A 9/11 family reaches out to the grief-stricken in NYC

Bellmorite Billy Esposito never had the chance to see the marriages of his two children or the births of his five grandchildren. Esposito, a vice president and partner of the equity investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald, died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

His daughter Susan was 23 and his son Craig was 25 at the time. Their fathers’ sudden and violent death filled them with equal measures of sadness, horror and anger, said Susan, now 38.

She tried to work through her grief with therapy, she said, but nothing helped. She remained forlorn. Then her therapist suggested that she perform a charitable act in her father’s name.

“I came home and said we’re starting a foundation,” Esposito said. Thus the Billy Esposito Foundation was born.

At first Susan focused on raising money to provide scholarships for families of 9/11 victims. She said her father believed in the importance of education, so a scholarship fund seemed like a natural fit. She was having trouble giving away the money, however. Numerous groups were raising funds to provide scholarships for the children of 9/11 victims.

So she decided to shift focus. Her brother noted that a grief-stricken student who is coping with the loss of a parent would have trouble achieving the solid marks needed to apply for a scholarship. Perhaps the Esposito family foundation should focus on providing grief-counseling services.

From that conversation came A Caring Hand: The Billy Esposito Foundation Bereavement Services. The not-for-profit organization provides bereavement services to any children in the greater New York metropolitan area, including on Long Island. Students meet at Manhattan schools after classes let out. Currently they meet at one in Harlem.

The loss of a loved one “is something that happens to everyone,” said Esposito, a registered dietician.

Since the nearly all-volunteer organization’s founding in 2008, it has aided nearly a thousand schoolchildren, ages 5 to 18, in working through the unspeakable pain of losing a mother, father or other caregiver. Dr. Robin Goodman, a psychologist, leads the organization and trains all volunteers. To date, she has recruited more than 150 volunteers.

A Caring Hand had opened a bereavement center in Midtown Manhattan in 2008, but had to close it after only a year amid the Great Recession. The group has been in the schools ever since.

Esposito, who is a registered dietician, said she hopes to raise enough funds to reopen the bereavement center one day soon. “I want to see [the program] become bigger and better,” she said.

Esposito, a graduate of Kennedy High School in Bellmore, said that starting the foundation helped to heal her psychic wounds a great deal, but her pain remains. “We still deal with our own daily struggles,” she said of her family. “I wish I could have done this because I wanted to help somebody, not because I had to channel my anger and grief.”

For more, go to www.acaringhand.org.