By KEITH GRANT
Pray to remove the anger from our hearts, congregants were asked. It's hard not to retaliate, but Jesus said we must forgive. We will find peace for us, and peace for all.
Mixed with fear, shock, sorrow and anger, not every resident was ready for peace on the day of the attack. Of the hundreds that flocked to the pier at Magnolia Boulevard to see the smoke pouring from lower Manhattan, some were filled with outright rage.
Why can't you nuke a country? one resident asked. I don't see this as an act of terror. It's an act of war. You either address it and fight, or you don't.
Underneath the quietest skies the city had experienced in probably over 50 years, visitors to the pier throughout the day tried to come to grips with the reality that had befallen them.
It's just so unreal, a woman said. It's something you'd see in a movie. How can we be so vulnerable to this?
It's as if they attacked something that was our pride and joy, another said.
For many residents, the day was far from a time to be reflective. They were merely trying to escape. After watching the South Tower fall from his nearby office window, Mickey Wilson walked miles through inches of soot and debris, trying to reach his wife in Long Beach on his cell phone.
Others left their buildings while the Towers still stood, only to see jumpers falling to their deaths from more than 80 stories up. For the survivors, most streets and the FDR Drive turned into paths for refugee columns coming out of a war zone.
It was like the world was ending, one resident said.
For many families, their world had ended, or at least felt like it. Those who couldn't reach their loved ones on their cell phones began to fear the worst. But for many days and even weeks, the term was simply missing.
Firefighter Ken Marino of Rescue 1 was one of them. An Oceanside native and former Long Beach Fire Department volunteer, Marino had never wanted to be anything but a firefighter. As he family recounted while hoping for news of his fate, the burly former athlete had moved to Long Beach in 1987 to be a part of one of Long Island's busiest departments. Three years later, he earned a spot in the Fire Department of New York.
It's all he ever wanted to do, said his mother, Mary Ann.
The same was said of Michael Kiefer, a Long Beach lifeguard who realized his dream of being a New York City firefighter barely a year before the call to the Trade Center.
His mom said, He wants to be a fireman so bad I'll buy him a truck,' recalled veteran firefighter Bill Quick of Long Beach.
Other neighbors, such as Noell Maerz and Stephen Hoffman, were soon discovered to be among the missing. Friends, relatives, and rescue workers at Ground Zero held out hope for weeks that victims would be found alive amongst the debris. But eventually, our missing friends become Our Lost Neighbors and family's began to plan memorial services.
For Greg Stajk, a Long Beach resident for the past 12 years, fellow firefighters traveled to the small streets of Kings Park, Long Island, to pay respects to their fallen comrade in his hometown. A memorial service for Maerz, who would have been 30, soon followed at St. Ignatius R.C. Church in Long Beach, along with one in his hometown of Lansdale, Penn.
I had planned a special birthday for Noell, his wife Jennifer said to the gathering inside St. Ignatius. A memorial is not what I had in mind. But instead of his birthday, we celebrate his life.
Ken Marino's life was celebrated at St. Anthony's R.C. Church in Oceanside with his former Long Beach colleagues. A somewhat impromptu memorial for Hoffman, an avid outdoorsmen, drew hundreds of people to Lincoln Beach to remember Stephen and pay their respects to his wife, Gabrielle, and five-year-old daughter Madeline.
Michael Carlo is still remembered by his neighbors on Tennessee Avenue, who have created makeshift memorials for the fallen firefighter outside his home. Michael and his brother Rob, also a firefighter, both had made Long Beach their home within the past two years.
With 343 fallen brothers, along with the dozens of cops and Port Authority Police, firefighters have attended a countless number of services over the past months. Few have witnessed more than the department's pipeband.
We didn't get to them all. We tried to have at least one at all of them, said Bill Crowley, a retired veteran New York City firefighter and longtime member of the pipeband.
The cops helped us out. And other bands helped us out. Everybody offered. One pipe band even came down from Boston to play one of the funerals.
The tragedy cost the band one of its members, Durrell Bronko Pearsall, the first member of the band to fall in the line of duty, and one member lost a brother.
It's sad for the kids, Crowley said of all of the services he has attended. The ones who are older, old enough to remember...that's tough watching them come out of the church.
RECOVERY
Progress below, and hope for renewal
By KEITH GRANT
The smell was a constant reminder.
While millions of New Yorkers faced daily reminders of the attack, workers in lower Manhattan faced something even more grueling. From the moment they exited subways to the time they returned to them to go home, the smell of fire permeated their lives. More than just daily, it was a constant reminder of the destruction blocks away.
It was difficult to get a sense of separation because that's the same smell every day, said Mickey Wilson, whose office is blocks from the World Trade Center. No one was feeling a sense of progress or moving forward as long as the smell was with you.
A Long Beach resident, Wilson watched the tragedy happen from his office window. He and his colleagues watched the second plane strike the South Tower, and later watched it collapse.
From the time he could return to his office the following week, work went on almost daily on the ventilation system to cleanse the air in the building. With the fires from Ground Zero burning around the clock for three months, the work was usually futile.
A lot of people didn't want to return as long as the smell was there. It was a constant reminder. But once they put the fires out, you sensed an immediate change in the reaction to downtown. People are starting to talk about renewal and moving forward, talking about rebuilding. We've gotten beyond that day, now.
Working in lower Manhattan will never be the same, Wilson says, but after nearly four months there is finally a focus on the area's future. The end of the fires, the optimism that oozed from Mayor Giuliani, and sense that something was being done in Afghanistan have helped business leaders talk about how to rebuild the area. While the debate now rages over exactly what to rebuild
