Reunited in loss: Children of Twin Towers victims share their stories Their love lives on - & so does their grief
A year after 9/11, a group of Long Island schoolchildren whose mothers or fathers died in the World Trade Center gathered to tell The Post their stories. They reunited on the third, fifth and 10th anniversaries of the terror attacks. Now, 20 years after the city’s darkest day, we catch up with some of this group, who have since grown into homeowners, professionals and parents themselves — and who continue to grapple with their loss and honor their mothers’ and fathers’ legacies.
JACQUELYN HOBBS
The horror of 9/11 confronts Jackie Hobbs whenever she arrives at her workplace in lower Manhattan.
“My office is right next to the World Trade Center,” said Hobbs, 32, an associate media director at an ad agency whose headquarters overlooks the void where the north tower once stood.
Her father, Thomas, 41, worked on the building’s 105th floor as a broker for Cantor Fitzgerald.
Glimpses of the 9/11 Memorial Plaza from a conference room or a colleague’s office sometimes leave her reeling.
“It’s like, ‘Oh! I wasn’t expecting that,’ ” she said. “I’ve needed to take a step back, take a breath.”
But over time, the plaza became a place of solace.
“On days when I’m really stressed, that’s where I walk,” she said. “It reminds me that life is precious. It puts everything into perspective.”
Jackie and her two brothers all live on Long Island and remain close. Steven, 30, is an attorney; David, 28, recently founded a business-services firm. Jackie and her husband, Anthony, bought a home of their own last year in Bellmore, a few miles from her mother’s house.
“My mom’s been seeing someone for years,” she said — a man who stepped up to fill a crucial role at Jackie’s November 2019 wedding reception.
“He danced with me at my wedding,” she recalled. “It was nice. But not the same.”
JENNIFER & ASHLEY HEROLD
“Pop-Pop was a hero. He helped people get out of the tower when bad men crashed the planes.”
That’s how Jennifer Herold explains 9/11 and their grandfather’s death to her three young children.
Gary Herold, 44, a risk management supervisor at Aon Corp., worked on the 98th floor of the south tower.
Soon after the attacks, a coworker called the family.
“She said my dad walked her to the stairwell, gave her a hug and
said, ‘I’m going to go back and make sure everyone else is out,’ ” Jennifer recalled.
Jennifer, now 36, has overcome the anger she felt because her dad didn’t escape when he could.
“In the beginning, it made me very mad. But as the years went on, I realized he wouldn’t have it any other way. He wouldn’t run away. He would have tried to save someone,” she said.
Her father never met his grandchildren — Lucas, 6, Ashlyn, 5, and Declan, 3. They hug his gravestone on visits to St. Charles Cemetery in Farmingdale, LI, the town where Gary Herold raised Jennifer and her two sisters, Ashley and Lyndsey — ages 16, 13 and 9 on 9/11.
“When it came to us kids, he was so funny and had such a big heart,” Ashley said.
He also left them with lessons that molded them. In the seventh grade, when Gary took Ashley to school, a girl with pink hair walked by.
“I expected him to laugh and make fun of her. Instead, he said, ‘She’s trying to be who she wants to be, and doesn’t care what anybody else thinks. That’s how you should be,’ ” Ashley recalled.
Six years ago, the sisters and their mother, Angela, all moved to Florida.
Inspired by a high-school staffer who helped her get through the trauma of 9/11, Jennifer became a guidance counselor. Ashley, now 33, became a teacher, recently taking a job in West Virginia. And Lyndsey, now 29, who had the shortest time with their father, works in a restaurant and still struggles with grief.
But the sisters keep their dad’s memory alive. Five years ago, they launched the Gary Herold Memorial Scholarship in Spring Hill, Fla., raising funds to give out $1,000 and $500 to teens who write the best essays on “why it is important to never forget 9/11.”
“Students also have to demonstrate selflessness and generosity, the characteristics my father embodied,” Jennifer said.
CHRIS WIEMAN
“They tell me I can take the day off,” Chris Wieman said of the anniversary of the terror attack that killed his mother, Mary Lenz Wieman, 43, a marketing executive at Aon Corp. in the south tower.
“But it’s just better if I work,” he said. “It’s better to keep my mind going.”
Chris, 32, has formed a “tight family” of colleagues at Greek Xpress, a Long Island-based restaurant chain. He spends six days a week at its Great Neck branch, where he takes great pride in his work and doesn’t have to retell his family’s 9/11 experience.
“The owner knows my story,” he said. “The people here know my story. Everyone’s there for each other.”
The sudden loss of his mother at age 12 haunts him.
“It just never leaves you,” Chris said. “You still remember where you were, what period in school you were in . . . You remember that moment, and the day after, as if it was yesterday.”
Healing “has been a process, year after year,” he said. “Especially when my dad got remarried” in 2009, adding two step-siblings to the family.
“That was a process for me and my sisters” — Alison, 29, an attorney who announced her engagement this year, and Mary Julia, 27, a physical therapist in Boston.
“Now everyone’s as close as can be,” Chris said.
“Mom would be happy that everyone’s working hard and doing the right thing. I just know it in my heart.”
LAUREN ERKER August is the cruelest month for Lauren Erker.
“His birthday is Aug. 7, so I remember that every year,” she said, speaking of her father, Erwin, 41, a vice president at Marsh & McLennan in the north tower.
“And then everything about 9/11 starts,” she said. “You turn on the TV, it’s there. You turn on social media, it’s there.
“You don’t want people to forget.
But for everybody that was directly affected by it, we’re reliving it over and over, every year.”
Now 32, Lauren settled in Rhode Island after attending college there. She works in marketing for a major mortgage lender — a handy connection when it came time to buy a home of her own.
“I still don’t understand mortgages, but the marketing side of it I got down,” she joked.
Her cherished townhouse adjoins a 130-acre nature preserve, perfect for her athletic, outdoorsy nature. Her brother Andrew, 29, a supervisor at a large sportinggoods store, recently got a place of his own in Long Island.
Lauren, who was 12 when her father died, clings to memories of traveling with him on his meticulously planned family vacations.
“My dad was all about us,” she said, tearing up.
“My mom’s my rock, and I had a lot of amazing men in my life — uncles and family friends who stepped up,” she said. “But nothing replaces Dad.”