Some Families Prefer To Skip Latest Show

The 9/11 hearings have come home to New York City,the site of the most horrific attack on America’s civilian population in our history. Approximately 3,000 victims perished nearly three years ago, but the majority of their relatives and friends were not present in the hearing room in the New School University — and they won’t be there today, either. Only a fraction of them could bear to sit in while the commission officials reconstructed the tragic events of that morning in its attempt to examine the emergency response to the disaster. Staten Island was hard hit by the terrorist attack that day, and most residents here are less than six degrees separated from someone who was lost in the attack. Throughout the borough, street signs have been designated with names of those lost on 9/11. My friend Donald Foreman, a Port Authority police officer, had his nameplate placed on Monroe Street, where he lived.Small memorials to the victims are scattered on little islands near Hylan Boulevard and are lovingly maintained by their surviving relatives. I called Kathy Curatolo,whose brother, Robert, was one of 343 firefighters lost that day to ask her if she was watching the 9/11 hearings. “No,” she said. “It opens it all up again,” she added. “Whenever they show reports, they flash pictures which are very painful to watch.” The hearing began with a minute-byminute recap of the morning of September 11th and those attending watched a video of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers and their eventual collapse. To this day, that image breaks my heart and I can only imagine what it would do to someone whose loved ones were forever lost to them in the collapsing mass of steel and concrete. What about the families who have been closely involved in the hearings, here and in Washington, D.C.? “People grieve in different ways,” she said. “Some have made this their crusade and fuel their energies into different causes. Whether it’s about benefits for the widows and children or about improving communications, this is how they are dealing with their loss.” Ms. Curatolo said her parents are still pretty grief-stricken, but they have always been involved with sporting events and this helps them. They have no desire to speak on a podium or to be a public figure. While the Curatolos represent those families who’ve elected to keep their bereavement privately,others have chosen to find answers to their grief on the public stage. Some surviving relatives of the 9/11 victims who have taken on an activist agenda have been vocal in criticizing the Bush administration. A group called September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, issued a press release on March 5, castigating the Bush re-election campaign for using 9/11 imagery in an ad. The group is composed of 100 victim families and 3,000 supporters.It has obtained funding from the Tides Foundation, a nonprofit organization, which contributes to progressive social issues. There were some allegations the 9/11 group was politically motivated because Heinz Endowments, Teresa Heinz Kerry’s foundation, donated $230,000 to Tides. But that money was given between 1994 and 1998, long before the horror of 9/11. At the other end of the spectrum,other families who lost loved ones on 9/11 issued in response “An Open Letter to America,”which declared their support for Mr. Bush and his use of the images of the destroyed World Trade Center. “There is no better testament to the leadership of President Bush than Sept. 11,” the letter states.“In choosing our next leader we must not forget that day if we are to have a meaningful conversation.” A former president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, Jimmy Boyle, came up with the idea for this letter after hearing the criticism of the Bush ads. He has also said that he will be voting for a Republican president for the first time in November. Politics aside, there are no easy answers as to why 3,000 died that day. Firefighters thought they were battling a typical high-rise fire. No one expected the towers to fall, not even Osama bin Laden, who was seen laughing at that surprise on one of his many videos. September 11 changed everything. This panel will come up with recommendations on ways to prevent communication failures that prevented the doomed firefighters from hearing the evacuation order. We’ll come up with better exit and rescue strategies and a host of other suggestions that may or may not comfort the grief-stricken. But we need to also remember that because of the heroism of fellow workers and police and fire personnel, tens of thousands survived. Just weeks after 9/11, I went to see a performance of “Fantasticks” at Snug Harbor, where one of the actors was a young man who had barely escaped from the stricken towers. Still suffering from nightmares, he was nevertheless performing, as best he could, a comedic role. His is just one of the many heroic tales of the city. Kathy Curatolo says it best: “Just because we’re moving on doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten,” she said. “It’s important to live life in the present.There is no enjoying life unless you do.”