Maine mortician aids NYC efforts

ISLAND FALLS – Tony Bowers was used to dealing with grief. As the owner of Bowers Funeral Homes, his job is to comfort the bereaved. In a way, it’s been the family business since 1900.

But nothing he’d ever experienced prepared Bowers for the immense and intense emotions he saw and experienced in New York since the terrorist attacks.

“To see it turns your stomach upside down,” said Bowers of his visit to the site where the World Trade Towers collapsed, referred to as Ground Zero. “Watching it on TV was horrible, but being there is a different feeling all together.

“From a long distance, it almost looks like artwork,” he said. But walking down the streets toward it, he was reminded of pictures he’d seen of cities bombed out in World War II.

The mortician, who returned home late Saturday after 11 days in New York, first heard of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as he was leaving an Aroostook County cemetery. Bowers said that he was “heartsick,” but went home and began making preparations to leave his wife and four children so he could help the loved ones of strangers begin the grieving process.

The phone call he’d expected came about noon. Bowers and his colleague, Jim Mockler of Caribou, left late that night. The two are members of the New England Region’s Disaster Mortuary Team, or DMORT. Both men worked on the crash of an Egyptian passenger plane off Rhode Island two years ago.

DMORT’s task is to provide victim identification and mortuary services under the auspices of the National Disaster Medical System. Its responsibilities include:

. Setting up and running temporary morgue facilities;

. Identification of victims using latent fingerprint, forensic dental, pathology and forensic anthropology methods;

. Processing, preparation and disposition of remains.

The two arrived at the Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, N.Y., about 60 miles north of the city, at 9:45 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 12. Once they’d been organized, DMORT members from around the country set up an office at the Armory in New York City. There, for the next four days, Bowers interviewed relatives of the more than 6,000 people now believed to have died at the World Trade Center.

Bowers collected information from the relatives of the missing that would help in proper identification of remains, he explained from his Island Falls office Monday morning. His team helped complete paperwork and asked for distinguishing features like birthmarks and tattoos. They collected medical histories and dental records. They also gathered hairbrushes, combs and toothbrushes that could be use for DNA matching.

“People wanted something of their loved one to take back home with them,” he said. “It was very intense emotionally, but we were able to comfort people. Over and over again, they kept asking, ‘Why?’ We would just hug total strangers.”

Bowers spent his last few days in New York City at the morgue on Pier 94. There he helped prepare the few bodies that had been recovered for the identification process or to be transported to funeral homes. Particularly moving he said was the way firefighters reacted when the body of a colleague was at the morgue.

“All the firefighters stood at attention and saluted whenever the body of a firefighter was brought in,” said Bowers. “When they were put in the hearse to go to the funeral home, they would do the same thing again.”

He said that even though he’s home now, he still calls Mockler and other friends still in New York every day to see how they are doing emotionally. Bowers said that he wore his DMORT uniform on the drive home, and everywhere he stopped along the way, people came up to him, shook his hand and thanked him for his efforts.

Bowers said he could not have gone without the support of fellow mortician Hervey Clay of Lincoln who helped out at Bowers Funeral Homes. Bowers also credited his wife and children. He knew the 11 days he was gone had been difficult for them, but it wasn’t until he got back that he understood just what a toll his absence had taken.

“Every time they see me, they hug me excruciatingly tight, tell me they’re glad I’m home, and tell me they love me,” said Bowers.