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Toll of
a Tragedy: Broken Hearts and Empty Places in Hoboken
New York, Oct. 8 (Bloomberg)
-- When they were first married Christopher and Kelly Colasanti moved to Hoboken, New
Jersey, a square-mile city that hugs the Hudson River, to be
close to the
World Trade Center.
Now Kelly asks her daughter,
Cara, 4, to turn off the television when an image of the trade center towers
appears.
Christopher didn't return home from his job at Cantor
Fitzgerald LP on the 105th floor of Tower One after the terrorist
attacks on Sept. 11.
``I would see them (the
towers) everywhere, but I never thought much of it,'' said Kelly, her 21-month-old
daughter, Lauren, watching ``Barney'' on television in the den
of the family's brownstone. ``Funny thing is, since this
happened, I go by the river and I can't even remember where they
were.''
The impact of the disaster
has radiated from ground zero to the cities, towns and suburbs ringing New York. In New
Jersey, tragedy made a devastating stop in Hoboken, which has
been transformed from a shipping and manufacturing center
to a haven for young financial professionals.
Hoboken ``is like a mining
town and the mine collapses,'' said Judith Seaver-Brady, a sales associate for River
Street Realty. ``Every day you hear about someone else. It's
been a funeral
for weeks.''
Hoboken lost at least 39
residents, compared with nine people from the city who were killed while serving in
Vietnam, said Roy Huelbig, a commander of the Disabled American Veterans
local
chapter.
Tragedy also traveled from
New York City east on the Long Island Rail Road to Nassau and Suffolk counties and
north via the Metro North Railroad to Westchester County and upstate
New York.
Daily Funerals
Hoboken, once a city of
decaying docks and shipyards, started to emerge as an artists' enclave in the 1970s and then
as a bedroom community to the financial district in the
1990s. The victims in Hoboken were brokers and traders in their
20s to 40s. Several who were starting their careers held second
jobs in town, as bartenders or waiters, to make ends meet.
Many people in the financial
services industry live in Hoboken at the beginning of their careers, and then
follow New
Jersey's commuter train lines to suburbs like
Maplewood, Millburn and
Basking Ridge.
Hoboken felt its first
aftershock immediately after two hijacked jets crashed into the trade center. Ferries
carried people fleeing the attack, covered with dust and soot,
to a dock
on River Street. One bar, Texas-Arizona, was converted
into a triage center. Some people were bloody or bandaged;
others were wearing sweatpants and shirts given to them to replace
their
ruined work clothes.
People Fleeing
``Everyone exited the city
any way they could and people just ended up here,'' said Eugene Flinn, who owns Amanda's
restaurant.
With its one-family
brownstone homes and single main street, Hoboken, population 38,000, has the feel of small-town
America.
Kelly Colasanti, 32, met her
husband in high school in Maplewood -- they went to the prom together -- and he
wooed her
again when he returned to New Jersey after graduating
from Dartmouth College. Christopher Colasanti, 33, was a
bond broker at Cantor Fitzgerald in 1993 when a truck bomb exploded
at the trade
center, killing six people. The attack rattled Kelly
and she became anxious when she called him at work and he
didn't
immediately pick up his phone.
Kelly let the phone ring six
times on Sept. 11 and didn't get an answer. She went to her backyard and waited.
Waiting for Word
``I had a little bit of hope,
but it looked so bad,'' said Kelly, who wears a necklace of Buddhist prayer beads.
``I just waited. Late that night his best friend was here, and
he told me there are no more towers. After that I just had to
decide that whatever I was saying to Cara, it was that Chris was
dead, because
I knew he'd be home with us if he wasn't.''
A few blocks away, Ed
Kearns, 40, was hoping to hear from his wife. Donna Bernaerts-Kearns, a computer
consultant, worked on the 94th floor of tower one, at Accenture Ltd. Donna
usually left
for work before Ed. On the morning of Sept. 11 he had
gotten to his job as an administrator at Jersey City Municipal
Court and opened an e-mail full of jokes she sent him. It was
marked 8:43
a.m. The first plane struck at 8:48 a.m.
``There were no more
e-mails,'' he said.
Ed and Donna met at a club in
Jersey City, and they planned to celebrate their 14th anniversary on Sept. 19. They
moved to Hoboken in 1987, where they raised their son Joseph,
11.
At Ted and Jo's, a bar in
Hoboken's north end, the bartender and some customers waited to hear from George P.
McLaughlin Jr., 36, a regular. He was a trader for Carr Futures Inc.
at the trade
center, and ``everyone's best friend,'' at the bar,
said Tom Harris, 25, a bartender and currency trader.
Father Figure
Across from the train
station, at a popular after-work bar, Hobson's Choice, others were longing for some word
from Robert W. Hobson, the owner, whom everyone knew as Wayne.
Hobson, 37, who lived in Hoboken for 12 years, met his wife, Nancy, at
the bar. By
day, he was an electricity broker for TradeSpark, a
subsidiary of Cantor Fitzgerald. At night he'd always find his place
at the end of the wooden bar, said Belinda McCullagh, 33, the
manager
at Hobson's.
Every Sunday Hobson, a
Washington Redskins fan, was the host of a football party at the bar. He was a father figure
to the neighborhood's young strivers, and helped two of his
bartenders,Thomas Patrick Knox, 31, and Doug F. DiStefano, 24,
get jobs at TradeSpark.
None of them came home on
Sept. 11.
Accounting for the dead in
Hoboken began while thousands gathered at the city's waterfront to gaze at the
smoldering ruins of the trade center.
Two weeks later, the local
paper, the Hoboken Reporter, published a list of 28 residents who were missing.
According to
Bloomberg News records, the list has grown to 39.
Empty Chair
``The first couple of days I
was checking in with newsstand owners and they were telling me that many of their usuals
were not coming in,'' Hoboken Mayor David Roberts said. ``That
could be two things -- people could just have gone home to be with
their
families, or it could be the worst.''
McCullagh opened Hobson's two
weeks after the attack for the
afternoon football party. She left an empty seat for
Hobson at the end of the bar. ``He was wonderful, obnoxious,
funny,
nice,'' McCullagh said. ``People still can't believe that he
won't come in
here at 5:10 p.m. and stand at the end of the bar.''
Ed Kearns sorted through
boxes of photographs last week looking for the best image of his wife to put on a
memorial program. He found photographs of their trip to
Pasadena, California, to watch the New York Giants play in
football's Super Bowl game in 1987, and another trip to San Francisco.
He talked
about her devotion to singer Barry Manilow and the
television show
``Star Trek.''
They mostly stayed in, Ed
said, although each Friday night Ed's mother would watch Joseph, and Ed and Donna would
slip out to Hoboken's City Bistro for filet mignon.
Tragedy's Face
Ed went out to dinner alone
two weeks after the attack. ``I just had to get out of the house by myself,'' he said.
``I didn't go to that place. But going out to dinner by yourself
stinks.''
Kelly Colasanti has had
dinner prepared for her each night by
a group of volunteers from Hoboken, and meals are
planned for at least another month. At 5:30 p.m. on a recent night
the doorbell rang with her meal, and her eyes, still red from
tears, brightened.
``Everyone feels like it
happened to us, like we're part of it,'' she said. ``There were just a huge number of
people affected and a lot of people know us, so there is a face on the
tragedy for
them.''
The streets of Hoboken are
lined with American flags. Flyers depicting the victims -- photographs of happy young
men and women-- cover bus stop kiosks.
``We had it pretty idyllic in
this town for the last 25 years,'' said Mark Stavros Bogdanos, owner of River
Street Realty.
``We've had a number of booms, and people living a
sweet life in general. All that changed. We're never going to have
the same kind of life we had before.''
Printed with the permission of
Bloomberg News Service.
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Hoboken
Residents
Lost Sept. 11
This list was complied
from the NY Times and AP newswire service. It is not believed to
be a complete list.
Links are to the New
York Times
Peter Apollo 26,
Nick Brandemarti 21,
Christopher
Colasanti 33, NY
Times
Christopher Cramer 34,
Gavin Cushny
47,
Douglas
DiStefano 24,
Michael
DeRienzo 37,
Margaret Echtermann 33,
Jeffrey
B. Gardner, 36,
Michael
Edward Gould 29,
Scott
Hazelcorn, 29
Joseph
Ianelli
Matthew
Horning 26,
Thomas
Knox
Donna Bernaerts-Kearns 44
Greg Malone 42,
Marc
A. Murolo
Katie McGarry-Noack 30,
George
McLaughlin Jr. 36,
Michael Mullin 27,
John Murray
32
Martin
S. Niederer 23,
Brian
Novotny, 33
Keith K.
O'Connor 28,
Lesley Thomas
O'Keefe 40,
Dominique Pandolfo 27,
Jon
A. Perconti Jr. 32,
Scott Rohner 22,
Joshua
Rosenblum 28
Nick
Rowe 29,
Ronald
Ruben 36,
Richard L. Salinardi
32,
Alex
Steinman, 32
Melissa
Vincent, 28
James
Patrick White, 34
Deborah
Lynn Williams, 35
Michael
Wittenstein, 34.
Friends of Hoboken
James
Straine 36
Robert Hobson 36
Susan
Pollio 45
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