The Woman Who Wasn’t There (11 page)

In Tania, the group had found a tireless advocate and a passionate voice. Now the World Trade Center Survivors’ Network needed a purpose—or, as Tania would say, something to dwell on other than themselves. The early part of 2005 saw the survivors gain inroads in many of the developing plans and policies for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center neighborhood. They had successfully lobbied for a say in decisions affecting historic preservation downtown, memorials to be built at ground zero, and the development of a tribute center at the site. “Things are starting to happen,” Tania wrote Richard Williams in Oklahoma City. But as much as the survivors had accomplished
in getting the recognition they deserved, she said, they still needed a project to call their own.

At the time, a controversy was brewing over a staircase that had provided the only route of escape for hundreds and perhaps thousands of survivors on the day of the attack. The thirty-seven steps that had once connected the plaza outside the towers to the street below had miraculously withstood the collapse of the buildings and the subsequent demolition of the ruins. The stairway stood, intact but alone, in the midst of the vast, empty landscape of ground zero—the last remaining aboveground relic of what had been the World Trade Center. Some people had dubbed the artifact “the stairway to nowhere.” Both the Port Authority, which owned the World Trade Center site, and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC), the authority created in the aftermath of September 11 to lead the renewal efforts for ground zero, insisted that it had to go because it stood in the way of the rebuilding. Critics tossed in their two cents, some saying that the stairs were an insignificant eyesore and had no place in the blueprint for the redevelopment. But to many people, those craggy stairs represented much more than a bruised mound of chipped concrete and cracked granite. The staircase had been their passageway to survival.

Peter Miller, who survived both the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, was a special projects manager for the Port Authority. His job was to oversee custody of the many pieces and artifacts left over from the attack. He was tasked with placing as many of the items as he could in museums and parks and other places around the country that would preserve and display them. He was also in charge of disposing of the items that his bosses determined weren’t worth keeping. Miller mentioned to Tania that he’d been covertly working to try to save the staircase, but his job would be compromised if anyone from the Port Authority discovered what he was doing. The
New York Times
had made mention of the endangered staircase in a story about preservation efforts at ground zero, he said, but nothing had come of it. He worried that the powerful relic would
disappear when no one was paying attention, and then it would be too late to try to save it.

If there was one thing Peter knew about Tania, it was that she could get things moving.

“What do you think?” he asked.

Tania was beside herself with excitement. What would be a more fitting mission for the survivors than to lead the crusade to save the stairs? It was exactly the project they needed to establish the WTCSN as a bona fide reform organization, and not just an encounter group. When she and Miller introduced the idea at the next Survivors’ Network meeting, the others jumped on the concept of the campaign. Miller agreed to work behind the scenes, monitoring the Port Authority for information about its plans for the staircase, while Tania and the others began what was certain to be a long, uphill battle to save it.

In April, the network issued a press release to announce the initiative:

The World Trade Center Survivors’ Network is launching the Save the Survivors’ Stairway Campaign. This stairway is the only remnant of the World Trade Center complex remaining above-ground. It is located on the north side of the World Trade Center site near the intersection of Greenwich and Vesey Streets. While many have termed this remaining piece of stairwell the “Stairway to Nowhere,” we prefer to think of it as the Stairway to Safety or the “Survivors’ Stairway.”

A widely circulated picture in the press after 9/11 shows people from Tower One who survived because they descended those stairs moments before their building collapsed. We believe that this was the only escape route for hundreds of survivors, after Tower Two collapsed.

The World Trade Center Survivors’ Network proposes that those stairs should remain as a testament of hope to the thousands who survived that day. If restored and connected to a platform, the Survivors’ Stairway could even provide a fitting
vantage point from which survivors, and everyone whose life was profoundly changed that day, could gain a vantage point from which to contemplate the footprint voids, paying respect to their lost friends, colleagues, and loved ones.

Finally, we propose that development plans should be modified to dedicate a survivors’ area on the plaza: an area where survivors could remember in peace and gain strength from the renewed World Trade Center community. The area should include the Survivors’ Stairway. We hope that you agree that our stories are a poignant counterpoint to the tragic loss of life that day, and our proposal for the Survivors’ Stairway creates a fitting prominence in contrast with the memorial design, Reflecting Absence.

The phone in the Survivors’ Network office at September Space began ringing with calls of support for the initiative. Survivors who hadn’t been part of the network volunteered to help. Other nonprofits pledged their support. Reporters called, promising to look into the plans for the stairs.

David Dunlap of the
New York Times
followed up with a poignant story about the plight of the stairs. Under the headline, “Survivors Begin Effort to Save Stairway That Was 9/11 ‘Path to Freedom,’” he wrote, “These were the final steps. After hundreds of workers made a terrifying floor-by-floor descent from their offices in the sky on 9/11, as the twin towers shuddered and rained ruin, they found a gangway to safety from the elevated plaza down the Vesey Street stairs . . . The World Trade Center Survivors’ Network hopes the stairs can stay rooted. ‘There’s a great power in their being where they were,’ said Gerry Bogacz, a founding member of the group. ‘After the south tower collapsed, that was the only way anyone could get off the plaza.’”

The survivors had their platform. They had something to live for other than the pain. By committing their time and energy to saving the staircase, they were in essence saving themselves.

Tania was bursting with anticipation. She could hardly wait to
figure out the next step in the campaign to save the stairs. “We’ve put ourselves on the map, and we have to make sure we stay there,” she told Peter Miller.

“This is our time.”

It was Tania’s first brush with Dunlap and the
Times,
but it would not be her last.

A
t the same time the campaign to save the stairs heated up, the fledgling Tribute WTC Visitor Center issued an invitation for volunteers to lead walking tours at the World Trade Center site. As it was, every day, busloads of tourists from around the world descended on the spot to look through the slats of a fence into a naked hole.

Marian Fontana lost her firefighter husband there, and her advocacy work for grieving families mushroomed into the powerful September 11th Families’ Association, the offices of which overlooked ground zero. She’d suggested the idea of the tours after watching Lee Ielpi, the father of another fallen firefighter, usher visitors on impromptu walks around the property. Ielpi, a retired New York City firefighter, had dug for two months in the infernal wreckage for the remains of his son, Jonathan, and he carried his body home in a basket when it was finally pulled from the ashes. It had been his idea to build an educational center where visitors would get a history lesson and hear stories such as his.

Fontana hired Ielpi and a civilian volunteer named Jennifer Adams, who delivered supplies to recovery workers in the aftermath of the attack, to make it happen. It was during those times when he was overseeing the progress of the Visitor Center that Ielpi corralled tourists and took them on tours. Fontana saw how much that effort meant to the sightseers, and how important it was for the proud father to tell the story of his heroic son. One day, after watching him speak to a group of visiting schoolchildren, she approached him with her idea.

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” Fontana said. “Why don’t we formalize what you’re doing for tourists and train people to give tours?”

Ielpi didn’t hesitate. “That’s a great idea,” he said.

In August 2005, with the opening of the Visitor Center still a year off, they had a syllabus and a tour route and were ready to train their first group of docents. An invitation circulated throughout the 9/11 community, calling for volunteers. The goal for the charter docent group was for ten people to be trained in time to give tours for the fourth anniversary commemoration the following month.

Tania was one of the first to respond.

“Put me in for the training,” she emailed Rachael Grygorcewicz, a spirited young woman who had recently been hired as the coordinator of the volunteer program.

Being chosen for the guide program was seen as an honor, and many people who responded had to be turned away. The prerequisites for the position were nonnegotiable. Everyone who applied was required to fill out an application and be interviewed by the Visitor Center staff. The candidates had to be outgoing and personable and have solid public speaking skills and a memorable story that they were willing to share. Tania hardly needed vetting. By then she was the emblem of 9/11 survivors. Her inimitable story and upbeat personality took her to the top of the list, and the Visitor Center staff felt privileged to have the celebrity survivor on its docent team.

The inaugural training was set for a weekend in mid-August. The volunteers were asked to report to the Families’ Association offices for a meet and greet and a screening of a film showing Ielpi hosting a tour for a group of primary school students. Afterward, the trainees were invited to a fashionable downtown restaurant to toast the program’s official kickoff. Seated around a long table were Ielpi and his staff and the volunteer guides. They came from every corner of the 9/11 community: a widow who’d lost her husband, three mothers who’d each lost a son, a couple who lived in a neighborhood high-rise and nearly lost their home, and Angelo Guglielmo, a filmmaker who had befriended Jennifer Adams when they both shuttled supplies to the disaster workers and who’d ended up making a documentary about the volunteer effort.

Gerry Bogacz sat at one end of the table, and Tania and Linda at the other. Angelo was instantly drawn to Tania. She exuded such goodness and warmth. All the volunteers wanted to meet her, and she graciously acknowledged all of them. She was in high spirits, merry even, giggling and engaging in the light dinner conversation and posing for pictures. After a spirited introduction to the program, Ielpi raised his glass, and everyone toasted the new chapter in 9/11 history.

The following morning, the docents returned downtown, ready to go to work. Tania arrived with Linda and Gerry Bogacz, looking fresh in casual slacks and a blouse. She stood beside Angelo, who was sipping a cup of coffee, and they struck up a conversation. Angelo was taken by Tania’s bright smile. It was so genuine and contagious. She listened intently as he told her about his work at ground zero after 9/11 and his film about the volunteers. When he asked about her, she told him her story of survival and loss. By the time she finished, he was in tears. He just couldn’t reconcile how the sweet, vulnerable woman standing next to him could have survived such an agonizing experience and still be willing to come back to the site to help others understand what had happened there. With the training about to start, the two embraced and exchanged email addresses. They promised to get together again, and Angelo knew that Tania was someone he wanted to get to know better.

Over the next eight hours, the tour guides became experts on the history of the World Trade Center and both the 1993 and 2001 attacks. The idea was that they would follow a script with historical and factual details about the attacks, and then weave in their own personal stories. At the end of the day, they were escorted outside to conduct practice tours along the perimeter of ground zero. The exercise brought up different feelings for each of them. Linda had to fight off her unresolved feelings of illegitimacy, because she had neither lost a loved one nor been inside the towers. Bogacz struggled with feeling that the tours were part of his penance for surviving, as well as how much of his personal story he was comfortable sharing with strangers. But Tania? A natural. She sailed through her practice tour as if she’d
performed it a thousand times. Everyone had stories, but not like hers, and her telling of it was so detailed and evocative that the others were all captivated.

“My name is Tania, and I lost my fiancé in the north tower,” she began. “I’m going to tell you about that.”

Over the next hour, she was vintage Tania. One minute she was making everyone cry, and the next minute she was cracking jokes and putting them all in stitches. Ielpi was in awe of her performance.

He knew he had a star.

T
ania and Linda’s friendship had developed rapidly after the museum scavenger hunt. They never missed a day without at least talking on the phone. Some nights Linda left her job as an administrative assistant with a brokerage firm on Wall Street and took the subway to midtown to spend time with Tania before going home. The two would have dinner at a neighborhood restaurant or order in Thai, and talk until Linda had to leave to catch the last train back to Hoboken. When they weren’t discussing something involving the Survivors’ Network, their conversations were usually typical girlfriend chatter: Linda talking about dieting or her experiences meeting men through an online dating service, which made Tania howl with laughter. They even had nicknames for each other: Tania was T-Bone; Linda was Blondie.