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hobokeni.com - REMEMBERING SEPTEMBER 11
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Toll
of a Tragedy: Broken Hearts and Empty Places in Hoboken
New York, Oct. 8 (Bloomberg)
-- When they were first married Christopher and Kelly Colasanti moved to
Hoboken, New Jersey, a square-mile city that hugs the Hudson River, to be close
to the World Trade Center. Now Kelly asks her daughter, Cara, 4, to turn off
the television when an image of the trade center towers appears. Christopher
didn't return home from his job at Cantor Fitzgerald LP on the 105th floor of
Tower One after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11. "I would see them (the
towers) everywhere, but I never thought much of it," said Kelly, her
21-month-old daughter, Lauren, watching "Barney" on television in the den of
the family's brownstone. "Funny thing is, since this happened, I go by the
river and I can't even remember where they were." The impact of the disaster
has radiated from ground zero to the cities, towns and suburbs ringing New
York. In New Jersey, tragedy made a devastating stop in Hoboken, which has been
transformed from a shipping and manufacturing center to a haven for young
financial professionals. Hoboken "is like a mining town and the mine
collapses," said Judith Seaver-Brady, a sales associate for River Street
Realty. "Every day you hear about someone else. It's been a funeral for
weeks." Hoboken lost at least 39 residents, compared with nine people from the
city who were killed while serving in Vietnam, said Roy Huelbig, a commander of
the Disabled American Veterans local chapter. Tragedy also traveled from New
York City east on the Long Island Rail Road to Nassau and Suffolk counties and
north via the Metro North Railroad to Westchester County and upstate New York.
Daily Funerals
Hoboken, once a city of decaying docks and shipyards,
started to emerge as an artists' enclave in the 1970s and then as a bedroom
community to the financial district in the 1990s. The victims in Hoboken were
brokers and traders in their 20s to 40s. Several who were starting their
careers held second jobs in town, as bartenders or waiters, to make ends meet.
Many people in the financial services industry live in Hoboken at the beginning
of their careers, and then follow New Jersey's commuter train lines to suburbs
like Maplewood, Millburn and Basking Ridge. Hoboken felt its first
aftershock immediately after two hijacked jets crashed into the trade center.
Ferries carried people fleeing the attack, covered with dust and soot, to a
dock on River Street. One bar, Texas-Arizona, was converted into a triage
center. Some people were bloody or bandaged; others were wearing sweatpants and
shirts given to them to replace their ruined work clothes.
People Fleeing
"Everyone exited the city any way they could and
people just ended up here," said Eugene Flinn, who owns Amanda's restaurant.
With its one-family brownstone homes and single main street, Hoboken,
population 38,000, has the feel of small-town America. Kelly Colasanti, 32, met
her husband in high school in Maplewood -- they went to the prom together --
and he wooed her again when he returned to New Jersey after graduating from
Dartmouth College. Christopher Colasanti, 33, was a bond broker at Cantor
Fitzgerald in 1993 when a truck bomb exploded at the trade center, killing six
people. The attack rattled Kelly and she became anxious when she called him at
work and he didn't immediately pick up his phone. Kelly let the phone ring six
times on Sept. 11 and didn't get an answer. She went to her backyard and
waited.
Waiting for Word
"I had a little bit of hope, but it looked so bad,"
said Kelly, who wears a necklace of Buddhist prayer beads. "I just waited. Late
that night his best friend was here, and he told me there are no more towers.
After that I just had to decide that whatever I was saying to Cara, it was that
Chris was dead, because I knew he'd be home with us if he wasn't." A few blocks
away, Ed Kearns, 40, was hoping to hear from his wife. Donna Bernaerts-Kearns,
a computer consultant, worked on the 94th floor of tower one, at Accenture Ltd.
Donna usually left for work before Ed. On the morning of Sept. 11 he had gotten
to his job as an administrator at Jersey City Municipal Court and opened an
e-mail full of jokes she sent him. It was marked 8:43 a.m. The first plane
struck at 8:48 a.m. "There were no more e-mails," he said. Ed and Donna met at
a club in Jersey City, and they planned to celebrate their 14th anniversary on
Sept. 19. They moved to Hoboken in 1987, where they raised their son Joseph,
11. At Ted and Jo's, a bar in Hoboken's north end, the bartender and some
customers waited to hear from George P. McLaughlin Jr., 36, a regular. He was a
trader for Carr Futures Inc. at the trade center, and "everyone's best friend,"
at the bar, said Tom Harris, 25, a bartender and currency trader.
Father Figure
Across from the train station, at a popular after-work
bar, Hobson's Choice, others were longing for some word from Robert W. Hobson,
the owner, whom everyone knew as Wayne. Hobson, 37, who lived in Hoboken for 12
years, met his wife, Nancy, at the bar. By day, he was an electricity broker
for TradeSpark, a subsidiary of Cantor Fitzgerald. At night he'd always find
his place at the end of the wooden bar, said Belinda McCullagh, 33, the
manager
at Hobson's. Every Sunday Hobson, a Washington Redskins fan, was the host of a
football party at the bar. He was a father figure to the neighborhood's young
strivers, and helped two of his bartenders,Thomas Patrick Knox, 31, and Doug F.
DiStefano, 24, get jobs at TradeSpark. None of them came home on Sept. 11.
Accounting for the dead in Hoboken began while thousands gathered at the city's
waterfront to gaze at the smoldering ruins of the trade center. Two weeks
later, the local paper, the Hoboken Reporter, published a list of 28 residents
who were missing. According to Bloomberg News records, the list has grown to
39.
Empty Chair
"The first couple of days I was checking in with
newsstand owners and they were telling me that many of their usuals were not
coming in," Hoboken Mayor David Roberts said. "That could be two things --
people could just have gone home to be with their families, or it could be the
worst." McCullagh opened Hobson's two weeks after the attack for the afternoon
football party. She left an empty seat for Hobson at the end of the bar. "He
was wonderful, obnoxious, funny, nice," McCullagh said. "People still
can't believe that he won't come in here at 5:10 p.m. and stand at the end of
the bar." Ed Kearns sorted through boxes of photographs last week looking for
the best image of his wife to put on a memorial program. He found photographs
of their trip to Pasadena, California, to watch the New York Giants play in
football's Super Bowl game in 1987, and another trip to San Francisco. He
talked about her devotion to singer Barry Manilow and the television show "Star
Trek." They mostly stayed in, Ed said, although each Friday night Ed's mother
would watch Joseph, and Ed and Donna would slip out to Hoboken's City Bistro
for filet mignon.
Tragedy's Face
Ed went out to dinner alone two weeks after the
attack. "I just had to get out of the house by myself," he said. "I didn't go
to that place. But going out to dinner by yourself stinks." Kelly Colasanti has
had dinner prepared for her each night by a group of volunteers from Hoboken,
and meals are planned for at least another month. At 5:30 p.m. on a recent
night the doorbell rang with her meal, and her eyes, still red from tears,
brightened."Everyone feels like it happened to us, like we're part of it," she
said. "There were just a huge number of people affected and a lot of people
know us, so there is a face on the tragedy for them." The streets of Hoboken
are lined with American flags. Flyers depicting the victims -- photographs of
happy young men and women-- cover bus stop kiosks. "We had it pretty idyllic in
this town for the last 25 years," said Mark Stavros Bogdanos, owner of River
Street Realty. "We've had a number of booms, and people living a sweet life in
general. All that changed. We're never going to have the same kind of life we
had before."
Printed with the permission
of Bloomberg News Service
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