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Excerpts

From After: How America Confronted The September 12 Era

Chuck Schumer left the studio at the Fox network local affiliate in New York just as the station switched from his live appearance to the interview with Eileen Simon and her daughter, Brittany, that had been taped in July. As Schumer got into the car and the police driver raced toward Ground Zero for the memorial ceremony, he called Iris. She had decided to skip the memorial and spend the day in her Transportation Department office.

"Look at this city," Schumer exulted after he got off the phone and the car started approaching downtown. "Look at these people. They went through hell a year ago, and look at them now. They look great. The place looks great."

As Schumer's car approached a staging area across from the old Trade Center site, it was hard not to agree. Newly planted trees swayed in the heavy wind. The lobbies and parks around the Battery Park City apartments, which a year ago were so covered in ash and smothered in putrid air that people had wanted to abandon them, seemed completely refurbished and well occupied. A state program, using some of the federal money Schumer had helped obtain to offer rent aid to people who signed residential leases in the area, had obviously worked. The palm-tree-filled atrium lobby looked better than ever at the World Financial Center -- which was once again home to corporations, such as American Express, that had returned following a crash rebuilding effort and the implementation of another federal program providing rental supplements.

Across the street at Ground Zero, there was a tent for people like Schumer who were to read the names of the victims at the memorial service. The readers could wait in the tent and watch the service on a television monitor until it came time for their moment on the stage -- which in the case of those reading names further down the alphabet could be two hours or more. In every case, a celebrity reader was paired with a noncelebrity who had some connection to the tragedy, typically because he or she had lost a family member.

It was in this tent that the true spirit of the September 12 era recovery became even clearer.

Because there were more than 100 readers, a rule was being enforced not allowing any of the celebrities to enter with their usual posse. Just about everyone complied, shedding their aides or even security guards at the tent's entrance. It had also been requested by those organizing the event that no one leave before the entire ceremony was over, but instead return to the tent after reading their assigned names.

As a result, celebrities were stuck there for nearly three hours with no one to talk to but other celebrities -- or to the noncelebrity readers. And the most stunning thing about it was not only that they all stayed, but that they seemed to prefer talking to the strangers among them. Thus, Secretary of State Colin Powell could be seen sitting in a bridge chair chatting with a fire widow, while Hillary Clinton stood, also with no entourage or Secret Service detail, chatting with a fireman and what seemed to be two widows.

Soon Schumer was in an animated conversation with the widow with whom he had been paired to read names. But then he got up and starting moving around the room, feverishly looking for someone in charge, as if he had a complaint. The problem, he explained, as he grabbed for his cell phone to get his staff working on the case with him, was that his new friend had just discovered that her own husband's name had somehow been left off the list. Schumer spent a half hour ignoring everyone in the tent until he performed this urgent piece of constituent service.

Copyright © 2003 by Steven Brill