, nice sandwiches. I told them I can't believe where I am right now, and I completely lost it again. Chancellor Levy gave me a box of tissues, because now I was bawling. And I kept thinking back to what must have gone through his head that day: a million point two children in his care, his responsibility, and having no clue where they were. Were they safe? Did they get home? How about children who need medical attention, kids who need medication?

Then I just wanted to hear my husband's voice. We contacted his school, and they were able to get him. It was funny talking to my husband, the calm after the tragedy. Lisa and I waited at the Department of Ed until my husband finally picked us up. I opened the door and got in the car and just said, “What a day, oh, what a day.” The things we did not say. I told him I was not telling the story; I couldn't relive it right now. There was no [other] talking.

We took Lisa home, and I just fell to the floor when I got into my house. I'd really lost it uncontrollably and was having a shock moment. Suddenly, still on the floor, I began to ask, “Where's Wendy? Has anybody seen Wendy?”

I have a daughter who was studying in London that semester. She could not reach me in Brooklyn or my sisters in New Jersey, but she called my sister in Texas, who then contacted one of my sisters in New Jersey. There was no other way to communicate. We've since learned about how to communicate and how families should create plans for emergencies. Lessons learned after September 11.

At 5:30 I got a phone call from the secretary of Curtis High School in Staten Island, who told me that more than half of my kids were there, and that they were creating a manifest for me. After that day I learned to keep a list of the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the teachers and students at home, because it was of no value at school. “Are they okay?” I asked. “Are they behaving?” They were contacting every parent, having them call to talk to someone, because the students would be there all night. No one was leaving Staten Island and coming to Manhattan or Brooklyn that day.

Then I got another call, for there was another group of students in New Jersey, because some of the boats skipped Staten Island, went a little farther, and took them to New Jersey. They were all over the place. There were kids all over, staying in school gyms, city halls, government buildings. Every food place was giving them more food than they knew what to do with—Chinese food, Italian food, pizza, McDonald's. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. You know, we're amazing people, Americans—amazing, beautiful people. We get a little cocky sometimes, and we let little stupid things get in our way, but when it's time for us to really pick up our boots and make it happen, we are just amazing people. The giving that went on . . . truly amazing.

That week I never reported to work. I couldn't even think, except for
Where's Wendy
?
Had anybody heard from Wendy? Did anybody . . . who's going to the hospitals? Who's checking the hospitals? Maybe go to the hospitals in New Jersey. Go to the hospitals in Lower Manhattan. . . . Go to every hospital. Please, somebody find Wendy. She's probably shopping. She went shopping. She's stuck in a mall. That's what happened in 1993. Go find Wendy. Somebody look for Wendy. Where else is Wendy?

That night, about midnight, a pastor from my church called the house and said, “I'm standing in front of your school building, your building is standing straight. Nothing, not a broken window.” How did that happen? Miracles of 9/11. Sometimes I still believe the entire time is like an out-ofbody experience. Except the thing that, of course, is so real to me is: There's no Wendy anymore. We don't have my sister. Until days later, when we realized that there was no hope, we were like everybody else, putting up pictures : If anybody has seen this person, please notify us.

Indeed, it wasn't long before we started hearing from the Cantor Fitzgerald people: 658 of its 960 New York employees were lost in the attack. The news media were saying, “If you were looking for someone who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, report to the Pierre Hotel, where a center had been set up for the company,” so we went there several times. They asked us to identify whom Wendy worked with, what floor she worked on, and her boss's name. And to look for pictures. Then we went to give DNA, at the West Side pier that they had set up for receiving samples.

I went back into my school building to collect the belongings of all the teachers, with my husband and one other person. We filled up garbage bags with their pocketbooks. Everything was covered in ash, for the windows had not been completely shut. The
New York Times
from that day was on my desk, which I actually have at home. Teachers' coffee cups were on desks, and whatever coffee was there had started to rot away the bottoms of the cups, and so the coffee had spilled. It was strange, very strange.

Also, I had to get into the vault. My assistant principal had said to me, you have to go to the vault and get the school's checkbook, so we can at least write checks for things that we might need. As I stood in front of the vault I was suddenly sort of paralyzed. Normally I didn't even have to think about the numbers: My fingers just knew how to spin back and forth, and it was open. But now I stood in front of the vault and I cried my eyes out. I could not remember the combination to save my life. I didn't have it written down; I didn't have to—it was ingrained. I had to leave then. Afterward, I contacted my assistant principal, who told me the combination so I could go back and open it up.

That's when I first began to understand. I didn't have a name for it then, but I began to understand,
Uh oh, something is wrong
—I wasn't right. I couldn't remember the names of the kids, and I had always known all their names. So that's how I began to realize that I was not normal anymore. What the hell was all of this? It was a lot of pain, a lot of heartache, a lot of anger, frustration, going back to a new school building. My kids were beaten up. The basketball team got beaten up. People just weren't nice. We forgot nice. It just wasn't good at all.

I immediately started to be proactive and got involved in a support group of school leaders and schoolteachers in the Lower Manhattan area. Some bonds were made, and Linda Lantieri, who had worked at the Department of Education for a long time, started something called the Project Renewal. It was really just a meeting, to come together, using some of the philosophy of Parker Palmer, who was a Quaker. We would gather in a circle, and whatever was in your heart came out in silence. It was silence, but we interacted, hugged. And being held gently in someone else's arms during that silence . . . that was really tremendous. It led me to my own spiritual and emotional recovery. We did it weekly, and then it was once a month. And I'm still connected somewhat.

My family . . . we've never sat down and had a powwow. We never sat down and had a conversation about Wendy, to grieve together, cry together. Just never happened. Everybody kind of dealt with it on his or her own. But we were in constant communication with one another. My father performed enough funerals as a minister that I guess he had developed this really hard shell. My sister Clara, the one closest to Wendy, still feels a sense of despair. She has not allowed faith to bubble up in her soul. She's angry—very angry at Muslim people, at anyone who may look like an Arabic person. But everybody heals in a different way. I just like to hold her gently. You know, faith does play a role in giving you some sense that there's a future, and there's life. We'll see Wendy again. Faith is a beautiful thing, and faith really will sustain you. If you have that, this life really doesn't end. There's a pause right now, but there's more to this.

We had a memorial service for Wendy in November. The day after Christmas we got a phone call: They had found remains of Wendy. We all cried, and I could not believe it. They identified her two molars through dental records I had given them. God has a great sense of humor, but it was no joke that they had found her molars. Because Wendy was always smiling. She always had a big, toothy, mouth-f-of-teeth smile. Her mouth was always open. She was always laughing. That was Wendy. You will never see a picture of Wendy that she doesn't have a big fat smile on her face.
Son of gun
, I thought,
first thing they would find would be her teeth
. You know she's smiling down on us. . . .

A few months later they called us again. They had found a part of her leg, and then, a week or so later, one more call: They found a part of her shoulder. I was very upset and said, “Please do not call us again.” I spoke to the family and told them, whoever wanted to take these calls, I would send them on, but I couldn't take them anymore. I can't have my life disrupted this way. Wendy is not a puzzle to be put together. Every time you get these calls it was like someone sticking knives in you. Your emotions just become bitter, it just hurts so much. I said, We know she's gone. So we felt . . . just please don't call us again. And they didn't.

We did not bury her. We have her ashes, and she sits in a box in my sister Clara's house. At first we put her in a mausoleum, because we knew that there could be more remains, and of course we hoped for a lot. We realized that if we buried her it would be a lot more expensive to go back and try to bring . . . And I got a little exasperated again, and said, “Why don't we bring”—oh the dark, sarcastic, bitter sense of humor—“a file cabinet, you know, then we'll know exactly where she is. File it.” Then, after the first time we went to the mausoleum, we said, “We're not doing this anymore. This is ridiculous. There's no joy, no nothing coming here.” So we took what there was of Wendy and we put the box in Clara's house in New Jersey. Back with her twin. They were two of a kind, and Wendy was as much a best friend to Clara as she was a sister.

I didn't hit rock bottom for about two years, after everything. You don't know what that bottom looks or feels like until you've hit, because when you're the principal of a school there's no time for sitting back and pondering. You don't have time to walk down the street and cry. You've got to get your act together. You've got to graduate the kids. Yes, the world came to me and touched me with sympathy, all of that, but about two years later I just . . . I was angry, I was upset. I was realizing the trauma. I could hear an airplane taking off miles away. People would say, “You can hear that?” Every time a truck went by I just jumped right off my feet. Loud sounds. I was quick, I was sharp. And I knew I wasn't well.

So I started taking a little medication. It was great; it's a beautiful thing to feel relaxed, untroubled. But I knew that medication wasn't going to work for me in the long run. That way of coping doesn't resonate with me. I went to faith:
God, if you're real, and you're a God that heals, and I believe that you are a healer, then you have to heal me, because I can't do this thing. I'm a wife. I'm a mother. I have to make sure that I'm okay.

And again I turned to the Project Renewal—the resilience work, the work of renewal, renewal of spirit, working through it and participating. Opening yourself up, allowing others into your life in the Parker Palmer method, [according to] everything he wrote. I learned to read his little book,
Let Your Life Speak.
I learned to embrace the seasons of life; that's what his little book is about, the winter of your life and what happens in the winter of your life. Just like winter: When everything is rock solid there are a lot of beautiful things happening underneath the ground that have to break through. Eventually they do. The little crocus makes it through that hard ground, doesn't it? So I knew that I had to strengthen my spirit to get it past the winter and arrive at the spring of my life. I went to healing masses. I went to prayer circles. I opened myself up. I learned about acupuncture for stress. I learned about Reiki. I just became so open to the power of people and healing. Every time I tell the story of that day and of Wendy, it's very healing. Every time I tell the story I honor Wendy.

Not long after the attacks some amazing and wonderful people out in California found me on the Internet. They were all brokers for Prudential Real Estate, and they wanted to volunteer, so they were invited to come and do support work at St. Paul's church downtown. Seventeen of them came to New York for a week, taking their vacation time. This is part of the great outpouring of American love after 9/11. They wanted to meet me for breakfast, and because we were back in our school building by February 1 of 2002, we met at my building. They had just worked an entire night, from midnight to eight in the morning, helping with water and food for the recovery workers. They were tired and exhausted, in their sweatpants and T-shirts, but they came to my school for a beautiful New York City breakfast of bagels and lox. Immediately . . . there was such a bond of joy and love.

Once they were back home, Kathy and Steve Ollerton, my new California friends, continued to be in touch with me and our school. We started an exchange of phone calls, e-mails, and letters between our New York City kids and kids out in California, as a way for them to share their stories, relate their 9/11 experiences. And we actually brought them together: The California kids came to New York City. We called it East Meets West.

For the first anniversary of September 11, Kathy and Steve came back to New York City and went to Ground Zero alongside the rest of my family. The following day we went to the 9/11 family room at One Liberty Plaza, on the twentieth floor, which has a complete view of Ground Zero. They asked me, “What's the legacy for Wendy?” And I said, “I'm an educator; there's only one thing I know, and that's education. And if we don't teach, how will we ever learn? So we have to do something about schooling to memorialize Wendy.” And then I thought about it and said, “I'm going to build a school in Afghanistan. What a kick in the head to Osama bin Laden.” That's my big sentence, my contribution.