Project Rebirth

by Dr. Robin Stern

  If all these guys were helping out, Brian figured, why not him? He quickly hatched a plan—he’d keep on walking north until he could hop on a Metro-North train and get to his brother’s house in Westchester, where he knew he could find some of Michael’s extra gear in the basement. He’d suit up, grab Michael’s extra ID (despite being eight years apart, they looked enough alike to pass for each other—both stocky guys with that pale, Irish skin and round, jolly faces), and just head down there. He would see what he could see, and help in whatever way he could help.

  After a stop at his own home where he kissed Lori good-bye and fended off her protests, Brian headed out. He drove down the eerily empty FDR Drive and headed west to the World Trade Center site. A parkway that normally carries upward of 175,000 cars through Lower Manhattan, and all the noise and pollution that they produce, was suddenly a nearly silent passageway for one determined man.

  Brian hardly had the energy to notice how bizarre it all was—driving alone on the FDR, a road that he had cursed more than once on other bumper-to-bumper occasions. His entire body was engaged in his mission—his heart was beating fast, his eyes were watching the smoky air drift by, his digestion had slowed down to a quiet grumble. He knew that New York was falling apart all around him, but all he could see was the narrow path he’d carved out in his mind that led straight to his brother.

  Thanks to his brother’s ID, he got through all the checkpoints that Tuesday morning, parked his car on the corner of Pine and Church Streets, and headed—counter to the stream of people searching for safety—toward the site. “It was like a war zone,” he remembers. Fires were still burning. Paper and dead bodies covered the ground. Piles of steel were everywhere. Brian took a deep breath, surveying the carnage in every direction. He decided to walk the entire perimeter of the demolished site, so as to get a better sense of the scale of the damage and need.

  It quickly became very obvious that it would be difficult to find his brother amid all the chaos. There were police and firefighters everywhere, everyone trying to coordinate getting to the injured and buried people still trapped in the ruins. Massive machines were already moving piles of steel to help rescue workers get in to find survivors. In the meantime, he decided, he would just help out. As he walked, he gave himself a little pep talk: “Just one grain of sand. That’s all I’ve got to do. If I can do something to the best of my ability, add one grain of sand to the bucket, then I can help the common goal.”

  He wouldn’t leave the site for three full weeks.

  Brian’s firefighter brother Michael was the youngest of four sons and, as a result, had the most eyes and expectations on him as he was coming of age in the Lyons family. “We all wanted to make him what we weren’t,” Brian explained. “We wanted to make sure he got good schooling, went to a good college, and he was good in sports.”

  Stickball was king on the streets of Yonkers in the sixties and seventies when the boys were growing up. “There would be ten, twenty, thirty kids on the corner at one time,” Brian remembers. “You had generations—my older brother and friends, me and my friends . . .” They would spend hours playing games and talking trash.

  The Lyons family immigrated to the United States in 1957, after a decade of economic depression and political violence in their home country of Ireland. Brian was born in 1960. Michael, dubbed “the moon baby,” was born on July 20, 1969—one day before Neil Armstrong first stuck an American flag in that silvery orb far, far away.

  All the boys were raised in the Catholic Church and taught to be pious, helpful, and scrappy—always looking for opportunities to make a buck. From a very young age, Brian would wander onto local construction sites and ask if he could lend a hand, “hoping for a dollar to get something to eat.” It was during these long, hot days of summer that he first learned about construction work. On rare trips to Lower Manhattan as a teenager, he remembers marveling at the World Trade towers, which he viewed as feats of construction, symbols of patriotism and power. Brian explains, “I admired the Twin Towers since I was a little kid. Just like you want your baseball team to win the World Series, you want your city to have the biggest, best building in the world. That’s how I thought about those towers.”

  Brian wasn’t very drawn to school, so he figured that he’d join the service instead, even if his heart wasn’t really in that either. “I was just a kid going to boot camp,” he remembers. “They do everything bad to you.” But there was a silver lining to all that harsh treatment: “I got stationed in Alaska for a year and half. I was sailing around the North Pacific at nineteen years old. It was really good.”

  As Brian was wandering around the world as part of the service, Michael went on to Manhattan College, where he studied mechanical engineering. “He’s got a good head on his shoulders,” Brian explains.

  Brian finally settled back into the area in the late eighties, at which time he met Lori—a bright young business school student at the time. He proposed to her at the World Trade Center restaurant, Windows on the World, on September 12, 1989, and they were married in 1990. They were excited to start a family right away but weren’t able to conceive their first child, Elizabeth, until 1995, followed by Patricia in 1998—right around the same time that Michael started his own family with his new wife, Elaine. Their first daughter, Caitlin, was born in 2000.

  This was also the time that Michael became a firefighter. There were very few engineering jobs when Michael graduated, but his name came up on the list for the FDNY—he’d taken the test his senior year in high school—so he jumped at the chance.

  Michael and Brian were very close, coming up with all sorts of entrepreneurial schemes, even a baby-bottle business. When Michael decided he wanted to renovate his house, Brian teamed up with him. On their many drives to Home Depot and in almost daily phone calls, they cemented the plans for the renovation and carried it out, side by side. They mourned the loss of their parents together. Their daughters were destined to be playmates. Their wives were friends. Everything seemed to have turned out as the Irish blessing foretold that it would:MAY YOU ALWAYS HAVE WALLS FOR THE WINDS, A ROOF FOR THE RAIN, TEA BESIDE THE FIRE, LAUGHTER TO CHEER YOU, THOSE YOU LOVE NEAR YOU, AND ALL YOUR HEART MIGHT DESIRE. MAY ST. PATRICK GUIDE YOU WHEREVER YOU GO, AND GUIDE YOU IN WHATEVER YOU DO—AND MAY HIS LOVING PROTECTION BE A BLESSING TO YOU ALWAYS. MAY THE ROAD RISE TO MEET YOU, MAY THE WIND BE ALWAYS AT YOUR BACK. MAY THE SUN SHINE WARM UPON YOUR FACE, THE RAINS FALL SOFT UPON YOUR FIELDS AND, UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN, MAY GOD HOLD YOU IN THE PALM OF HIS HAND.

  Brian slept in his car, ate donated sandwiches, drank copious amounts of donated coffee, and worked for three straight weeks following September 11, 2001. Whatever project he found that needed doing—no matter how seemingly mundane—he would attach himself to it and make sure he saw it through from start to finish. Whether it was removing a small section of debris, in hopes that there was an air pocket below, or making a path to a particular section of the site where rescue workers were concentrating, he was there to see the project through. He knew no one working alongside him but quickly made friends with other bighearted people trying to move the rescue effort along. Brian’s steady demeanor was a huge asset in the midst of such traumatic work; rescue workers were attracted to both his calming presence and his capable hand.

  Brian would call a few times a day, giving both his wife and Michael’s wife updates on what was going on down there. Elaine and Michael’s home had become a bustling center where family members came through, bringing food and prayers for Michael’s safety. Sometimes they would take the girls to Chuck E. Cheese’s or Carvel to keep them away from the steady stream of sobering conversation among the adults. Their sprawling extended family held out hope that Brian would call any minute with news of Michael’s rescue. Lori worried about Brian—she couldn’t imagine what kinds of things he was experiencing down there. But she tried to keep her worries, small in comparison with Elaine’s, at bay and focus on finding Michael. Later, she admitted to Brian that she was abs
olutely terrified for his safety.

  For three weeks the family prayed and gathered, and Brian worked and waited for any sign that his brother might be alive, trapped in the rubble somewhere as if living in a postapocalyptic pocket of air and safety somewhere beneath the surface of rubble. Michael was “the moon baby,” after all; maybe he’d figured out some way to survive in quiet darkness.

  And then, one bright October morning—as if the people working there were waking up from a collective dream—the mood on-site dramatically shifted. “I remember it was eight o’clock and the sun was out, nice sunny day, and the whole site was at a different pace,” Brian remembers. “Everything was one notch down, much slower. Everyone just knew—there really isn’t [anyone] alive now. We’re still working hard, but it wasn’t the same intensity of trying to save someone trapped under a piece of steel.”

  For Brian, the shift meant a chance to slow down, but it also meant something much more profound. “That was the moment I knew,” he explains. “I looked at my watch and it was 8:01. Whatever date it was, I knew we weren’t going to find him alive or anyone else alive.” The effort went from being a project of rescue to one of recovery. They were no longer looking for survivors; they were looking for remains. Michael was dead.

  It was at the end of that day that Brian finally decided it was time to go home and kiss and hug Lori and the girls, and tell Elaine—almost nine months pregnant—that the father of her children, her husband, her childhood sweetheart, wasn’t coming home.

  After breaking the news to Elaine, he retreated to the warmth and comfort of his own little family. It was nice to be home, to feel the warm bodies of his little girls and the loving embrace of his wife, but by four thirty the next morning, Brian was back at the Brewster train station, waiting for the five a.m. train. It was a foggy October morning. Everything was very still and peaceful. Only one other man stood on the platform.

  He looked to be in his fifties or sixties. They struck up a casual conversation. Then the man said, apropos of nothing, “Don’t worry. Everything will come out all right. Things will work out for the best.” Brian was stunned. He hadn’t told him anything about where he was headed or where he had been.

  The man went on, “Things are screwed up, but it should work out.” Despite his confusion at how this man could possibly know anything about what he was dealing with, Brian found his words, his presence, strangely consoling.

  The train appeared in the distance, moving toward them. Brian said, “Nice talking to you,” and reached out his hand. “I’m Brian.”

  “Nice talking to you too,” the man responded, taking his hand and shaking it with a warm sureness. “I’m Michael Lyons.”

  Brian, stunned to the core, got on one train while the man with his dead brother’s name got on another.

  The recovery effort was tedious, backbreaking, and traumatic, but Brian felt deeply committed to helping with any- and everything. He was especially focused on finding his brother’s remains. “I felt I had a responsibility to bring his remains home,” Brian explained. “Because of my nature, and the nature of the beast that was down there—organized chaos, if you will—I really felt that they needed someone of my stature to organize some of these things. I couldn’t sleep at night knowing someone down there might screw it up.” Brian had ample experience managing complex construction projects and prided himself on his capacity to keep things moving on schedule, with integrity and a sense of team unity.

  He put off his sadness surrounding his loss by toiling day in and day out, eighteen-hour days, no time for tears or memories. He told himself that Michael would want him down there, helping out, making sure things were done properly. He reassured Lori that his absence was only temporary, that he would have a regular schedule again once he found whatever remains existed of Michael and his buddies from Squad 41.

  What allowed Brian to sustain such long, arduous hours? Psychologists have been investigating the nature of human resilience since the late seventies. Up until that time, many researchers felt that the only respectable or serious focus of study was on pathology—essentially, what went wrong with people’s psyches. Countless research dollars and ounces of typewriter ink went into investigating dysfunction. But just as a political and social change shifted the tectonic plates of American life in the tumultuous seventies, the field of psychology also changed at that time—the psychological version of “make love, not war”; study what is restorative in the human psyche, not just what is potentially destructive. Resiliency theory was born.

  In 1979, psychologist S. C. Kobasa argued that resilience was related to three healing beliefs: (1) control—that one can influence circumstances (in contrast to adopting a victimized identity); (2) commitment—that one expects to find purpose and passion through one’s own resourcefulness; and (3) challenge—that one pursues growth even when it’s hard, knowing that this leads to greater fulfillment in the long run. Brian, it seems, is a poster child for this hardy response to trauma and loss.

  He was also buoyed by fate. Eerie events, like that which transpired on the train platform in Putnam County, continued to happen, making him feel as if his work at Ground Zero was a matter of destiny. “I don’t believe in ESP or UFOs or nothing,” Brian explained, “but very, very weird things happened down there.”

  The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung explains such happenings through his concept of “synchronicity.” Jung explains: “Meaningful coincidences are unthinkable as pure chance—the more they multiply and the greater and more exact the correspondence is, the more they can no longer be regarded as pure chance, but, for the lack of causal explanation, have to be thought of as meaningful arrangements.”

  These inexplicable moments are experienced not only by those in mourning, of course—just ask a starry-eyed couple how they met and you’ll likely hear a tale of synchronicity. But for someone trying to process a recent loss, someone aching for a sense of connection to a loved one who has been torn from their daily lives in one brutal swoop, synchronicity ensures a continuation of the relationship. Whether real or imagined—who can possibly know?—these defining moments are opportunities for comfort and wonder.

  On Thanksgiving morning, Brian had yet another ineffable experience. He watched as a machine dug up a huge batch of identification cards and sent them flying through the air. On a whim, he grabbed one, and then a strong thought flashed through his head: “I know I’m going to read this thing, and it’s going to say Michael Lyons.” Indeed, it was his brother’s ID card.

  On St. Patrick’s Day, at around five p.m., Brian and a couple of guys from Squad 41 who hadn’t been on duty that fateful day, two of Michael’s dearest friends, were digging in the same general area as where the ID card had shown up months earlier. All of a sudden, a piece of hard metal hit Brian in the foot. He looked down to see a Halligan bar—a tool commonly used by firefighters and law enforcement to pry, twist, or force entry—with Squad 41 etched onto it. “I just knew my brother had been carrying that Halligan that day,” Brian said. Michael was often the one to grab the Halligan for his team.

  As he held it in his hand, feeling the weight of the cold metal and experiencing a wave of relief, a light snow began to fall. “I realized that there was a force that kept me going from 9/11 until St. Patrick’s Day,” Brian explains. “The instant it started snowing, it was like a switch went off inside, as if everything was drained from me.”

  But Brian and Michael’s friends didn’t give up just yet. They kept digging in that exact spot. Just before midnight, they found a very hot area filled with ashes and bones. Later on the next day, they found a Squad 41 helmet. Within three days, they had recovered every tool, bone fragment, and all the remains they could find in the area. The remains went to the medical examiner’s office to be identified. Brian brought the tools back to the firehouse, where the surviving squad members laid everything out. Just about every tool was there, except for the head of a solitary ax. To his great relief and honor, the squad gave Brian the Halligan, s
aying it was his right to keep it in honor and memory of his brother.

  “That was huge closure,” Brian explained. He had fulfilled his responsibility of finding what was left of his baby brother, a sacred promise he’d made to himself. (None of Michael’s physical remains were ever found.)

  At Michael’s memorial service, Brian recounted that his brother had always regretted having missed “the action” with the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center. “Everyone wants to get the big fire,” Brian explained. “So when the towers were on fire, I knew Michael was so excited to get there. I could picture him, getting out of the fire engine, grabbing his Halligan, and running into that building. I know he was full steam ahead, trying to get in there and accomplish something he had in his heart.”

  Roman lyric poet Horace wrote, “Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.” He could have been speaking of Brian, who in the process of pitching in at Ground Zero found both a mission and a new identity. He had always worked in construction, of course, but the leadership that emerged from within during his time on the recovery effort brought his professional life to a new level. He was asked to stay on as one of the key managers overseeing the PATH Restoration Project from August of 2002 to November of 2003.

  Every morning, he would facilitate a coordination meeting at nine a.m. between the fifteen subcontractors and the PATH and MTA teams. They would go over the agenda, talk about various safety issues, cover any labor questions (e.g., Who is working today? How long are they working?), go over all the systems (fire alarms, elevators, plumbing, heating, sewer, drainage, etc.), and discuss how the track work and other reconstruction efforts were coming along. Brian would write down any outstanding issues on the board and assign people to follow up. It was like he was the choreographer of an incredibly intricate dance involving hundreds of laborers, thousands of tons of steel, and the dream of a restored transportation hub downtown.