A year later, Mainers reflect on life after terror

loading...

Editor’s Note: A year ago in “Diary of a Tragedy,” the Bangor Daily News printed the personal stories of several people directly affected by the attacks of Sept. 11. Recently, those people were asked to reflect on the intervening 12 months and relate stories about their lives.

Jerome and Ruth Nadelhaft

Not long after the Sept. 11 attacks, Ruth Nadelhaft received an e-mail from a former University of Maine student. The e-mail, which it seems people everywhere received, was to inform her about a candle-lighting ceremony that was going to be held at 7 p.m. It encouraged people to go outside and light a candle in front of their homes.

While having dinner with friends that evening, Ruth mentioned the e-mail. Rather embarrassed and doubting anyone else would actually be outside lighting candles, the Nadelhafts and their company took four candles outdoors. To their surprise, the sidewalk and doorways of Kenduskeag Avenue glowed with candlelight.

“I can still not talk about it without crying,” Ruth said, her voice quavering. Later, while in New York, the Nadelhafts learned that people there also had lit candles at 7 p.m. on the same night.

“I felt such a sense of connectedness,” Ruth said.

The couple, who still divide their time between Bangor and New York, have not made a definite decision regarding what they will do to commemorate the events of Sept. 11. Their son still lives in New York and “We think we want to go down to New York to be there for September 11 – I think we’ll feel the need to be there,” Ruth Nadelhaft said.

“It remains an incredibly sad event, but shouldn’t be the excuse for undermining our own liberties and freedoms, and declaring war,” her husband said. “We have some distance, and now we need to cool off.”

The Nadelhafts are native New Yorkers and retired University of Maine professors who divide their time between Bangor and Manhattan. After three days of watching the scenes at the World Trade Center from Bangor, they felt the need to go to their other home in New York.

Rita Sullivan

Rita Sullivan lives in Manhattan and works for the Women’s National Basketball Association. She will be in China with the WNBA for an international tournament during the entire month of September, which means she will miss commemorative events here in the States.

“I’m not really upset I’ll be missing them,” she said. Sullivan explained she has had her own healing process and is ready to move on.

Immediately after the attacks living in the city was “like living in a war zone,” Sullivan said. But now, it’s more like “a big, huge construction zone.”

“New York has kind of gotten back on its feet … yet, every time I drive in and out of the city, the skyline is a constant reminder.”

But in typical New England fashion, Sullivan said she is ready to move forward.

“I don’t want to wallow in this,” she said.

Rita Sullivan grew up in Bangor where her parents still live. She continues to reside in Manhattan and work for the Women’s National Basketball Association.

Lana Cartwright

Though Lana Cartwright noted the attacks have taken a toll on Manhattan financially, “I can safely say that many things are back to normal in this big city,” she said.

“Last winter and fall the city was eerily at a lull throughout most parts of Manhattan in the evening.” With the decline of business and layoffs in many fields, “less people were shopping or spending money,” she said.

But Cartwright now is positive that “romance is ‘in’ in New York City.” She explained that the young, driven people she moved from Maine to New York to be surrounded by “seem to be placing more importance on spending more time with a significant other and family.”

Cartwright has not been left out of this romantic scene. She now has a boyfriend, whom she described as “a brilliant, successful, well-traveled, highly cultured, doting boyfriend who calls me his ‘Queen.'”

Contrary to when she wrote her column last year, “I find myself turning to the news much less than ever before in my life,” she said. “I certainly have turned away from being as in tune with what is going on politically. It seems less meaningful.” Instead, she turns to music and good films as an escape.

As far as commemorating Sept. 11, Cartwright plans to conduct her day as normally as possible, “observing and keeping things low-key, but certainly not taking part in some city arranged commemoration.”

“I believe the terrible event is still too raw in the minds of many and the idea of a day of commemoration is a bit strange and indescribable to many. It will be a solemn day. Certainly not a happy day to remember, but certainly remembered.”

Lana Cartwright, who was born in Bangor and raised in Dover-Foxcroft, is a television news analyst at CBS News in New York City. She is the daughter of Joseph and Dorle Cartwright of Dover-Foxcroft.

Brent Murray

Brent Murray, a former graphics designer at the Bangor Daily News, still lives and works in New York City as an editorial designer at The New York Times.

“The events of the past year have changed very little about how I live my life,” he said. “They have, if anything, encouraged me to pause more often to appreciate that which I love about this city – as well as this country – and its people.”

He also noted that his desire for achievement, improvement and success, has been further fueled by recent events.

“I have now seen profoundly and far too closely the effects of the mentality of those who preach collectivism instead of individualism, and intellectual stagnation instead of progress.”

On Sept. 11, Murray will be at work in the newsroom, as he was last year at this time. While others reflect on lives that were lost a year ago, Murray said he will be thinking of the future, and “hoping that the titans of architecture will prevail and rebuild on the World Trade Center site.”

He quoted Jonathan Hakala, a worker on the 77th floor of One World Trade Center, who Murray feels said it best.

“If you’re going to put buildings on that site, build one of the seven modern wonders of the world, and please give us a skyline that will once again cause our spirits to soar.”

Brent Murray is the son of former Bangor residents Frank and Sharon Murray and also is a previous Bangor Daily News employee. On Sept. 11, he was in the newsroom of The New York Times, watching the towers fall.

Michael McDonald

For Michael McDonald, who worked as a business reporter at the Bangor Daily News from 1997 to 1998, life slowly returned to normal after the events of Sept. 11. His office at The Bond Buyer, a daily financial newspaper in lower Manhattan, reopened a few weeks after the attacks. His office had to wait for the telephone system switch, which was up one street in the World Trade Center, to be replaced.

“While there are signs of high security – security guards checking ID in my building, a bomb-sniffing dog at a checkpoint put on the street leading to the New York Stock Exchange – much of the fear of another attack has dissipated,” McDonald said.

He explained that “the 16-acre World Trade Center site has become a major tourist attraction, with thousands of people filing around it every day.” Yet, the rest of the financial district has remained relatively unchanged, he noted.

Referring to the fact that a number of companies have relocated out of the district McDonald said, “occasionally, I feel like a holdout, especially when people talk about the possibility of another attack on the city.”

McDonald will be working this Sept. 11 at The Bond Buyer.

“The newspaper will be covering the memorials of bond dealers and brokers, along with doing regular market coverage and running some features on how things have changed since September 11,” he said.

Michael McDonald is a former business writer for the Bangor Daily News. He was on his way to work at the daily financial newspaper The Bond Buyer in Manhattan when the planes hit the World Trade Center.