Mom’s sad visit to Ground Zero
IN A poignant reminder of the pain that lives on 16 years after 9/11, Ann Douglas visited Ground Zero Sunday, clutching a small wooden box containing a portion of her son’s remains.
Frederick John Cox, 27, worked as an associate for the Sandler O’Neill investment banking firm on the 104th floor of the south tower.
He perished in the terror attack along with 66 colleagues and some 2,700 others.
On Sunday, Douglas, 74, came to New York City from her home in Meredith, N.H., to kiss her son’s name on the memorial by Ground Zero, as she does each anniversary.
“I come to honor my son and to write a letter to tell him I’ve done everything in my power to make the world a better place,” she said hours after the visit.
But this year was slightly different: She also attended a private ceremony at Trinity Church. During the intimate ceremony, she had her son’s remains — a part of his right forearm — inside a silver and walnut wood box.
“It was a beautiful ceremony,” said Douglas, who picked up the newly identified remains last Wednesday from the Frank E. Campbell funeral home on Madison Ave.
Like many victims, Cox’s body was not recovered from the debris during the initial excavation, leaving his family with a haunting emptiness.
The family held two memorial services and buried ashes from Ground Zero rubble at the family’s plot in a cemetery in Thomasville, Ga.
“People came from around the country,” Douglas recalled.
In 2003, the city’s medical examiner identified 5½ inches of bone fragment from his upper right arm with the use of new technology.
“I cremated them and will mix them with my ashes,” his mother said.
Ten years later, the city found another 6½ inches of his right arm bone. That section was given to Cox’s father, Fred, who put them in a cherry wood box which he keeps on his desk.
The latest find — 4 inches from the lower right forearm bone — was given to his two older sisters, who decided to place the remains inside a maple and silver ossuary in his room on Bear Island, N.H., where the family vacationed in the summer.
“That was his favorite place in the world,” Douglas said. “I have all his furniture and clothes in that room.”
Before his death, Cox put up a hammock overlooking Lake Winnipesaukee outside the home.
On the tree trunk, he put a plaque that reads: “Do what you love, love what you do.” Douglas visits the site often. Each year on 9/11, she comes to New York and stays at the World Center Hotel overlooking the Ground Zero memorial. She can see her son’s name on the memorial from inside the hotel’s restaurant.
Before the official ceremony, she always visits a vault that holds remains from 9/11 victims. The area is only accessible to family members and staff from the medical examiner’s office.
“Some of my son’s remains are there,” she said, noting she wants to make sure someone always visits them.
In April 2005, the city made a controversial decision to put the identification effort on hold, saying it had used all available technology.
But a year later, additional remains were discovered on top of the Deutsche Bank tower and in a manhole by Ground Zero. A new search for remains uncovered 1,500 additional pieces.
In 2013, the city hauled away about 60 truckloads of debris that may include small bone fragments that were dug out by construction crews working in the area.
Still, the overwhelming majority of human remains are unidentified because they are too damaged to match to DNA .
As for Douglas, she has kept busy in the years since her youngest child, and only son, died on 9/11.
The retired art teacher, who splits her time between New Hampshire and Georgia, wrote a children’s book “Freddy & Flossy Flutterby.” The book is based on lessons she taught her son and other children.
She also founded Betta Place, a nonprofit educational foundation that promotes love, forgiveness and the elimination of bullying.
Douglas regularly visits Public School 53 in Bay Terrace, Staten Island, and Golden Door Charter School in Jersey City as part of that effort. She talks to the children about her son and joins in 9/11 memorial ceremonies at the school. OFFICIALS in charge of the federal 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund urged people sickened by the terrorist attacks to apply for benefits. “Things I hear repeatedly, especially from people who are not as sick, is they don’t want to apply for our program because that money is for firefighters and first responders,” fund Special Master Rupa Bhattacharyya said Sunday during a forum at the New York Marriott Downtown in lower Manhattan. “There’s a lot of survivor guilt.” All told, the fund has processed 17,500 claims and distributed more than $3 billion of the $7.37 billion available. “A first responder doesn’t have to be NYPD,” said Matt McCauley, a lawyer who helps 9/11 survivors. “It can be a construction worker. A survivor is someone who is living in Battery Park. There were 400,000 people who were exposed.”