  | Profiles of ten alumni | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Witnesses to HistoryBy John Pantalone ’71
Nathan S. Blaney ’96 September 11 was just the second day of class for students at the Village Community School. At 8:46 a.m., when the first airplane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center, a number of children were outdoors at gym class. They were the first to know something was terribly wrong. Nathan Blaney was in class with his students when he heard the crash. “We were about 20 blocks away,” he said. “I grabbed my camera and ran out to 10th Street. I had a view straight to the towers. About 20 minutes later the second plane hit; I knew it couldn’t be an accident.” Blaney shot only the few frames that remained in his camera. About a week later he retrieved his camera, which he had left behind at the school, and shot stills and video of the aftermath at various sites in New York, including the memorial at St. Paul’s Church near ground zero. He described it as “similar to the Vietnam Memorial Wall; people were leaving mementos, notes, and cherished possessions.” Fortunately, no one at his school lost a relative in the attacks, but it took nearly the entire day to evacuate the children. Blaney couldn’t get home to Brooklyn that night because Manhattan was sealed off below 14th Street. “The next day I met my wife and we drove over the Brooklyn Bridge. It was frightening and eerie. Everyone was still worried about more attacks, and bridges seemed logical targets.” Blaney’s images appeared on Dateline NBC and an HBO special, and Ocean State Online included many of his pictures on a special Web page (www.oso.com/news/2001/ground_zero.html). More than seven months later, the children at Blaney’s school still have the attacks on their minds. “It shows up in their artwork,” he said.
Rear Admiral Richard E. Bennis ’72 Leaving New York City under a cloudless sky early on September 11, Rear Admiral Richard E. Bennis, the U.S. Coast Guard commander of the Port of New York, had no idea that the last six months of his 30-year military career would be the most grueling. Just north of Washington, D.C., he received an emergency phone call about the first airplane hitting the World Trade Center. “We stopped and took out a portable TV we had in the trunk,” said Bennis. “Then we saw the second plane hit. I put my police pass on the dashboard and raced all the way back.” With hundreds of thousands streaming from Lower Manhattan to get out of the city, Bennis oversaw a waterborne evacuation worthy of Dunkirk. The Coast Guard, with help from every imaginable vessel, moved between 800,000 and one million persons. “On an average day, the ferry system in New York would move about 175,000,” he said. “We saw a tremendous response from the maritime community. No one was hurt or lost in the evacuation.” As he approached the city by boat from Sandy Hook, N.J., Bennis remembers “this immense cloud of smoke across the horizon. The site burned continuously for a couple of months. I don’t think most people realize that. I remember thinking, ‘this isn’t our skyline.’’’ The Coast Guard kept the harbor closed for two days. When the harbor reopened, there were stringent new security regulations. “Our active response lasted about 20 hours a day for several weeks. In a 30-day period we logged as many hours on Coast Guard boats as we would in 15 years of normal use.” Bennis left the Coast Guard on March 23, 2002, and became associate under secretary of transportation for maritime and land security at the newly formed Transportation Security Administration. “We’re starting from scratch to build response preparedness,” he said. “September 11 taught us a lot. It’s a whole new world out there now.”
John M. Murney ’79 In 17 years as a TV cameraman and soundman, John Murney had seen suffering and anguish, but one week in New York was exceptional. “It was obvious that no one had experienced anything like this before,” Murney said. “It just felt very somber. I tried to focus on what I was doing.” Later he wrote about what he saw from the time he arrived at 2 a.m. on September 12 until he left a week later. A freelance soundman from Providence, Murney worked that week for ABC News mostly covering how New Yorkers were coping and recovering. He spent several days at a makeshift memorial at Union Square at 14th Street. “We talked to many people who had seen terrible things. People were crying and hugging one another. In such a situation you try to be as respectful as possible.” At the Union Square memorial, a black soldier in Army fatigues caught the crowd off guard one afternoon, saying he had dedicated his life to his country and was ready to die for it, but some in the crowd would kill him because of his race. “Why,” he asked, “does it take something like this to bring us together?” Murney wrote that “many in the crowd began to weep and some touched the soldier in a gesture of comfort and apology.” There was a constant procession of people at the memorial. “A few would burst into tears at first sight of the display,” Murney wrote. “Others would sit for hours, staring, and suddenly begin to weep.” Families posted photos of loved ones with messages: “Have you seen Ginny? She works on the 92nd floor of Tower 1. Please call.” “Have you seen Michael?” Murney recalls looking at the photos and thinking, “they were attractive people photographed in happy times.”
James F. Campbell, director of URI’s Counseling Center By 10:30 a.m. on September 11, James Campbell’s pager was beeping. Crisis Management International, an Atlanta-based crisis counseling service, was asking him to get to Manhattan. “It was the most intense thing I have ever experienced,” Campbell said of the six days he spent in New York helping people through the trauma. “Crisis counseling is always intense and exhausting, but things beyond the school or company you are working with remain normal. In New York, nothing was normal. Everyone had shell-shocked looks.” Campbell couldn’t get to New York immediately because he needed to stay on campus to help organize URI’s response. Many students were concerned about relatives and friends in New York, others were suffering high degrees of stress. Campbell drove to New York and back three times between September 13 and early October. “At the beginning we had 8 or 10 counselors there; by the third week there were 150. The level of fear in New York was palpable. Many people couldn’t return to work.” Counselors worked with survivors and with workers and residents who were affected by the trauma. Some were experiencing intense guilt because they felt that they didn’t do enough to help. “People who witnessed bodies falling from the towers were the most challenging to help. You offer concern, support, and guidance about dealing with symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.” Two moments stand out in Campbell’s memory. “I grew up in New York and know that New Yorkers pay little attention to noise. One day a patrolling jet fighter flew over Manhattan. Everyone on the street froze—almost in mid-step. It was totally quiet except for that jet. It was eerie.” “And I will always remember the man who helped a pregnant woman escape from the towers. He put her in a wheelchair and pushed her from Lower Manhattan to Brooklyn. I’m sure he just wanted to run, but he didn’t. There were so many stories of ordinary people showing extraordinary courage.”
Paul S. Sledzik ’84 As a forensic anthropologist and team leader for one of 10 federal Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Teams, Paul Sledzik had worked at the Oklahoma City bombing site and the Egypt Air crash site off southern New England. So getting the call to go to Pennsylvania to help identify the victims of the terrorist plane crash there last September didn’t surprise him. “You try to work as quickly and efficiently as possible knowing how important it is to families to have their loved one identified,” Sledzik said. “When I am doing this, I watch no media. I separate the work I do from all else.” The curator of anatomical collections at the National Museum of Health and Medicine of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Sledzik has served on the Region III DMORT team since 1993. “Although the morgue team doesn’t deal directly with the families,” Sledzik explained, “our family affairs team collects hairbrushes and toothbrushes for DNA comparison. It can be stressful. You do think as you are looking at remains that these people were alive a few days before. “In this case, we also understood the gravity of the situation nationally. As a medicolegal investigation, we saw the need to thoroughly document the United 93 crash. Fortunately, we were able to work fairly quickly.” While all the victims have been identified, as late as eight months later Sledzik’s team still received calls from federal agents about investigative procedures. “It’s taxing and important work,” said Sledzik. “Being able to return remains to the family does not necessarily provide closure, but rather helps them through the grief process.”
Katherine T. Powers ’66 As associate director for NBC News, Katherine Powers dealt with the attacks on a personal and professional level. In October, NBC received an anthrax-laced letter in the mail addressed to Tom Brokaw. Everyone was tested and put on Cipro. A week later most of the test results came back negative. “At first we were pretty frightened,” Powers said. “Tom Brokaw spent an incredible amount of time making sure everyone was informed. We worked in temporary quarters carrying our rescued possessions around in backpacks while NBC took the extraordinary action of reconstructing our offices and replacing all the furniture.” Powers, who usually helps prepare NBC Nightly News from noon to 8 p.m., couldn’t get to work on the day of the attacks because there was no transportation. “They called me in, and I said I would be there in half-an-hour, but when I got to the street there were thousands of people streaming up 6th Avenue heading north.” She stayed home that day, emailing relatives and friends to assure them that she was all right. Her daughter, in her first days of college in Toronto, reassured Powers that her new Canadian friends were being tremendously supportive. Her stepson, who works near the World Trade Center, had called his wife in the morning to say he was fine, “but we couldn’t reach him again. He arrived on my doorstep at around noon.” Returning to NBC the next day, Powers joined others putting in extended hours with increased coverage. “On Friday an internal power failure took Nightly off the air. While engineers raced to get everything working again, most of us admitted we had had a fleeting ‘we’re all going to die moment.’’’ Months later, reluctant to talk much about those days, Powers says her nightmares have subsided. “I am not afraid to fly, but the image of a plane in the sky over New York is now more menacing than romantic.”
Kim M. Queren ’83 Two days after the attacks, Kim Queren returned to work as a director in the Pharmaceutical Regulatory Education Group at Pfizer, Inc., on East 42nd St. “At first it was difficult to focus on work. There were many reminders—posters of missing people in the subways, flowers and candles outside firehouses and police stations, sometimes the air would smell like burning electrical wires. On the day we came back there was a bomb scare at Grand Central Station right across the street from my office that sent people evacuating onto the street in fright.” Pfizer had lost two employees—one was attending a meeting at the WTC and another was on the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania—and many colleagues had lost family members and friends in the attacks. Queren dealt with her fear by volunteering each weekend for over seven months at Red Cross and Salvation Army respite sites at Ground Zero. “It was hard at first because so many workers were streaming into the respite sites. They were so incredibly exhausted and covered in mud and dirt. You could see the devastation near the WTC site: office papers crammed into windowsills, dust and debris everywhere.” Providing meals and respite for recovery workers, the volunteers also listened to their stories. “There are so many images I remember. The rescue workers who drove from Mexico on Day 1; a fellow volunteer who lost her firefighter son; attending mass at a makeshift altar next to the iron beams shaped in a cross that were pulled from the wreckage. “There was such a sense of gratitude and respect at Ground Zero. Firefighters, police, EMS workers, iron workers, construction workers—we were grateful for what they were doing; the things they faced each day cannot even be described. They were equally grateful for what we were able to provide— a meal, a smile, a listening ear. “I have a different philosophy about life now. I feel lucky to be alive. Most importantly, I cherish the relationships I have with my family, friends, and colleagues. I think I have a much better sense of what is truly important.”
Mohammed Sharif, Professor of Economics Immediately after the September 11 attacks, Professor Mohammed Sharif, a native of Bangladesh who has taught at URI since 1984, received over 60 speaking requests. “I got calls almost daily for the first month or so,” said Sharif, who appeared on television, spoke on the radio, and was extensively interviewed by newspaper reporters. “I had problems at just two places, Cumberland and Lincoln, where people tried to attack me. A teacher at Portsmouth Abbey referred to Muslims as having ‘a history of barbarians.’ Otherwise, the response was overwhelmingly positive. People wanted to know about Islam.” Sharif began working to increase American understanding of Islamic people about seven years ago. The situation in the Middle East and his experience with stereotyping of Muslims encouraged him to do something. Ironically, Rhode Island’s Muslim community “discouraged it more than anyone,” he said. “They said any Muslim in a leading position is investigated. They said, ‘not only will you be in trouble, you will bring trouble to us.’’’ Sharif felt that if he did nothing wrong, he would have no trouble. It surprised him when he received a visit at home from an FBI agent and another at his office from an Army Intelligence Officer. “When the FBI agent came to my house, I invited him in and said, ‘Just in time for tea.’ It disarmed him a little.” With the support of URI President Robert L. Carothers and the South County Interfaith Council, Sharif organized a month-long Muslim Cultural Heritage program on campus with speakers, videos, and a food festival. He founded the Southern Rhode Island Islamic Society and put together traveling exhibitions on Muslim life. And later he organized the Muslim Heritage Council, which has gained a presence in Providence’s planned Heritage Harbor Museum.
Joseph J. Seymour, M.C.P. ’76 Directing the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is a daunting task. The executive director manages 30 facilities in two states including transportation systems that serve more than 400 million travelers a year, from Kennedy International Airport to the George Washington Bridge to the PATH interstate rail system. Replacing a close friend in that job would be difficult for anyone. Joseph Seymour, who was appointed as executive director on December 13, 2001, replaced Neil Levin, who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center. “Neil Levin was my friend,” Seymour said, “and I will work hard every day to honor his memory by ensuring that the Port Authority plays an active role in revitalizing the entire region.” Levin was at Windows on the World on the 107th floor of the North Tower when American Airlines Flight 11 struck the tower. No one who was at Windows on the World at that time survived. The Port Authority lost 37 police officers that day and 38 civilians from among the nearly 2,000 who had offices in the World Trade Center. In April the Port Authority graduated 83 new police officers, the first to enter the force since September 11, 2001. Seymour, who earned a Master’s in Community Planning at URI, has over 30 years experience in New York state and local government. Today he guides the Port Authority’s $9.5 billion capital investment program in bridges, tunnels, airports and other regional facilities as part of the effort to redevelop Lower Manhattan.
Jennifer Griffin Sherwood ’89 The director of development and marketing for Young Audiences/New York, Jennifer Sherwood helps bring the arts into the city’s public schools through residency programs and performances. “We had had a board meeting on September 10 to talk about celebrating our 50th year of arts education programming,” Sherwood remembered. “When the attacks happened, we realized that we were facing an entirely new situation. One of the first things we did was to bring in a psychologist to advise us on helping the students. “We were then asked by the New York Times Company Foundation to offer arts programming to the schools where children had witnessed these events or had lost family members in the attacks and rescue efforts. We wanted to start a renewal process by pulling kids, families, and communities together.” Young Audiences/New York put artists into these schools for 20-week residencies in music, dance, theater, and visual arts. “The artists worked with classroom teachers to encourage the kids to express themselves.” Elementary School Principal Gin Gee Moy wrenchingly described the impact of September 11 on her children, many of whom are from immigrant Chinese families that lost their restaurant and sewing factory jobs. “For weeks we lived in a school building surrounded by acrid and rancid air. Many of us developed worsened asthma, skin rashes, coughs, headaches and sore throats....A sadness crept into the building—a very quiet sadness.” Moy praised Young Audiences for giving the children, confined to the building and denied enrichment trips, a venue for expression. “The World of Art always serves as a classic outlet of emotion, especially for children. It has also helped the teachers see inside their charges. The experience has simply been one of joy and relief for the kids.” Anticipating the first anniversary of September 11, Sherwood said Young Audiences/New York hopes to help the city’s children “create something beautiful that will give them continuity and stability and, most of all, hope for the future.” |
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