September Eleven

For my nine eleven remembrance on the ten year anniversary, click here.

Today, for just a few minutes after lunch, I’ve been listening to a few StoryCorps stories on 9/11.  The StoryCorps team is trying to collect at least one story for each life lost, and they have been collecting them here.

Here is one by a woman whose husband of 31 years was killed.  They had a minor tiff before he left for work.

And here is one about a bunch of guys who carried their paraplegic coworker down 69 flights of stairs.

One man talks about his wife, who was lost in the towers.  He works – and worked at the time – at the cemetery where they buried her, and discusses how sometimes he finds himself at her grave without realizing it.

Here is an interview with a steel-cutter who cut away the rubble to try to locate victims.  He did not find anyone alive.

Here is a StoryCorps story told by Bill Cosgrove, who carried the body of priest Mychal Judge out of the rubble on 9/11 after Fr. Judge was struck by debris when the first tower fell, and killed instantly.  The iconic picture of Cosgrove and others with the priest is here.  According to Wikipedia: “Judge was also well known for ministering to the homeless, the hungry, recovering alcoholics, people with AIDS, the sick, injured, and grieving, immigrants, gays and lesbians and those alienated by the Church and society. For example, Judge once gave the winter coat off his back to a homeless woman in the street, later saying, ‘She needed it more than me.’ When he anointed a man who was dying of AIDS, the man asked him, ‘Do you think God hates me?’ Judge just picked him up, kissed him, and silently rocked him in his arms.”