By Jonann Brady
Sitting on the front steps of her parents' Baldwin home, the home where she grew up and is now living again after her life was upended by Sept. 11, McCourt said she wanted answers.
You hear about these warnings and you wonder if it could have been prevented in any way, she said, referring to recent revelations that the Bush administration had been warned about potential terrorist attacks.
On Sept. 11, two days before her 27th birthday, McCourt lost her boyfriend Mario Nardone, who she calls the love of my life. Nardone worked on the 84th floor of Tower Two for a financial firm called EuroBrokers. Five of the 20 men who worked in Nardone's area were lost. A co-worker of Nardone's who escaped later told McCourt that Nardone and two other men stopped at the bathroom, not realizing the urgency of the situation, and the three were never seen again.
Beyond the anger, there is frustration. I want something, said McCourt, fingering a silver locket with Nardone's picture she wears around her neck. They can't give him back to me. They should at least give me answers.
With no answers forthcoming, McCourt is taking small steps to honor Nardone and the others who died. On June 2, she will take part in a 100-mile bike ride in Lake Tahoe to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Nardone had completed the 2000 ride, and the couple planned to ride together this year. Nardone's cousin John will take his place.
McCourt will ride in honor of her lost love, but also for John Fiorito, Jr., a five-year-old who suffers from leukemia. The boy's father, John Fiorito, Sr., was a good friend of Nardone's who also perished in the World Trade Center attack. McCourt has raised $11,000, far surpassing her original goal of $3,800.
The ride, she says, is her way of reaching out. I'm afraid people will start to forget, she said. Everyday I'm remembering it.
A high school English teacher in Astoria, Queens, McCourt was in her classroom the morning of Sept. 11. From her windows, she could see the New York City skyline. A student pointed to the Twin Towers with black smoke billowing from them and said, Ms. McCourt, are those buildings on fire?
McCourt said she rushed out of her classroom and bumped into a colleague, who said simply, Two planes.
She continued running the 10 blocks to her apartment, where she waited up for Nardone all night. Her father, also a teacher at the Astoria school, came over to wait with her. Nardone never arrived.
McCourt said it took her a good month to admit Nardone was gone. He was so resourceful. If there was a problem, he fixed it, she said.
The two met only nine months before September through mutual friends, but McCourt said she instantly knew he was the one. Nardone, who was born in Brooklyn and moved to Staten Island in his teens and then to Manhattan, was down-to-earth and outdoorsy, she said. He didn't live like a high-rolling Wall Street bond trader. In fact, he didn't even like to tell people what he did for a living.
He wore a fake Rolex he bought on Canal Street for $10. We always laughed about that, she said.
The couple had plans. Besides the bike ride, they had planned a trip to New Orleans. The day before Sept. 11, Nardone told a co-worker he was looking for an engagement ring for her.
On Sept. 12, McCourt came back to Baldwin to stay with her parents and took a hiatus from work through January. Eventually, she moved from her Astoria apartment and is staying in Baldwin for the time being.
I couldn't be there, she said of her old apartment. I waited there 24 hours for him and he didn't come.
A 1992 graduate of Baldwin High School, McCourt said she has a tight-knit group of friends from high school who supported her, coming by to visit every evening. She has also been through counseling specifically for those who lost loved ones on Sept. 11, but for her, it's been a little like slapping a band-aid over a machete wound.
Help is not the right word, she said of counseling. You have to do it so you can function and go to work.
While she struggles with her own sadness, confusion and anger, McCourt said her biggest fear is of other people forgetting. And she says she sees it happening already
