| Stonewalk
press coverage
September
11, 2001: The day my son didn't come home
By David Usborne
The Guardian
9/11/04
"Men are idiots when it comes to grieving." Bob McIlvaine,
59, has a right to make such an assertion. Today marks the third
anniversary of the day two jetliners dropped from a blue Manhattan
sky and rammed the twin towers, sending them tumbling to the ground.
Left in the dust were the mangled and charred bodies of almost 3,000
people.
Among them was his son, Bobby. But if he is speaking of himself,
he is mistaken. It is not that Mr McIlvaine, a retired counsellor
to troubled teenagers and one-time tavern-owner from Philadelphia,
has returned to the groove of his old life. He hasn't done that
at all. Rather, everything has changed for him - he has different
friends, different passions, he has lost his religion. He is still
with his wife, but for a while that was touch and go too.
This modestly built man with silver hair and glasses has found his
own way to cope and for that no one could call him an idiot. True,
he weeps still - he crumbles twice in our conversation - but nowadays
he is mostly in charge of his pain, not the other way around. His
daily experiences are, by his own choice, not what he could have
possibly imagined a few years ago. But that was before 9/11.
On that fateful Tuesday, Mr McIlvaine was at the hospital in suburban
Philadelphia where he worked with the teenagers. The TV was on at
the nurses' station and shortly after 9am someone burst in and told
him that bad things were happening in Manhattan. He left to go home
to his wife, Helen, a special education teacher. They weren't overly
worried. Bobby, who was 25 - and who only the weekend before had
announced plans to become engaged to his girlfriend - did not work
in the twin towers.
Not that they could relax entirely. Recently promoted to assistant
vice-president in the media division of Merrill Lynch, he had an
office in the World Financial Centre, just across the street from
the flaming towers. What his parents did not know was that on that
day he was involved in setting up a trade show on the 106th floor
of the north tower, just four floors below the restaurant Windows
on the World.
The worry had become acute by nightfall when Bobby hadn't telephoned.
And this was a man who talked to his mother every day, without fail.
Their second son, Jeff, three years younger, was determinedly positive.
But the next morning there was nothing to do but struggle up to
New York and look.
On Wednesday, they went from hospital to hospital searching for
Bobby. Nothing. It was the next day that word came that was at once
terrible and relieving. They had found a body; it might be Bobby.
This is the part of the story that Mr McIlvaine still is unable
to tell without faltering. The memory of that moment when the news
of your child's death is first brought to you is stored away most
of the time. But when someone asks you to talk about it, to describe
that excruciating instant, it comes alive again. And still it is
too much. What he does know, however, is that his family was one
of the lucky ones. They had a body they could take home, mourn over
and bury or cremate. That was not the case for the large majority
of the 9/11 families, many of whom held burial ceremonies with empty
caskets.
But something still haunts this man and he has not been able to
let it go. How did Bobby die, exactly? Where was he? He and his
wife never saw the body. It was identified, without any question,
by dental records. (Bobby had recently had a crown fitted.) They
were advised against viewing it at the makeshift morgue that received
all the 9/11 remains at that time. And when they got him home to
Philadelphia, the undertaker was similarly discouraging. "He
said that it was just going to leave a mark on us for the rest of
our lives, if we did," he recalls now. What they were told
was this: Bobby suffered massive trauma, had post-mortem burns over
90 per cent of his body and was missing his right arm.
Mr McIlvaine is still searching for answers. His theory is that
Bobby was struck by flying debris, perhaps a chunk of concrete or
a girder. If everyone was telling them the truth about the condition
of his body, he surely could not have jumped. To imagine that would
almost be too much to bear.
And yet. What if the body was in a far worse state than anyone had
let on? That would change a lot. "I don't think the funeral
director was lying to me," he offers. If he had viewed Bobby's
body, he would know for sure and part of him regrets he did not
ignore all that advice, at least to say a final goodbye.
As the weeks and months passed, father and mother found themselves
drawn apart rather than brought together. Bob's friends all but
vanished. He hardly sees any of his old mates any more except for
an occasional round of golf with them when 9/11 is never mentioned.
Helen, however, was surrounded by her old friends who became a constant
support network. Hence, more than anything else, the "men are
idiots" remark. If it was not aimed at himself, it was definitely
aimed at those that used to be his buddies. "Helen had everyone
around her, talking to her. Men don't do that. My friends never
came around."
But there was more to the tension at home in those first years.
The second year, he says, was even worse than the first. Eventually,
Bob and Helen sought help from a psychologist. "I think that
if we hadn't seen the psychologist, we probably would have gotten
divorced," Mr McIlvaine concedes now.
For one, there was the journal episode. A few days after 9/11, the
family returned to New York to clear out Bobby's apartment. The
almost-fiancée, Jen, was there too and asked to keep one
of Bobby's diaries. Bob saw no harm. Only later did Helen discover
that it was the last one their son had kept. She wanted to see it.
Jen said she needed time to think about it. Then three months later,
she flatly turned Bob down when he asked her for the loan of the
journal again. Helen was livid - with Jen and her husband. From
the look in her eyes that day, "I think she was ready to divorce
me right there," recalls Bob.
An encounter between Bob and their local priest didn't help much
either. They were standing outside church soon after Bobby died
when the priest said, "Don't worry, because peace will triumph
against evil." The remark stuck in Bob's craw. What did he
mean "evil"? "I got really angry. I said to him,
'Who are the evil people?'" From that moment on, he stopped
going to church - he is a Catholic - and has not returned since.
Calling the hijackers "evil" wasn't good enough for him.
"I didn't want to know who was evil. I wanted to know why they
were doing evil things."
And this is where the more fundamental rift between father and mother,
though both equally bereaved, began to show. Bob began to take exception
to the reaction that almost everyone else - and the government especially
- had after 9/11. By his own admission, he drew more and more angry.
He was opposed to the invasion of Afghanistan and the war against
the Taliban. In other words, revenge did not interest him. "I
just didn't see what it would achieve," he says now.
Most troubling for his wife, however, was his quick determination
that all was not as it seemed. How come the photographs of all 19
hijackers were in the newspapers the day after the jets struck?
He theorised that the government had known the attacks were coming
and had said nothing. It is a belief that, he says, was compounded
for him by the findings of the recent congressional investigation
into the attacks. "I honestly believe that they knew it was
coming." But whenever he raised this at home, Helen would shut
him down.
"She would just break down at the thought. It was too much.
In fact, no one wanted to listen to me at the time and she would
have none of it."
In early 2003 something happened, which at the time was bad news,
but now Mr McIlvaine is glad of it. He was laid off. By then, he
was filled with frustration about Afghanistan, about what he saw
as the cover-up and the coming war in Iraq. "I wanted to grab
people and convince them that this world is not what it is supposed
to be." And so, with time on his hands, he did what so many
other families of 9/11 victims had done - he got involved, by joining
a peace advocacy group called September 11th Families for Peaceful
Tomorrows. And by then, Helen was with him and supported him fully.
That was a good thing, because the following month, he agreed to
join a group travelling to Washington DC to protest at the impending
invasion of Iraq. They stood outside the White House and chanted
for peace. The night before he had made a startling decision - he
would get himself arrested. "It was very nerve-racking. It
was tough, because I had never been arrested before."
When the time came, he simply asked police officers in the cordon
to break arms and allow him through. He said that he would go with
them quietly afterwards. Which is what happened. They took away
his protest sign, with pictures of his son stapled on to it. One
officer took the pictures off and placed them in Mr McIlvaine's
top pocket.
More recently, he has been part of a project called Stonewalk. For
the past several months, volunteers, including several who lost
sons, daughters or spouses in 9/11, have been pulling a large wooden
cart throughout New England that carries a massive granite tombstone
with the words "Unknown Civilians Killed in War" engraved
upon it. The hope was to have it erected in the Arlington National
Cemetery, but the group was turned down. Mr McIlvaine was part of
a team hauling it up the East Side of Manhattan and pausing to join
afternoon prayers at the 96th Street Mosque, when he met with The
Independent.
Being inside a mosque is something else he would never have done,
but for Bobby's death. And, as you would guess by now, any animosity
against Muslims could not be further from this man's mind. Last
month, he helped to drag the half-ton tombstone for three days through
the hilly country of northern Connecticut.
The pulling - and all that he is now doing to advocate peace - is
doing him more good than he could have imagined. Especially when
it brings physical hardship, as it most definitely did when he was
at the cart's wooden yoke in Connecticut. "It was probably
the best thing that has happened to me since Bobby died. The pain
was so severe sometimes that honestly it was cleansing."
The word catharsis is not one he likes, he says, but that is what
he is experiencing right now. And it does not stop with Stonewalk.
On the Sunday before the Republican Convention he joined the mega-march
through New York City to protest against the Iraq war and George
Bush. "What hurts me so much is that he is taking credit for
being a war president," he says. "People need to see that
he failed this country miserably."
The day after tomorrow, for the first time, he will be part of the
commemoration ceremony at Ground Zero, taking his turn to read the
names of the dead.
Whenever Mr McIlvaine is out to work for peace, he wears the red
Princeton cap that used to belong to his son. He has pinned two
badges to either side of it. One is a peace sign with the twin towers
superimposed on it. The other is a photograph of Bobby. "You
know, he was a shining light and the world was his oyster,"
he explains, his eyes once more starting to moisten.
And Bobby, he goes on, is with him today, as he pulls the stone,
and was with him on the march in Manhattan, just as he is at his
side every day. "I really believe he is a force and he is with
me. There had to be a reason he was murdered. Maybe I'm the reason."
‘We Don’t
Want Our Loved Ones Who Died In 9/11 Used As An Excuse To start
war’
The Sunday
Herald, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
9/5/04
Dan Jones
starts to cry. He’s in the middle of Union Square in New York
City and he’s trying to explain how his children felt when
they lost their favourite uncle – his brother-in-law –
on September 11, 2001. Jones is one of the founders of the September
11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows organisation and it’s been
a rough week for him.
His brother-in-law, he feels, has been wrapped in the Stars And
Stripes and his death expropriated by the Republican Party, which
has come to town just days before the third anniversary of the attacks
on America for its pre-election convention.
The decision to hold the convention just a few blocks from the site
where nearly 3000 people died in the World Trade Centre attacks
has been condemned by many opponents of the Republican Party as
a gross exploitation of America’s suffering. Each day of the
convention has invoked the memory of 9/11 as a reason to “never
forget and never forgive”; each day delegates have called
on September 11 as a reason to justify war.
If the convention and the memory of his family’s loss has
made this a harrowing week emotionally for Jones, then it’s
also been a hard few days for him physically too. He’s just
completed the mammoth task of dragging a 5000lb tombstone –
inscribed with the words “to the unknown civilians killed
in war” – from Boston to New York in time for the convention.
The “Stonewalk” saw some 500 people, led by Jones, pulling
this hulk of granite along the same route that the planes which
crashed into the twin towers took when they were taken over by the
9/11 hijackers.
The Tombstone now takes centre stage in Union Square. This usually
bohemian, bustling little patch of ground has now been turned into
a shrine for all those who have died since 9/11. Surrounding the
tombstone are 978 pairs of boots – a set for every soldier
who has died in Iraq. Hundreds of kids’ shoes and women’s
shoes and the shoes of men are there as well – each pair representing
a dead Iraqi. The names of all those who have died during the invasion
and occupation of Iraq are being read out as Jones tries to describe
the pain and anger his family has felt – pain at losing his
children’s uncle, Bill Kelly, and anger at the Bush administration
for using their suffering, as they see it, as an excuse for war
across the globe.
Bill Kelly was at a breakfast meeting at the Windows on the World
restaurant at the World Trade Centre when the first plane struck.
His body was never found. “My children lost their favourite
uncle,” says Jones, a 39-year-old social worker in the New
York school system. “We didn’t want to see any other
family going through what we did. My children are still very afraid.
The shock and horror hasn’t left them. No other children anywhere
in the world should go through what they went through. The city
in which they live saw planes crashing into buildings and the buildings
falling down.
“We knew that if our country waged war that other families
would be put in the same position that our family was put in –
children would lose uncles and parents, people would lose their
brothers and sisters, parents would lose their children.
“We wanted justice, not war. War is no way to get justice.
It took a long time for the man who blew up the plane over Lockerbie
to come to justice, but it happened in the end. We wanted this pursued
as a crime, not to be considered as an act of war. The war in Afghanistan
has not brought those who plotted my brother-in-law’s murder
to justice. And the war in Iraq has certainly not served that purpose
either.”
The tombstone that he and the other members of September 11 Families
for Peaceful Tomorrows dragged to New York is meant to quietly and
symbolically show their President what they think of his foreign
policy as he staged his party’s national convention.
Not every protester is as eloquent as Jones and the 200 or so other
families in his organisation, but nearly all share his sentiments.
Since last Sunday – the day before the convention started
– New York has been a sea of protest. Sunday alone saw some
200,000 people take to the streets in a demonstration aimed solely
at one man – George W Bush. The poor, the homeless, military
veterans, former police officers and firefighters who responded
to 9/11, the gay community, the unemployed, anarchists, hippies,
Muslims, Christians, soccer moms – someone from every segment
of the myriad ways of life in America – has taken to the streets
of New York this last week to tell their President to stop what
he is doing and to let him know that they want him out of the White
House this November. Most have been dignified and some have been
silly – such as the panty protest down at Battery Park where
women flashed their knickers bearing slogans like “F*** Bush”.
Only a very few have been violent and a handful have been pointless
– there was more than a couple of wasted stoners desperately
wandering New York looking for something to protest about but unable
to locate the nearest demonstration.
The police arrested more than 2000 people, many for the slightest
infractions. The NYPD has operated a policy of pre-emptive arrest,
cracking down hard on anyone who so much as steps out of line. But
although draconian, the police were mostly not too heavy-handed
with the protesters. That’s not surprising. Few would have
had the guts to test the patience of the police in a city that looked
as if martial law had been declared. Giant spy blimps floated over
the city as helicopters patrolled the skies. On every street corner
in Manhattan there were dozens of police officers. Streets were
blocked off in all directions by anti-car bomb barriers. Flotillas
of motorcycle cops sped around as officers on horseback and with
batons drawn idled in the streets. Madison Square Garden itself
looked as if it was under siege, ringed by secret service agents,
the National Guard and thousands of police officers armed to the
teeth. This was not a city taking any chances. New Yorkers were
sure that there was going to be a terrorist attack.
The Republicans have delighted in disparaging the demonstrators
as a bunch of leftie hippies who have cost the city a fortune in
security. The response from the demonstrators is that the Republicans
should have taken their convention somewhere else.
But Jones is not the type of protester that the Republicans are
likely to pick on. He’s their worst nightmare – a victim
of terrorism who is also a pacifist and an opponent of America’s
wars. As bells ring in Union Square for everyone who has died in
the Iraq war, Jones says: “The philosophy of our organisation
is to highlight civilian deaths. Our family members went to work,
got on aeroplanes, went to breakfast, responded to an emergency
and were killed because they were in the wrong place at the wrong
time. We don’t want our loved ones used as an excuse to start
war. Yet the death toll of the innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan
just keeps going up. Like our families, these people were in the
wrong place at the wrong time.
“We just want peace and justice. Our organisation takes its
name from something that Martin Luther King said – ‘wars
are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows’. That’s
all we want – a peaceful tomorrow, and these wars we are involved
in are no way to bring that about. The stone that we’ve brought
to New York is a compliment to the tomb of the unknown soldier.
It is a mark of respect to the suffering and anguish of the families
of soldiers who have lost loved ones overseas. It’s a reminder
about the human toll of war.’As Jones speaks the names of
Iraqi children are read out. “Some of them were just two years
old,” Jones says. “I have children and it is horrible
to think of the one day of terror that we lived through in New York.
“But the nightly bombings in Iraq is terror raining down every
day, and the soldiers over there wondering each time a car passes
whether or not it is going to blow them up are living with a constant
threat of death.”
American politics, Jones says, has become a “fiery cocktail”.
“These wars haven’t made my country safer,” he
adds, “and even if they had, the means aren’t justified.
The entire world is a far more dangerous place, due in large part
to the actions of my government.”
Jones believes that what is happening overseas is an act of revenge.
He quotes an old college buddy of his – a navy veteran –
who told him that it was military doctrine that no army should take
part in a war for the sake of vengeance because it is dishonourable
and the military lives or dies by its honour.
“If the horror of those pictures from Abu Ghraib prison hasn’t
shocked us into admitting that we have no moral authority any more,
then I don’t know what can stop this,” he says. “The
genie is out of the bottle and I don’t know how to get it
back in. I wish I did.”
Jones hasn’t lost hope though. He says he and all the other
millions of protesters around America have to keep on protesting
for their children and the belief in a “peaceful tomorrow”.
“My children miss their uncle greatly,” he says, coughing
as his voice fills up with tears. “Their experiences have
prepared them for life at much too young an age.
“It’s painful for them, very painful. It’s painful
for all of us – both here and abroad. The pain has to stop.”
Message of peace
rolls from Boston;
Granite tombstone a civilian memorial
By Soni Sangha, staff writer, North Jersey Media Group
The Record (Bergen County, NJ)
9/29/04
NEW YORK - A one-ton message of peace, meant to commemorate civilian
casualties of war, arrived at St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Harlem
on
Saturday afternoon - one month after a small group of activists
began pushing the
6-foot-long giant tombstone from Boston.
The 220-plus-mile trek, called "the Stonewalk," was a
collaboration between the Peace Abbey - a multifaith retreat center
in Sherborn, Mass. - and The September 11th Families for Peaceful
Tomorrows.
The small group of volunteers - including a monk who made the entire
trek barefoot - pushed the granite slab from the site of the Democratic
convention in Boston to this week's Republican convention site.
They said they hoped politicians would heed their message for peace
and pull troops out of Iraq.
But Bronx resident Colleen Kelly, 42, said the route also served
another,
equally powerful, purpose. Her brother, Bill Kelly Jr., was among
those
killed on Sept. 11, 2001, when two planes that departed from Boston
crashed into
the World Trade Center.
"We wanted to retrace the path of those planes," Kelly
said. "You had
this intense violence that was the path of hatred. We wanted to
retrace it, but
in a very different way. The idea is to be very visible about the
fact that [war]
is not working."
Dan Jones, Kelly's husband, stressed that his group has no partisan
agenda.
"This is not about Republicans or Democrats; it's all politicians,"
Jones
said.
The massive stone rested atop a caisson that also weighed more than
a ton, with eight slots that allowed more than a dozen people at
a time to help push it. A group numbering about 30 crossed from
the Bronx into upper Manhattan via the 145th Street Bridge, with
recorded music by U2 and the Talking Heads helping inspire them
up several steep inclines as they neared the church.
The few spectators along the final leg of the route were greeted
with peace signs from the marchers.
A core group of eight people, including a Buddhist nun and the monk,
walked the entire route.
Aldina Kennedy, 34, a medical writer from the Bronx, joined the
march in its final stage Saturday.
"I've marched in protest against the Iraq war, but it doesn't
feel so great just marching against something," Kennedy said.
"It's so much better to be for something. We are marching for
peace."
Jack Hallock, a 45-year-old counselor from Philadelphia, lost his
cousin, Ryan Kohart, 26, on Sept. 11. Hallock said he found inspiration
in the teamwork required to push the stone, which is chiseled with
the inscription, "Unknown Civilians Killed in War."
"[Peace] is something I want for myself, for my children, for
everyone in the United States, and everyone all over the world,"
Hallock said.
A number of peace activists and religious leaders spoke at a forum
at the church Saturday night, including Michael Berg. His son, Nick,
a freelance telecommunications contractor from West Chester, Pa.,
was beheaded by
militant extremists in Iraq in May.
"We must decide now, for our future, whether we want peaceful
tomorrows or cheaper gas," said Berg, who advocated "staying
out of sovereign nations in the Middle East."
Dot Walsh, program coordinator for the Peace Abbey, said it is hoped
that the tombstone would someday be placed at Arlington National
Cemetery in Virginia,
alongside the Tomb of the Unknowns.
"Since soldiers and civilians die together, they should be
remembered together," said Walsh, who was unsuccessful in that
goal following a 1999 Stonewalk from Boston to the cemetery. "I
think now the American people understand what civilian casualties
mean."
|
September
Eleventh Families For Peaceful Tomorrows
