For Roger, a vice president of Gilbane Building Company, becoming involved in the aftermath of tragedy has been both a blessing and a curse.
"By becoming actively involved, you're continually reminded of the situation, and in effect you're postponing dealing with some of the personal issues," says Roger, who lives in Longmeadow. "But on the other side, I felt I had to do something other than just sit and grieve. I'm a Type A personality, and I've come to understand that becoming involved is a form of grieving. And you feel you make a difference on behalf of Jean and the others who can't be here."
Roger's primary interest is ground zero, both the memorial and the rebuilding. He is a member of the Families Advisory Council of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp and attends all their meetings in New York. He has also been drawn into the controversy over victims' remains and personal property, finding himself in the position of having to explain to families why their loved ones' articles have not been returned. "A frustrating middle-man job," he calls it.
Though his family did get his daughter's remains back, no personal property has been returned. Unlike some other families, who are angry that they've gotten nothing back, Roger understands.
"It's just so beyond the scale of anything that has ever happened. You had the personal effects of everybody and everything in that building, all mixed together with all the terrible destruction. How do you pair people up with things? It just seems like an impossible task."
Not all family members choose to get involved in a group. Some lack the interest, others the time. Dr. Stephen Holland's wife, Cora, was also on Flight 11, en route to Los Angeles to see her disabled mother. The couple had been empty nesters for a week, having just taken their youngest, a son, to Fordham University, where he was a freshman. After his mother died, the son returned home to Sudbury, to stay with his father for the year. Two older daughters live in the New York area.
With his son and one daughter, Holland attended that first meeting of Families of Sept. 11. "I remember the thing that struck me most was there was a woman there from a national organization for airline disasters. She had lost a son on a flight years ago. And I realized, `Oh my God, she's 10 years out and she has dedicated her life to airline safety.'"
As medical director of a start-up longterm health care company, Holland could take only two weeks off.
"There is no one else but me," he says. "I had to go back to work." Still, he stayed active in the group for several months until he ran out of steam, trying to work 60 hours and be both mother and father to his kids.
"I was just being overwhelmed by my job and my children," he says. He still supports the group, and regularly writes his congressman, senator, and the president Bush on myriad issues.
Holland sees political activism as a means to heal, and to vent. "It's a way to do something. I mean, my wife vaporized. I put her on an airplane and she was gone from my life," he says. "We didn't get to hold a hand or see a body. I think it's a way to do something positive after a devastating loss. I think it's a way to be angry, and to try to prevent it from happening again."
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