I thought back to when Judge Wolf had exclaimed that the job at the Herald meant I’d made a “complete comeback.” How, for many years, David had insisted that while I’d been changed, I was changed for the better. How some in my family said much the same thing. I understood. It was what they wanted. It was what I wanted, too. The Kelly Clarkson hit “Stronger,” voicing the familiar American adage that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” and popular at the time, underscored the dissonance with my own reality. I wasn’t stronger. What was I?
A couple of years later, the call to be “Boston Strong” after the attacks at the finish line of the Boston Marathon similarly seemed to insist on a one-size-fits-all approach to resilience. But I also didn’t feel “strong” after the Marathon attacks. Boston being attacked again by terrorists, the subsequent lockdown, and the civic unity, so different from what happened with me and Logan after 9/11, left me with a sense of alienation even deeper than before.
And I felt a deep shame that I wasn’t stronger.
A hard word that. Shame. But I was ashamed that I wasn’t healed or whole or even close to it nearly ten years after 9/11. I hadn’t “moved on.” I wasn’t “better than before.” I wasn’t resilient.
Or was I?
What if resilience didn’t mean being “unbroken” by trauma and loss, as the title of the best-selling book about Louis Zamperini, the Olympic athlete who was captured and tortured during World War II, promotes? I loved everything about that book but the title, and had even noted wryly in some talks I’ve given that the title of my story could be “Broken.”
I was broken by being blamed for the 9/11 hijackings. Not instantly, not shattered like handblown glass, but over time. Like a bottle tossed into the sea, tumbled apart by the motion of the waves. The bottle as we knew it no longer existed. Yet that wasn’t the end of that bottle’s story, was it? I’d long collected pieces of sea glass at low tide. It took twenty, thirty, even fifty years for the waves, the salt, and sand to smooth the jagged edges of the glass. To make what was broken beautiful.
I began to think about the editorial written in the weeks after 9/11 that I had found so devastating: “What began at Logan on Buckingham’s watch is a disaster whose outcome will follow her the rest of her life. . . . Call it bad luck, bad timing, call it a mixture of chance and fate, call it what you will, Buckingham cannot come back from this.”
What if the cruelty of this statement was actually true? What if I couldn’t “come back,” that I would never be the same? What of that bottle tossed in the sea and the resulting smooth-edged sea glass scattered on the beach? Green, milky white. And if you were ever so lucky to find it, deep, deep blue. It was broken. Changed forever. Yet still capable of bringing joy to she who picked it up from the sand and cradled it in her hand. Might that not be a different way, a truer way, of defining resilience?
I hadn’t moved on. I had moved forward. I wasn’t stronger, I was wiser. I would carry 9/11 with me like I carried memories of the first time I held Jack and Maddy in my arms, and the image of the people jumping from the tower, the first time David took my hand, and the pendant bearing Marianne MacFarlane’s picture. Beauty and loss, pain and hope, carried together. As resilient as sea glass.
***
Would that realization help me through the upcoming 9/11 anniversary? How did one mark the tenth anniversary of hell visiting earth? Each anniversary before that one had seemed much the same, something to get through, pain to be endured. But I feared this one. There would be heightened media attention to it certainly. Former president George W. Bush and President Barack Obama both planned to attend the memorial services in New York.
I worried that the media would want to talk to me. And I worried that they wouldn’t, the fear of reliving the intensity of being blamed, competing with the despair of my utter isolation.
My former editor Shelly offered me the entire op-ed space in the Herald for the Sunday paper on the anniversary itself, and the Boston TV station I did occasional political commentary on asked if I’d tape an anniversary show. What could I say or write to adequately fill the one-thousand-word space or fill the airtime; how could I be adequate to the moment at all?
Van der Kolk in The Body Keeps the Score wrote about the necessity to put words to your experience. “Finding words where words were absent before and, as a result, being able to share your deepest pain and deepest feelings with another human being,” he wrote, is “fundamental to healing the isolation of trauma—especially if other people in our lives have ignored or silenced us. Communicating fully is the opposite of being traumatized.”
Andrea had taught me to “hold on to what you know is true.”
And this: Sometimes your truth is all you have to hold on to. And you need to hold on to it with all your strength.
So using words to tell the truth as I saw and felt it would be what I tried to do.
I was scheduled to pretape the TV interview on the Thursday before the anniversary. I hesitated when I was told I would be joined by a 9/11 family member. “Can we appear separately?” I asked, the fear of being blamed still omnipresent despite the judge’s ruling.
In the lobby of the station, I recognized Christie Coombs, whose husband, Jeff, had been on American Flight 11. She had taken a leadership role as a voice for families, and I’d seen her on the news over the years. I introduced myself, doing my best to hide my nervousness. Our initial interaction was polite, if distant, but I detected no animosity and felt my shoulders relax a little. In the greenroom, the producer asked each of us to read a transcript of a recording, just publicly released, of Mohamed Atta’s voice during the hijackings. The producer told us they would play it during the show and ask each of us for our reaction. Christie and I read in silence, our own 9/11 stories reflected in our eyes.
“If we could have done anything to stop it, we would have, anything,” I said during the taped interview, responding to host Ed Harding’s question. He noted he could tell by the look in my eyes that the pain was as fresh ten years later as it had been that day.
Christie watched my portion of the interview on the feed in the greenroom. When I saw her waiting as I left the studio, she hugged me warmly. “What are you doing for the anniversary?” she asked. “Come to the State House.” I had never been invited to attend the official Boston remembrance. I demurred, saying I just wanted to be home with my kids, but inside I felt another gentle moment of healing—like sand and water smoothing jagged glass—spurred by her generous compassion.
In the Herald piece published on the anniversary, I wrote that many people had urged me to “move on” and that I’d learned that wasn’t possible, but “moving forward” was. “The difference? The first suggests a false promise of closure, the other a way to rebuild a life of meaning, even joy, cognizant of the foundation of loss.”
***
Fall turned to winter, and as January 2012 approached, I planned to jump into the freezing Atlantic on New Year’s Day for the tenth year in a row.
“I want to do it with you,” Maddy said. My confident and outspoken daughter would herself turn ten in April.
“She’s tough as nails,” David and I would often comment to each other, wondering if, somehow, being inside me during 9/11 and the aftermath had imbued her with a steely strength.
As our group of fifteen or so ran into the ocean, I looked over at Maddy as she dunked her head under the water. As she came up for air, she smiled broadly and gave me a thumbs-up.
Jack and David were waiting on the beach. As we ran toward them, I felt the sharp rocks dig into the soles of my feet and the wind on my exposed skin. David wrapped Maddy, who was now crying from the biting cold, in a towel.
I looked at my family and then back at the roiling gray water. “Let’s go home,” I said.
Epilogue
Letter to Readers
Dear Readers,
I have been told b
y many—not least by our culture—that I need to conclude my story with a happy ending. “I want to read about the woman who was broken and then triumphed” is a common refrain. The thing is, that isn’t my story and I don’t think that neat narrative is most of our stories. At least not in the way our culture seems to require.
I am still struggling, though the shadows and light of that struggle change as I move forward on a journey that is at times arduous and, at times, full of grace. Beauty and loss, pain and hope, carried together.
I once read a quote from Doctor William Petit, whose family was brutally murdered during a home invasion in Connecticut in 2007. He has since remarried and had a child, yet he said, “I don’t think there’s ever closure. I think whoever came up with that concept’s an imbecile.”
I wanted to stand and cheer. And cry.
I continue to try to parse the lessons of my story and offer them in the hope that they are of use to someone. To those who struggle, you are not alone. Your healing will come in its own time. At its own pace. But know, and hold on to the idea, that you are as resilient and as beautiful as sea glass. To leaders and citizens faced with a world still rocked by terrorism and many other complex challenges, I hope there is a growing recognition of the destructiveness of blame, an understanding that the easy act of blaming is in fact a formidable obstacle to finding real solutions. Ultimately, it keeps us from embracing our fragility and discovering the meaning and joy that might offer.
I also continue to care deeply about leadership in our world. I am not actively involved in politics anymore, but in July 2015 I graduated with the inaugural class of Presidential Leadership Scholars, a joint initiative of the presidential libraries of Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush, and Lyndon Johnson. The purpose is to use the leadership lessons of those presidencies to instill in participants a deeper understanding of core leadership characteristics like deliberation, intentionality, self-awareness, decisiveness, and resilience.
During the six-month program, I did get to spend time again with President George W. Bush and learned that he never had heard about the blame directed at me in Boston. I also accepted, in the deepest part of myself, where that elevator at times still rests, that “being my own hero” means just that. No one, not him, not anyone, was going to protect me from the pain of blame I still carried. It was up to me to “hold on to what I know is true” with all my strength and, if I could, use it to help others.
Our graduation was held at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas. As I crossed the stage to stand between former Presidents Bush and Clinton, a summary was read about my 9/11 story and the goal of this book: “On September 11, 2001, Virginia Buckingham was serving as the CEO of Logan Airport and has dealt with the aftermath of the attacks launched there. Virginia is developing a memoir to shed light on both the personal and broader implications of scapegoating in our culture and provide insights on building resilience.”
David was in the audience and we both understood how profound it was to be “seen” in this way, in front of two former leaders of the world, joining my 9/11 story to a much larger one. As I left the stage, I sought out David, and as we made eye contact, I saw that he was weeping. He took his index finger and scratched his heart, a signal he’d long used to send his love silently to me and Jack and Maddy. Our signal of home.
My story continues now as all of ours do. Thanks for coming this far with me.
Ginny
Acknowledgments
With Gratitude
While there were times when I felt alone on this journey, I realize I never really was. First, no one believed in me more than David. His voice of clarity and love, even when delivered in a way I could not hear, was a life raft. He was and is my bashert, my destiny. I am awed that I get to be the mom to Jack and Maddy, smart, kind, insightful young adults now, whose wisdom and love from the beginning were my anchors. I also felt your strong support, my Buckingham brothers and sisters, Tom, Shelley (Donahue), Michael, Lauren (Lundebjerg), Lisa (Gabrielle), Bill, RJ, and broader family, and that of all the Lowys, Fallmans, and beyond, especially Barbara and Marvin Lowy.
My mom and dad have passed and won’t see this moment, but oh, how I know they would have driven as far as they needed to in order to buy and cherish their copies, like they used to so they could read my columns in the Boston Herald. A large measure of whatever intellect, strength, and drive I possess was their gift. Thank you, Thomas (Bucky) and Florence Buckingham.
The Best Writers Group Ever (BWGE) individually and collectively put my fingers on the keyboard and welcomed my words. Thank you, Sara Foster, Kate Kahn, Jazz Newhall, Cheryl Byrne, and Phyllis Karas.
And Presidential Leadership Scholars (PLS), this book is not just for you, it’s from you. My participation in PLS and my project—which was finishing this book—not only returned me to myself but gave me the courage to put my story out in the world. Thank you especially to former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, their presidential libraries, and the presidential libraries of George H. W. Bush and Lyndon Johnson. Cassie Farrelly, your immediate grasp of what I was trying to say was both affirming and wise. Thank you also for founding Cavan Bridge Press to support works like mine. And to the rest of my PLS family, Mike Hemphill, Michael O’Leary, Stephanie Streett, Holly Kuzmich, Margaret Spellings, Kathryn Carr, Lori Zukin, Kristin King, Katie Lyman, Neill Sciarrone, (the other) Neil Grunberg, AnnMaura Connolly, An-Me Chung, Davy Carter, Haley Holm, Clarissa Martinez De Castro, Sean Fellows, Shelley Cryan, Jim Mauldin, Daniel Anello, Gina Warner, Brian McPeek, Steve Ressler, and all of the Class of 2015, you are forever part of me.
Andrea Bredbeck, my guide, my counselor, my path home. Thank you.
To my Pfizer friends, who have encouraged me and, no matter what, made me laugh, especially Heidi Cosgrove, Amy Goodrich, Meredith Sharp, Rachel Hooper, Steve Janson, Robert Popovian, Robert Jones, Daren Sink, Frances Devlin, Jim Sherner, Lisa Bellucci, Karen Boykin-Towns, Paul Critchlow, and instigator of my midlife adventure in New York City, Sally Susman, who also brought me Jessica Soffer, writer-inspirer extraordinaire.
To my political and news posse, Rob Gray, Stephen O’Neill, Dominick Ianno, Andy Antrobus, Kristen Lepore, John Brockelman, Stuart Stevens, Neil Newhouse, Andy Card, Patrick Dorton, Brian Kaminski, Jan Cellucci, Tom Reilly, Martha Chayet, Andrew Goodrich, Julie Mehegan, Shelly Cohen, Neil Cote, Beth Teitell, Raakhee Mirchandani, Frank Phillips, Janet Wu, and Mary Anne Marsh—campaigns and news careers end, but not friendships.
Boston College became my home at age seventeen and welcomed me home again many years later when I needed it most. With love to my forever-BC friends.
Eddy Foley, it happened! Tell Rose, and thank you for your belief.
To my mentors, Governor Bill Weld and Governor Paul Cellucci, with love and deep respect.
To those who call or text me every single 9/11 anniversary, or leave a Jersey tomato on my desk, please know how much it means to me.
I loved leading Massport and the remarkable people there. Thank you, Joey Cuzzi, Jose Juves, Julie Wasson, Tom Kinton, Lowell Richards, Chris Gordon, Betty Desrosiers, Dave Mackey, Leslie Kirwan, Bob Donahue, Ed Freni, Joe Lawless, James Roy, Katie McDonald, Russ Aims, Mike Leone, Tommy Butler, John Duval, and the entire Logan Airport community.
To my Marblehead community for so many deep friendships and kindnesses, especially David and Marla Meyer, Ann Fitzgerald, Kate Brooks, Sue McNeil, and Tammy Waite.
Thank you, Girl Friday Productions, especially Christina Henry de Tessan, Dave Valencia, and Georgie Hockett, and Smith Publicity’s Sarah Miniaci, for bringing this story on its final journey.
Finally, to Marianne MacFarlane—I promise to try every day to live a joyful, meaningful life in your name as your mom, my friend Anne MacFarlane, in her inimitable way, instructed.
About the Author
© 2019 Victoria Dosch/Victoria Dosch Photography
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Virginia Buckingham was born in Connecticut and has lived in Massachusetts for nearly forty years. She was the first woman to serve as chief of staff to two consecutive Massachusetts governors. Buckingham was subsequently the first woman appointed to head that state’s Port Authority, owner and operator of Logan International Airport. She has also worked as a deputy editorial page editor and columnist for the Boston Herald. In 2015 she was selected for the inaugural class of Presidential Leadership Scholars, a joint initiative of the presidential libraries of Presidents George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, William J. Clinton, and Lyndon Johnson. The completion of this manuscript was her Presidential Leadership Project, a key element of the program, which teaches scholars to apply leadership lessons from those presidencies, such as courage and resilience.
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