by Dennis Smith
From the time I had last spoken to her to that of the building collapsing, I really believed there was enough time for her to have made it down, and I was just waiting for that phone call. I believed she survived. There were things on television, things being published on the Internet. There was one Web site that said they had a survivor list, and mistakenly her name was on it. That made me think even more that she had made it.
Everybody began to call me, but I told them I had to keep the lines clear. Marie’s mother was frantic, absolutely frantic. People started coming to the house, and stayed with me. They just stayed—our friends, her cousins, my friends from Merrill Lynch and wherever else. We just waited. The police had been in touch with us, and I made a police report. I became numb, walking around not really knowing what to do. You were just waiting. I was just waiting for the phone call. Which never came.
For two full days I believed she was still alive. Her name was on that survivor list, and so I kept clinging to that. Maybe she made it out with no identification, leaving her purse. Maybe she had amnesia, in a hospital someplace, not knowing who she was. I had a life full of maybes. Maybe I was trying to find excuses and reasons why she had not called yet. But after two full days, after not hearing anything about survivors being taken out, and nothing from any hospital, after no phone call, I said, Okay, no more wishful thinking after that. The Red Cross told me there was help available. But I was not thinking of needing help. I mean, really, what kind of help could they give me? Except to return Marie.
After seeing the building come down that shock was very vivid, and stayed with me. And then the television kept showing it coming down again and again. A few days later they stopped showing it.
I now call it naiveté, for I did not even think that the second plane’s hitting Marie’s building was an attack. It just did not dawn on me. The first one got hit, a plane crashed into it, okay. But when I saw the second plane hit, it still didn’t dawn on me that we were under siege. Who? How could they do this to us? And then the building itself. How did a 110-story building just come down? Burn, yes. But an implosion?
Keefe, Bruyette, and Woods lost sixty-seven people that day, including my Marie. Because of attending social events I was very close with the group that she worked with, and there was one service after another for those who died. Anyone that I knew, I attended. I purposely scheduled hers toward the end, October 13. By then I had already gone to twelve or thirteen services, so at each one of them it was, Yeah, I lost my wife also. It seemed that the others who had lost a spouse or a child did not attend the services. I saw the bigwigs, who were attending as many as they could. But they did not lose somebody. I did. So every time I went to a service I would die, and I died all of those deaths.
By the time Marie’s came I had nothing left. I was so emotionally drained from all of the crying, and listening, and seeing suffering families, and knowing that these friends had been in my house and now they were gone. It was very, very difficult for me to go through with Marie’s service. But I felt obligated to do it, so I did a service for her without her remains.
Three years later, as I was getting used to her being gone, there was a knock at the door. Two policewomen had come to tell me that they had found her body—not her body, but they had identified some of her body, 79 pounds of her body. The detective had her dress, which I identified. She was 118 pounds. Just 79 pounds of her came back to us. It was almost three years to the day that they figured out the DNA. They found her body a month after the incident but could not identify it. They froze it, and during the next three years the DNA technology got better, to the point where they were able to make an identification.
I had the remains cremated and the ashes divided into four vials. I spread two of them out in Hawaii, because of her love for that place. I kept two vials, which I don’t know what to do with. Out of respect for my Orphelia, my wonderful new wife, I did not want another memorial here besides the village I had built. Not that Orphelia would object, but I just don’t know what to do.
I did nothing for the first year after 9/11. I was told by professionals, Don’t do anything for a year; don’t make any major decisions. So I stayed in the house alone. That was very, very difficult. I would see her where she always was. But she was not where I would see her. We lived in that house for twenty-plus years, and in that Long Island neighborhood. I would see her in every place in our memories, be it the grocery store, the drugstore, the train station, the library that she loved so much. Memories were every single place.
Three years passed, and one day I saw a house-for-sale sign on Woodbury Road. I looked up and saw it was my kind of house. It had a 270-foot driveway that went straight up from the street. It was very private, surrounded by rhododendrons and philodendrons, with a patio as big as Texas. I did not see the eight bedrooms, just saw a home that I liked, so I bought it. This was a minor victory for me, trying to find a place to be happy. The house made me happy. But then it haunted me that this beautiful place was not supposed to be just for me—it was supposed to be us two, together. And I could not live there. But I also could not bring myself to sell it. Finally, my agent said, “Your house is going to rot,” so I went ahead and sold it. My Filipino friends had started saying to me, You have a very strong, dominant character, and whatever you are looking for, you are not going to find here, alone in this big house. Go home to the Philippines, they said. Go home. Find a quiet girl who will say yes to you, whatever you want.
So I made it known that I was going home, and that I was looking. When I got to the Philippines my friends set me up with this one, and they set me up with that one. But everybody they set me up with was not quite right. There was one really nice-looking lady, but when I went to her house she had this huge picture with what must have been at least 150 people in it: daughters, mothers, cousins, this, that, all the children. I would be marrying into a tribe. And then I noticed that she was interviewing me—How do you feel about this and that?—and she had her checklist. She liked me and I liked her, but it really scared me when I saw that. I’m very American. Don’t come to my house unless you call first.
At that point I had pretty much given up, but it just so happened that I went into this place where all the bachelors go on Thursday nights, all schoolmates from Ateneo. I was going one way, and here comes this lady, the same way. We looked at each other, and, wow, what a beautiful smile—what a beautiful girl. I didn’t know who she was, no idea. I said, “Are you coming here?” and she said, “Yes.” Next thing I know she is on the stage. She was one of the singers and had a beautiful voice. So I said, “I want to talk to you afterward,” but she was kind of ignoring me.
That was the first time I saw Orphelia. I soon invested in the club, and then became the manager too. I made two more attempts to see her. I drove her home, but she wouldn’t pay attention to me. I drove her home again, and in the car she began [to talk]: “What do I need men for? To be used and abused? Men are all the same.” My driver said, “Are we going to do this again tomorrow?” I said, “No way.”
Then one day she texted me, wanting some help. She was working five days a week and needed her day off changed. I made the change, she was very grateful, and that was that. But one day I was talking to one of my partners, who asked, “Did you know that Orphelia was operated on?” I said, “No,” and I called her up and told her I wanted to visit. She was very grateful. That weekend she told me she was singing in Tagaytay, so I offered to drive her there. In the Philippines more patience is always needed.
I hadn’t realized what an influence Marie had been in my life. I began to see the mistakes that I was making—mistakes I had not been making when Marie was with me, because she had taught me in the particulars of that relationship how to deal with them.
After losing Marie, I wanted to do something meaningful in her memory. Basically, I wanted to help those who needed help. Naturally, being Filipino and having seen how poor it is for many here, I was directing my desires toward home. While I was st
ill living on Long Island I put out word that I was looking for a project in the Philippines and kept being told, Be careful, there’s a lot of fraud out here. You’re going to get sued. They are going to steal your money. They are going to kidnap you. One day a friend of mine, one of my classmates, mentioned that he was doing volunteer work for Gawad Kalinga, an organization that provides homes to people in the Philippines who have none. I told him that I had been looking for just such a project and asked him to send me material about it. Their goal is to stop only when there is no one else homeless in the Philippines. I sent them enough to buy fifty houses. My friend had told me that if I bought fifty houses—basically enough to build a village—they would name the village after me. I told them to name it after Marie. It was then that it came back to me that Marie had said that someday she was going to come back and help these people.
Gawad Kalinga pays only for the material; everything else is either donated or volunteered, whether the property itself or the services of the architect, engineer, or construction workers. It’s all volunteer. Anyone who wants a house helps build all the homes in the community. The poorest of the poorest will get houses this way. Their lives will be changed.
In the beginning this subdivision area was a slum, home to seven hundred or eight hundred families, until a fire destroyed the entire thing. Then Gawad Kalinga came in to try to rebuild, and priority was given to those who had been burned out. Just on the other side of the Marie Rose Abad Village is another subdivision that is all slums—people on the outside looking in, asking, When can I move in there? That’s the challenge now: to get those people into respectable housing. Each house is small—a twelve-byfifteen-foot area to build a bedroom, kitchen, and living room—but effective. Villagers are given a shell, cement, paint, raw walls, and it’s up to them to do what they want with them. Some of them have built a second floor, with basket gardens hanging down. People take real pride. It’s just good having a roof over your head. It gives them a sense of ownership, and because they get title in twenty years, they have an incentive to keep it clean.
These buildings are a transition for many of them from a cardboard box or a corrugated wood shack to a real house with plumbing.
We now have about three hundred people living in the houses in the Marie Rose Abad Village. When I go there I try to be very low-key, and don’t even want to be seen. It is about Marie, not about me. I look at it all and I’m so happy, but also sad, because I can see on the other side of the river a much bigger community waiting in those terrible huts. This had been a very high-crime area, but for the past two years we have not had a single incident. The area used to be a watering hole for drugs, but now there’s no longer a single person using them. The house offers a chance to restart something meaningful. Before, all they had was an absence of hope, no life, nothing. Marie has provided shelter and hope for so many of them.
Why was Marie killed? I suppress the rage only because I say to myself, I cannot win this battle. My pain is so great that if I start to fight, my pain will continue, and it is a battle that I cannot win. Some people have more anger than I can find. I’m not a coward, but it’s just, I don’t want to exert all my energy and then say, At least I tried. I do not want to accept defeat, no. But I will support in any way I can other people who are willing to take on the fight against terrorism. How can I win? I get so many e-mails from the Department of Justice about how this hearing is going and how that one has been dismissed. The big 9/11 organization, Tuesday’s Children, is continuing the fight, and will go to Washington to be heard. If I was in New York I would go with them, to be a part of them, my friends. But I would be a silent minority, not doing any screaming. That would not bring back Marie; it would only bring me pain. But if you need me to stand up for your issues for you to carry on, I will be there.
If Marie is looking down on us, she would say, I am really, really glad about what you have done in my memory. I know that the people in the village are very grateful. Her picture is on every row of houses in the village, along with the title Marie Rose Abad Village. I wanted her face, not just a name; I wanted people to see that this is the woman whom you thank. I’m not someone who is overly religious, thinking all the time of heaven and earth and hell and whatever. But I do go to church and I naturally always speak to Marie there, telling her that I hope she’s okay and happy. I do believe that she is watching over me, as I have had so many problems, and I feel her coming to me, smiling, a guiding hand. I guess I manage to stay okay because she has been watching over me. I believe that part.
I am not all alone. I have my brother, my sister, my mother—a meager family, but it is my family. I have my other family, Orphelia and her daughter, now our daughter, Gianne, and everyone who works in our house, which is eleven people plus six others working in our beach house. I also have a band I am managing. All of these people are now my family. These are the people that I care for, whatever happens, because this is what I have built here, with our village and my church. They all look to me, and if that is my mission, then so be it. I have been fortunate enough in my finances, and the good thing about that is that I know that I am doing positive things—things that, for some people, make life at least a little better.
Sally Regenhard
Sally Regenhard is the mother of two children—a son, Christian, and a daughter, Christina. Her husband, Al, is a retired NYPD detective. Christian was a probationary firefighter just six weeks or so out of the FDNY training school when he responded with his company to the World Trade Center disaster on 9/11. He perished along with four other firefighters from his assigned company that day. Sally describes herself as an activist and an advocate for high-rise building safety and is respected by many in the 9/11 community for the tenacity and spirit that has grown from a mother’s love.
I’m usually a little on the hard-nosed side, a kick-butt type of person, especially when it comes to the issues that get placed before us. But when it comes to my son, Christian, that’s when I cry. What can I say? I’m currently involved with the controversy down at the Ground Zero area where the building of a mosque is planned, and 60 Minutes called me about it. They sent a girl for a preinterview, and I didn’t know if she knew anything, so I had to go through the whole thing about my son and got so upset that I went off on a crying jag. It’s draining. It’s emotional. It’s very difficult to be a 9/11 parent.
Growing up I was known as Teresa Mary Doughty. I’m the child of Irish immigrants, from Mayo and from Derry. My father was a conductor on the IRT, and early on he moved the family to Mosholu Parkway. We were practically the only Gentiles in this 99 percent Jewish upper-middle-class neighborhood and so didn’t exactly fit in. My mother and father had brogues that no one ever understood. I was the only person on the block who went to Catholic school, and my sister and I had to walk ten blocks to get there. I was the first person in my family to go to college, because everyone in my neighborhood went to college. Later on, when I moved to Co-op City, I met activists there—socialists and union leaders. I learned so much from them about challenging the system, and that’s why I was able to challenge the system after 9/11.
I was basically a stay-at-home mom for the early years of Christian’s life. I went back to work when he was around nine years old. I also have a daughter, who is now a science teacher, and who like Christian is a graduate of Bronx High School of Science. When they were young I was with them, because I think it is very important for a parent. My husband was doing shift work back in those days. Before he became an NYPD detective, he worked in many precincts across the city as a uniformed patrolman. He was in the citywide anticrime unit and the senior citizens’ robbery unit. He was undercover. He was in the riots of the 1960s and at Columbia University for the famous anti–Vietnam War protests. There’s a famous picture of him and his colleagues at those protests, working the confrontation of a crowd. It was just a part of his thirty-nine years in the NYPD.
After just ten years he passed the sergeant’s test and aced it. He was a pe
rson who had a lot of talent, especially artistic talents. But in his era of growing up on the Upper West Side, you didn’t really become an artist or follow the arts. It was a very blue-collar, macho way of thinking. But he did have a very interesting, multifaceted career, and never took himself too seriously. He became a boss in the detective squad, so he was the sergeant. He had to deal with all these detectives—the good, the bad, and the ugly, but mostly good. And he was known among the detectives as a great boss. Before he retired, he had a remarkable career. I would say he was married to the Police Department. Every time there was a blackout, a snowstorm, riots, he was there. So mainly I was alone with the children while he was out saving the city. But that’s all part of the job.
I went to Catholic school, and I hate to admit it, but I didn’t get into the Bronx High School of Science, because the science and the math tests were so difficult. In those days the Catholic school system was superb in English, writing, history, and philosophy, but it was really not as demanding in science and, perhaps, in math. I was delighted when my daughter got into the Bronx High School of Science, and I was shocked when Christian got in. They both had one of the finest public educations you could receive in our city. In the early days of Co-op City, where we lived in the Bronx, the school used the open-classroom method of teaching. And so Christian was prepared for the Bronx High School of Science. It is one of the hardest high schools to get into in the whole country.
Christian was always a fantastic thinker, and a very charismatic and beautiful child. He had a Buster Brown haircut, with light blond hair and gorgeous blue eyes. And Christian was blessed with personality. Some children are chronic malcontents. Some are problematic. He was blessed with an easygoing temperament. He was a charming child. Everybody loved him and went crazy over him. I didn’t really understand why so many other mothers would just go crazy over Christian. I guess since he was my own, I was too close to him to fully get it. He was just a wonderful child.