Many dignitaries and elected officials are in attendance at the Port Authority of NY and NJ Remembrance service on September 11th, 2009. Lining the front pews of St. Peter’s Church at the corner of Barclay and Church Streets in lower Manhattan are, among others, Governor David A. Paterson, Governor Jon. S. Corzine, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. They have gathered today with members of the New York and New Jersey Port Authority community in remembrance of the eighty-four members who were lost on September 11th, 2001.
“It provides us with a certain sense of community. We’re a family,” says 75-year-old retired Port Authority employee Vic Guarnera of New Jersey. Guarnera was in Tower Two when the first plane hit. Ever since, he has experienced digestive problems, nightmares, and “psychological trauma.” Although he has concerns about the fact that “they’ve cut off the medical funding,” he feels lucky every day that he was not one of the eighty-four members of his company who perished. “When the alarm goes off you say ‘thank God,’” he says, fighting back tears.
Following the attack of September 11th, 2001 Vic has struggled to understand the event that took away so many of his friends and colleagues. He began reading the Koran to try and get inside the minds of the terrorists. “There’s a lot of stuff about having the authority to enforce someone else’s becoming a Muslim. And if they don’t wish to convert, they are your enemy.” Although, he believes there are dangerous extremists from every religion. “It’s just like Christians. They can pray next to you in a church and then the next day blow up a building. I know some very good, peaceful Islamics.”
Despite the perfunctory speeches of the politicians, when the bagpipes of the Port Authority Police Pipes and Drums begin, the camaraderie between the Port Authority people is evident. Guarnera greets his former colleagues affectionately, many of whom he remembers from the morning of 9/11. One man gives him a friendly pat on the back. “Sam had a stroke on the way down,” he explains. There is much hand-holding and embracing and not a dry eye in the house during the reading of the 84 names of the deceased.
Although Corzine assures his audience that “we are better prepared today than we were on September 10th, 2001,” Guarnera is not wholly convinced. “There are going to be more events,” he says. “They have the choice of time and location. We don’t know what that is.” And although he believes that invading Iraq “started to let them know that we mean business – that we’ll go after them the way they came after us,” he worries that “our politicians do not have military service experience. They don’t know what it means to be charged with the responsibility of protecting us.” Guarnera thinks that we should be looking to WWII for inspiration on how to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I’m old enough to remember that,” he says. “In WWII we were united in a common cause and if this isn’t a common cause, I don’t know what is.” He is concerned that there is confusion as to what our “common cause” in Iraq is, among politicians and the general public alike. “You don’t go there to create Democracy. You go there to knock out a threat,” he says.
Since the events of September 11th, 2001, Guarnera has written about his experience, spoken to children about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and spent a lot of time with his former colleagues, many of whom have become close friends. From the intimate atmosphere of the memorial ceremony, to the warm interactions of the members of the Port Authority community, it is evident that the sentiment felt by the group is embodied in Reverend Kevin V. Madigan’s sermon: “In the end, love is stronger that death.”
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