For family members of 9/11
victims, closure is a journey
BY ROBBIE SEQUEIRA
On Sept. 11, 2001, 2,996 people lost
their lives in what remains the singledeadliest
terrorist attack in human
history.
Roughly 3,000 names are adorned
on the bronze wall of the 9/11 Memorial
& Museum that is located at 180
Greenwich St., two blocks from where
the Twin Towers fell 20 years ago Saturday.
On that bronze wall is the name of
Danielle Kelly’s father, Maurice Patrick
Kelly, a “providing, fun-loving
and amazing” father who was gone at
just 41.
Danielle Kelly, 37, was a junior at
Mamaroneck High School on Sept. 11,
2001, and said her father, a carpenter,
was patching a ceiling for Cantor
Fitzgerald on the 103rd fl oor of the
World Trade Center.
But Maurice Kelly, who was living
on City Island at the time, wasn’t originally
supposed to be there that morning.
“He got called in randomly that
day,” she told the Bronx Times. “I remember
that school day, I had a break
and everyone was crowding around the
TVs in the classrooms and they showed
the plane going into the building and I
didn’t know what was going on.”
At the time of the morning attacks,
Danielle Kelly was unaware that her
father had been in the North Tower.
But after several unanswered calls
to Maurice Kelly’s normally responsive
beeper and no communication in
the following half-hour, Danielle Kelly
said there was a looming sense that her
father had passed.
“He would pretty much call back
in a half-hour tops, so when he didn’t,
I had a weird feeling he was gone,”
she said. “There were no calls and all
they had found was just a card with his
name on it. So at that moment, a big
piece of life was gone.”
There were an estimated 3,051 children,
according to Terry Sears, president
of the nonprofi t Tuesday’s Children
that lost a parent on the day
of Sept. 11. Tuesday’s Children was
founded in the wake of 9/11 to support
children and families who lost a loved
one on 9/11 and has expanded its scope
over the years to support those who
have lost loved ones due to military
service, mass violence or acts of terrorism.
There is also another population of
those personally affected by the 9/11
attacks that have been in search of answers
and closure for decades.
In the 20-year aftermath of the 9/11
attacks, there are still an estimated
1,110 victims, roughly 40% of those who
died on 9/11, that remain unidentifi ed.
Morgan Laird said that her fi ancee
Ben Johnson was in the North Tower
working on the 98th fl oor when the
California-bound American Airlines
Flight 11 from Boston’s Logan Airport
crashed into it.
Laird, 58, said she had been at
home when a breaking news report
on the local Boston channel 2 news
had shown the plane crashing into the
North Tower.
“My body immediately went cold
and I just remember seeing a plane
crash into one of the Towers, and I
kept saying to myself that maybe Ben
had been late to work or maybe he was
out on a coffee run,” she said. “But
when you frantically call and call and
call, and get no answer, this sick feeling
consumes you.”
9/11 - 20 YEARS L 2 ATER, SEPT. 9-16, 2021 BTR
Laird would frequently visit Johnson,
a Queens native from her hometown
in Newton, Massachusetts, with
plans to move to New York City the following
spring.
Laird said that when she found out
the details surrounding the attack —
Flight 11 had been hijacked by Mohamed
Atta, a key mastermind of the
9/11 attacks — she didn’t know how
long it would take for her to receive
confi rmation of his death or identifi -
cation of his remains.
Any hope for closure for Laird
might lie through new forensic technology
that recently identifi ed two
more 9/11 victims.
Dorothy Morgan of Hempstead,
New York, was the 1,646th victim to
be identifi ed through ongoing DNA
analysis of unidentifi ed remains recovered
from the 9/11 disaster. The
second person — and the 1,647th victim
— is a man whose name is being
withheld at his family’s request.
The new technology is courtesy of
the New York City’s Offi ce of Chief
Medical Examiner. It marks the fi rst
time in two years a victim’s remains
have been identifi ed.
According to The New York Times,
forensic scientists are testing and retesting
more than 22,000 body parts
that were recovered from the World
Trade Center site.
Laird said that while she’s been
in contact with forensic scientists in
New York about possible identifi cation
of Ben’s remains, she feels closure
for the loved ones of the victims
of 9/11 is seldom.
“We’re still waiting and I don’t
think that day will ever come,” Laird
said. “I still have some pieces of him
with me. The wedding ring, a few ‘I
love you cards,’ but I think like most
people who lost someone on that date,
you truly never get closure or peace.”
Danielle Kelly said that each subsequent
Sept. 11 got “harder and
harder” and when she visited Ground
Zero memorial in 2002, seeing her father’s
name memorialized, hit close to
home.
“Personally, it felt unbelievable,
that he was here one day and not
the next, and it seems like a surreal
event,” she said. “Seeing his name definitely
hit home more, it’s more heartfelt,
and whenever you see something
that reminds you of that person, you
remember all memories you shared
and milestones missed.”
Kelly said that trips to Ground
Zero, a site that would then become
One World Trade Center, had been frequent
until it wasn’t, as a mixture of
trauma and the next 20 years of school
and work milestones took place.
In 2019, for the fi rst time, Kelly took
part in the annual commemorative
reading of the victim’s name, an experience
that she said, “took a while” to
gather the strength to endure it.
The tradition will once again resume
after the name-reading portion
of the program was canceled in 2020
to keep participants from gathering
in small crowds during the COVID-19
pandemic.
“I did it when I fi nally felt I had the
courage to do so, and it took a while
for me to get to that point,” she said.
“I’m glad I was able to do it. It’s never
easy with each Sept. 11, but you do
have time where you remember how
special that person was to you and
how important each year since the
day becomes.”
Photo courtesy Danielle Kelly