9/11: 20 Years Later
Two decades on, 9/11 victim’s wife
recalls tragedy and adversity
BY MATT TRACY
Elba Cedeno and Cathy
Smith would often compare
themselves to Pepé
Le Pew and Penelope from the
Looney Tunes cartoon: Smith
pursued Cedeno at a Rockland
County bar they both frequented,
but Cedeno played hard-to-get —
at least until they couldn’t help
but fall in love.
They went on cruises together.
They dreamed of traveling the
world. They had an unoffi cial
marriage ceremony at a time
when marriage equality was not
yet a reality.
Their love story, however, took
a tragic turn on Sept. 11, 2001,
when Smith was working on the
97th fl oor in one of the Twin Towers
as a vice president at Marsh
& McLennan. Cedeno feared the
worst when she learned about the
attacks that morning.
“In the moment, when I got
the news, I was at my job — I
thought it was a joke,” Cedeno
recalled during an emotional
phone interview. “When I got
home, I walked in the house and
the TV was on and I kept looking
at it in disbelief.”
Smith died in the attacks at the
age of 44, leaving Cedeno with
a broken heart and a feeling of
shock that rattled her to her core.
Cedeno’s life — and the couple’s
relationship — disappeared in the
blink of an eye.
“I could not function,” Cedeno
said. “Thank god I had beautiful
friends and family and had the
support, because I could barely
eat, barely talk, and barely walk.
It was awful.”
Cedeno met up with Smith’s
family following the attacks and
they made their way down to a destroyed
lower Manhattan, which
was blanketed with memorials
and engulfed with silence. They
could “hear a pin drop,” Cedeno
remembered, as the hustling,
bustling city went quiet.
Elba Cedeno (left) with her late wife Kathy and Kathy’s mother.
To this day, Cedeno still speaks
with raw emotion when she
invokes her late wife. She recalls
Smith as an avid football fan who
loved watching Dan Marino and
the Miami Dolphins, and she
especially enjoyed spending time
together with loved ones. Cedeno
continues to stay in touch with
Smith’s family today.
“Cathy meant the world to me,”
said Cedeno, who owned a house
with Smith in West Haverstraw,
New York. “She was smart,
beautiful, and made me so happy.
I was proud to be her wife. We
had planned to spend a long life
together. We were going to spend
the weekend in New York and she
was going to show me her offi ce.
She never got to do that.”
Instead, Cedeno found herself
PROVIDED
saddled with the hardship of losing
her life partner at a time when
LGBTQ couples did not have the
same marriage rights as straight
couples. Cedeno encountered
roadblocks when she sought assistance
through the 9/11 Victim
Compensation Fund, which set
out to provide fi nancial help for
victims and their families.
Cedeno said she was initially
denied benefi ts and further faced
anti-LGBTQ discrimination from
the Salvation Army, which was
one of the agencies providing
relief in the wake of the attacks.
Thankfully, though, Cedeno
had the unwavering support of
Smith’s family members, who
stood alongside her as she sought
benefi ts and conveyed to offi cials
that Smith and Cedeno were just
like any other married couple.
Cedeno said she received legal
assistance at the time from from
Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ litigation
group, and she wound up
receiving the benefi ts in the end.
“It was rough,” Cedeno said.
“The pain of going through that
was just unbearable. I was happy
that we had Lambda step in and I
was happy that everybody was able
to recognize us and get it together.
The family was there to vouch for
us as if we were married. It was
more than enough proof.”
Smith was one of nearly 3,000
people who were killed during
the attacks on September 11,
2001, and many of those who did
survive wound up experiencing
severe health consequences that
have lingered to this day. Countless
others who initially survived
the attacks later died from
9/11-related cancer, respiratory
illnesses, and other health issues
stemming from the effects of the
dust that spread through the air
around Ground Zero.
Many of the surviving victims
and families of victims are commemorating
the 20th anniversary
of the 9/11 attacks. Cedeno, who
now lives in Florida, has since
returned to Ground Zero to pay
tribute to Smith — including at
the 10-year anniversary in 2011
— but the COVID-19 pandemic
has disrupted her wishes to return
to New York City this year.
“I would have loved to be
there,” she said. “All I can say is ‘I
miss you, Cathy. I wish we could
have spent our lives together. I
wish that never happened.’”
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