By JOSEPH KELLARD
Her fears were calmed when she entered South Nassau Communities Hospital's new north wing in Oceanside on Sept. 7. The hospital's atrium was filled with other 9/11 families, hospital staff, local officials, firefighters and reporters, all there for the unveiling of an exhibit of paintings, quilts and keepsakes entitled "Response to a Community in Need: South Nassau Communities Hospital's World Trade Center Family Center Commemorative Exhibit."
"To see a crowd like this," Pollicino said, her eyes reddened from tears, "it's the greatest thing, and hits right to my heart."
Pollicino contributed a square panel to one of three quilts displayed on a wall, which were made up of images and remembrances of loved ones killed on 9/11. Pollicino offered a snapshot of her smiling husband along with a photo of the 1968 Chevelle he drove on their first date.
She took comfort in knowing that her panel was part of this permanent exhibit at South Nassau, and was relieved to know that others share her thoughts on 9/11 and its aftermath. One speaker in particular, Ray Maguire of the Freeport Fire Department, representing emergency first responders, put things in perspective and was "right on the money," she said.
With the sun flooding through the atrium's glass ceiling, Maguire said that even a beautiful, cloudless day ‹ such as Sept. 11, 2001 ‹ reminds us of one of the darkest days in the nation's history, when the terrorists "murdered our families and friends," he said, noting that several of his friends were killed that day.
"After 9/11, there's not a family, friend or loved one who can get away from anything about 9/11, because every day it's in the back of our minds," Maguire added.
While she worries about others¹ complacency, Pollicino is equally concerned that she "goes overboard" in her focus on the attacks five years later. "But it was yesterday," she said.
Another speaker who touched Pollicino was Margie Miller, whose husband, Joel, died while working on the 97th floor of One World Trade Center as head of disaster recovery for Marsh & McLennan. Miller recalled how, after 9/11, reminders of her husband were ever-present when she drove through her hometown of Baldwin ‹ from the train station where she picked him up each evening, to the sea of American flags on display, to couples holding hands. "Every building and park became an emotional trigger," Miller said.
Then she recalled how she passed something that triggered not sentiment, but curiosity: South Nassau's WTC Family Center in Rockville Centre. Miller, who now acts as a liaison between the center's 9/11 families and South Nassau's staff, recalled her first long walk into that facility. "It's almost five years since that first visit, and the tears are still there," she said as tears welled up in her eyes.
Created on Sept. 18, 2001, the WTC Family Center has provided counseling to more than 2,000 families affected by the attacks, including 750 children and 3,000 first responders, in the hospital's Home Ground program. Participants have come from as far away as Canada. "We are here for our community ... for a shoulder to cry on," said Joseph Quagliata, South Nassau's president and CEO. He praised the center and thanked the hospital's various supporters, from its board of directors and staff to local elected officials, including Assemblymen Bob Barra and Joseph Saladino, who also gave brief speeches.
"There's no way that you all can possibly realize the impact that the center has on our families," Miller said. "... It has become a standard for everything right that a [community] can do for its citizens in times of catastrophe."
Before he explained the exhibit's various features, Dr. Thomas Demaria, head of behavioral health services at the family center, spoke of the impact of 9/11 on everyone. "We all were victims of 9/11; certainly it was a defining point in our lives," he said.
The exhibit's four paintings, entitled "Seasons of Grief," were created at the WTC's Bereavement & Trauma Program by about 20 children ages 5 to 14, less than a month after 9/11. The paintings of trees represented the four seasons and expressed their various emotions, from grief to anger to love, after the deaths of their fathers or mothers.
In glass cases on the atrium's walls were an American flag flown at ground zero and an urn filled with ashes from the site, as well as a weathered jacket worn by a construction worker there. "The gentleman who wore that jacket wanted us to have it in acknowledgment of the work we had done for the families and recovery workers," Demaria explained.
The quilts were made mostly by grieving widows like Pollicino. "They memorialize the life of the person who was murdered in the towers ‹ not their deaths, but their lives," Demaria said.
One quilt, dedicated to Stephen Siller, the firefighter who ran through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel on Sept. 11 to save people in the twin towers and died there, read, "From day one, Stephen was an optimist, always smiling, never having the sense to give up." Siller's panel offered a chronology of the major events in his life, from "Married Sally" in 1990, to "Katie, first child is born," the next year, to the last entry, dated August 2001, which reads: "Stephen and Sally take the kids to the Catskills."
Mary Seaman, a South Nassau assistant supervisor, who sang the national anthem and "God Bless America" to open and close the ceremony, respectively, was among those who gathered around the exhibit after the memorial. She stood before a quilt panel dedicated to firefighter Joseph Hunter, remembering him from the days when he tended bar at Montego Bay restaurant in Island Park. "I remember his smile and that he was always very pleasant," Seaman said as she gazed at a photo of Hunter mounted on a large shamrock.
When observers asked Pollicino about her late husband, she made obvious the comfort she took from having his memory preserved in the exhibit. "To have all these people maybe picking up on the essence of Steve," she said, "that to me is the plus for all of this."
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 287.
