Weeks after the World Trade Center towers crumbled, my life revolved around widows; women who lost their firefighters husbands, who were among the 343 FDNY members who raced into the smoldering buildings but never emerged from the rubble on the worst morning in American history – September 11, 2001.
One of those women was Tillie Geidel, who lost her firefighter husband Gary. On Thanksgiving Day 2001, I went to the Geidel’s home on Staten Island where the table was set with a place for her slain husband. In his place was a blown up picture of Gary Geidel which she pushed up to the edge of the table.
I listened as Tillie talked about her daughter, Matilda, a miracle baby that she and Gary were so grateful for after years of in vitro treatements. Then she broke the news that she wanted another miracle.
“I called the fertility clinic. I wanted to know if there was anything left of his sperm,’’ Geidel told me at the time. Unfortunately, that miracle was not meant to be I would later learn.
I supported Tillie Geidel’s fight and I also support the fight of Kynesha Dhanoolal who successfully fought to have sperm taken from his body and frozen four days after her 26-year-old husband was killed in Iraq. The widow’s mother, Yvonne Watkins, told Fox TV that her daughter hopes to have her husband's sperm artificially inseminated as early as this summer."We're trying to honor my daughter and Darren's wishes," Watkins said. "All of his comrades and anyone who knew them knew he wanted children."
Here is the FOX TV story on the Iraq war widow’s push to have a sample of her husband’s sperm preserved:
http://www.myfoxdc.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=6245525&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.3.1
Here is the story I wrote for the New York Daily News on Thanksgiving 2001:
FAMILIES STRUGGLE ON A holiday filled with empty chairs and grief
MICHELE McPHEE, NICOLE BODE and EMILY GEST DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
1804 words
22 November 2001
New York Daily News
SPORTS FINAL
4
English
© 2001 Daily News, New York. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights reserved.
Seventy-three days after the World Trade Center collapse, thousands of families will sit down to Thanksgiving dinner today with an empty place at the table.
How are they spending the holiday, and how do they feel about observing it so soon after losing a husband or wife, a son, daughter, brother, sister or cherished friend?
On Staten Island, Jennifer Nilsen wants to skip Thanksgiving altogether. She is still overwhelmed by the loss of her husband, Troy, whose help she desperately needs to care for their two children - one of whom is autistic.
Elizabeth Rivas is skipping the family meal in Manhattan and heading to a camp upstate, where she and her four kids will seek the comfort of other families who lost someone in the disaster.
In Larchmont, Westchester County, 18 Reilly family and friends will miss Tim, who always helped peel the potatoes and never remembered to tell his mom he was bringing an extra guest to dinner.
Celebrating will be especially hard today for the families of those lost in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, not only because their pain is so fresh on the first major holiday following the tragedy, but also because their loved ones died so violently, so needlessly.
"Picture whatever your celebrations are and an empty chair," said Bob Dingman, a disaster mental health services officer for the Red Cross who has counseled Sept. 11 families.
"You will notice that chair 27 times during dinner," he said. "And if that person said grace or made toasts, that empty chair is going to hit you like a sledgehammer."
Those fortunate enough to escape the towers also may be grieving today. "Sept. 11 is still very much a big part of their lives," said Dr. David Weng, director of an adult psychiatry clinic at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. "It's also only been two months."
Some of the Thanksgiving stories of the families of Sept. 11: Full of dread
Jennifer Nilsen used to look forward to Thanksgiving, when her biggest worry was getting her husband and two young boys out the door without forgetting the apple crumb pie.
But after losing her husband, Troy, in the Trade Center attacks, the very idea of a feast fills her with dread.
"My husband loved Thanksgiving - it was one of his favorite holidays," said Nilsen, 32, a stay-at-home mom on Staten Island. "Him not being here, I don't even want the holidays to come."
Troy, 33, a network engineer for Cantor Fitzgerald, was the only one who could manage their 5-year-old autistic son, Scott, while she took care of 3-year-old Ryan.
When Nilsen announced she was skipping the festivities this year, her in-laws would have none of it.
"No matter what, we have to move forward. It's what Troy would want us to do," said his mother, Mary Nilsen, 62, who cooks the family dinner each year at her Staten Island home.
As she prepares the candied sweet potatoes, cauliflower with onion sauce, stuffing and a 21-pound turkey, Mary Nilsen will think of Troy. Since he was a teenager, her son was in charge of the spuds.
"He would whip those potatoes creamy and delicious," she said. "Nobody can take his place with that."
Sharing the pain
The kitchen is no place for Elizabeth Rivas today.
Since she married Moises Rivas six years ago, they had always made Thanksgiving dinner together when he got home from his job as a line cook at Windows on the World.
"We both cooked - turkey, rellenos from Ecuador and salads," recalled Elizabeth, 39, of Washington Heights.
Moises, 29, covered a friend's shift Sept. 11 and was lost when the restaurant on the 107th floor of the north tower crumbled.
"I don't want to be here. I want to get away," Elizabeth said. "I don't want to think about all the things that have happened to me."
She and her children, ages 2, 4, 12 and 15, will spend the long holiday weekend at the Fresh Air Fund's 3,000-acre Sharpe Reservation in upstate Fishkill, where they will participate in cookouts, boating, fishing and hiking with other grieving families.
It is a welcome getaway. Moises Jr., 4, still thinks it's his fault that Pappy didn't come home from work. Moises thinks he was a bad boy.
"There are going to be a lot of people there who are missing people, but at least we're all going to be together," Elizabeth said.
Looking for a miracle
Tillie Geidel already had one Thanksgiving miracle. Now she's hoping for another.
Geidel and husband, Gary, had tried to have a baby for years. Drugs and life-threatening operations didn't work. In a final effort, they took out a $10,000 loan and went to an in-vitro fertilization clinic.
After a series of painful disappointments, the treatment finally worked. The day Tillie found out she was pregnant, Gary, her rough- and-tumble firefighter husband, sobbed.
Mathilda was born Thanksgiving 1994.
Today, Tillie will set a place at the table for Gary, a missing member of the FDNY's elite Rescue 1 squad.
Gary, 45, a 20-year department veteran, died weeks before he planned to retire and move his family upstate. Tillie, 35, has refused to hold a memorial service, light a candle, watch TV or even read newspaper stories about the attacks.
"He was not supposed to [work] that day. I still can't believe this really happened," she said from the Staten Island home her husband built.
In recent days, she has begun to accept the sad reality that Gary will not take his place at the holiday table, though she will set a place for him anyway.
Tillie is hoping for another miracle. On Nov. 12, the day after her 12th wedding anniversary, she called
the Brooklyn fertility clinic that helped her conceive Mathilda. "I wanted to find out if there was anything left of him," she said.
The couple's doctor came to the phone in tears. For some reason, they still had some of Gary's frozen sperm, even though the Geidels had not paid to save a sample.
Tillie plans to undergo the procedure again and hopes to have her late husband's baby - maybe even by next Thanksgiving.
"We already had one Thanksgiving miracle, and I think God might have another one for us," she said.
If it's a boy, his name will be Gary Miracle Geidel.
"It would prove that God is still there," Tillie said.
Center of the family
For years, Tim Reilly surprised his mother when he brought home unexpected guests to Thanksgiving dinner. Claire Reilly Walcovy would scramble to set an extra place at the table, and fretted there wasn't enough food.
"He had a way with people. He could do those things and not get the wrath of God from my mother," said Tim's oldest brother, Chuck. "Typically, the people he brought over didn't have a place to go. He always tried to include people in our celebration."
Each year, Tim, 40, a vice president at Marsh &McLennan, was first of the six Reilly kids to call and ask about the Thanksgiving plans, said his sister, Maureen.
"He was the centerpiece of the family," she said.
Tim used to peel the potatoes, and he loved to make toasts. Last Thanksgiving, he raised a glass to Maureen's engagement, a nephew's success on the football field, a cousin who died and his mother, whom he saved from a near-fatal car accident.
Today, some of Tim's surprise guests of years past will be among the 18 people gathered around the table at Walcovy's apartment in Larchmont, including one who credited Tim with preventing his suicide.
They will join a few of the 48 first cousins whom Tim knew well and wanted his siblings to know better. And there will be a place for Tim.
"That empty chair is going to be there," Walcovy said. "Everything is so raw."
Celebrating luck
Louis Lesce is ready for someone else to prepare and clean up after Thanksgiving dinner.
"I'm tired of cooking," said Louis, 64, who normally assembles an Italian Thanksgiving feast of antipasto, mussels, fried calamari, salad, lasagna, sausage and meatballs, turkey, cranberry, stuffing, roasted potatoes, string beans and cream puffs.
"I'm going to pay the bill and walk out," he said of the meal he plans to have at a diner with his wife, Karen, and her mother. "Then I'm going to go to Atlantic City and win a lot of cash."
Louis has a right to feel lucky. Having had a quadruple bypass, he managed to climb down 86 floors of 1 World Trade Center.
"If I had stayed in the building seven minutes more, it would have collapsed on me," said Louis, a career-transition specialist who lives in Howard Beach, Queens. "I was with 20 people. I was the only one who got out."
Louis, whose left eye is a fiery red from a corneal abrasion he suffered Sept. 11, said he doesn't mind missing his kids or 10 grandchildren today, since he sees them every week.
"I want to be with my wife a lot more now," he said. "Even if I'm not working, I'll ride the bus with her. I don't want to be away from her."
New life
Another survivor, Jacqueline Landrau, 34, will give thanks for the healthy birth of her son, Rey, who arrived two days after the attacks.
Landrau, with boyfriend Reinaldo McFarland and their three young children, will join about a dozen other relatives today for a turkey dinner at McFarland's mother's apartment in Flatbush, Brooklyn.
"Before, people took things for granted," said Landrau, a Morgan Stanley office assistant who escape down 45 flights of stairs and is still anxious about life.
"But now, everybody has had time to think about their lives and how they are going to spend it with their family."
