Fordham’s Department of Military Science will be presenting a panel discussion, First Response on 9/11, on Wednesday, November 10, from 6 to 7 p.m., in the Moot Court Room 1-01 at the Fordham Law School at Lincoln Center.

The panelists will share their personal experiences as first responders to Ground Zero on 9/11:

Twenty years later, “we continue to weep for those families whose lives were changed forever in an instant,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, during a Mass of Remembrance held Saturday, Sept. 11, in the University Church. “We protest not only the loss of what was but also the loss of what might have been in the lives of the victims.”

He also cited the valor and heroism shown by police, firefighters, and others who risked—and lost—their lives in saving others during the attacks, as well as those who, facing the prospect of imminent horrific death, used their final moments to open their phones and send messages of encouragement and love to those they would be leaving behind.

“I believe it is not too much to say that in the way that they faced death, they taught us how to live,” Father McShane said.

Interfaith Reflection

The Mass followed an interfaith prayer service held the evening before, in which about 20 people gathered at Cunniffe Fountain on the Rose Hill campus and then walked to Finlay Gardens, the site of Fordham’s memorial to the three students and 36 alumni who died in the Sept. 11 attacks.

“We bring our hearts together as a community so that our remembrance, our commitment, our hope, and our light may burn more brightly in the world,” said Joan Cavanagh, Ph.D., GSE ’05, ’17, the University’s director of spiritual and pastoral ministry, during the service.

The service included prayers from different faiths, with readings from the Bible and the Koran, as well as a singing of “Amazing Grace.”

Students read aloud the names of the members of the Fordham community who died on 9/11. After a closing prayer, students placed a few yellow roses in a vase at the base of the memorial.

“Let us remember that we are called to take our individual life and let it shine brightly each day, wherever we are,” said Kathryn Anderson Kuo, associate director of campus ministry for liturgy, in closing. “Perhaps whenever you pass by this memorial, you might ask yourself, how am I bearing witness to the lives of those that have gone before me? How am I letting my light shine, and how am I bringing peace to those who cross my path each day?”

One attendee, John DiDonato, was a 35-year-old MTA subway conductor who had planned to do some sightseeing at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. But instead he stayed in his apartment, watching the nightmare unfold on TV. “It still resonates in my head, just watching the first tower go down. I still see it,” said DiDonato, a communication and media studies student at Fordham’s School of Professional and Continuing Studies.

Personal Recollections

On Saturday, at the University Church, Kevin Horbatiuk, FCLC ’78, LAW ’81, took to the podium to read out the names of all 39 Fordham students and alumni who died that day. At the close of the service, Father McShane asked all the people in attendance—numbering about 80—to turn around so they were facing south, toward the former site of the World Trade Center, and raise their right hands in blessing.

Following the service, people were still stopping by the memorial at Finlay Gardens to reflect. Sarah Bel, FCRH ’08, was visiting with her father, Roger Bel, who was working on the 56th floor of the South Tower. “Twenty years ago, in the morning, I thought I was going to die,” he said.

Headed down the stairwell after the first plane hit, he kept going when he was told it was OK to go back up to his office. He recalled helping a woman who was frozen with fright, curled up in a corner, to get out of the building. Asked what the 20th anniversary means to him, he cited the need for greater national unity.

“We really were American that day,” he said. “Everybody helped everybody.”

Caley Knox, a Fordham sophomore, lost her uncle, Thomas Patrick Knox, who was working in the World Trade Center at the time. “We’ve always talked about there being a missing piece” in the family, she said. “I just would have liked to know him.”

“He’s very alive through us, still,” said Knox, who was visiting the memorial with Marlaina Cirone, also a Fordham sophomore.

Cirone said her father watched both planes strike the twin towers from the roof of his business’s building on the Bowery. “It’s something my parents can never forget,” she said. “They know that their lives have been changed ever since that day, and I think for every New Yorker, it’s the same way.”

—Taylor Ha contributed reporting to this story. 

“We barely knew each other at that point,” says McGilvery, who is now a weekday morning anchor at WTIC-TV (FOX61) in Hartford, Connecticut. “We were in school for two weeks and somebody came into a class early that Tuesday morning and said something is going on. And the professor just sat there with us, and we talked about it, and we went back to our dorm and you could see smoke from the top of Hughes Hall.”

For McGilvery, that time in his college career, while traumatic, was also one that brought him and his classmates closer together and reminded them of why they had chosen to go to Fordham.

“I think in that moment, you made friends that have lasted a lifetime, and you were immediately reminded of your responsibility to lead with conscience, to be a critical thinker, to be open to a world that was larger than what many of us knew at that point. … People were donating blood, everybody was jumping up to do what they could. And you really saw immediately the character of a class come together to do some really incredible things.”

McGilvery majored in communications and political science at Fordham College at Rose Hill, and he joined United Student Government (USG) on campus, eventually becoming president. On the first anniversary of the attack, USG, along with the recently graduated Class of 2002, unveiled a 9/11 Memorial in the Finlay Gardens, near the Bathgate Avenue entrance to campus. (The memorial was also unveiled at the Lincoln Center campus.) And as a member of his Class of 2005 Jubilee Committee, he and his fellow committee members raised class gift funds for Fordham’s 9/11 Scholarship for their 15th reunion in 2020.

“It was a small gesture,” he said, “but hopefully one that’s packed with a lot of gratitude for the fact that we got through that experience together, and in a small way might be able to help someone else.”

Classes, Clubs, and Internships Set a Career Path

As an undergraduate, McGilvery also worked as a Rose Hill Society campus tour guide for prospective students and their families,  and he was a member of Fordham Nightly News, the student broadcast journalism club and news show that launched during his senior year and gave him some of his earliest broadcasting experience.

Meanwhile, he took full advantage of Fordham’s proximity to news outlets, completing internships at Good Morning America, 20/20, and ABC’s Primetime.

“I knew from an early age that I wanted to get into the news and there was literally no better place in the planet to do that,” McGilvery says of Fordham’s New York City location.

While his communications classes gave him the journalistic foundation for his future career—he cites Paul Levinson, Ph.D., and CBS News executive and correspondent Joseph Dembo as particularly inspiring professors—McGilvery also points to his political science courses as shaping his ability to parse difficult topics and engage in conversations around them.

“Fordham had great debate,” he recalls. “We talked about everything. We talked about world events in political science classes. Fordham had that rare ability to bring together people from all walks of life.”

And through the study abroad program Semester at Sea, which brought him to 10 countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America in 100 days during the fall of his junior year, McGilvery says he was exposed to the world in ways that had a lasting influence on him.

“There’s no better way to see the diversity of the world than through something like that,” he says. “It also brought me back to campus [ready]to ramp up my experience, having been exposed to an even larger world.”

Telling the Extraordinary Stories of Everyday People

After graduating in 2005, McGilvery worked for a year in health care communications, before deciding to get a master’s degree in journalism at Emerson College in Boston, where he continued to hone his broadcasting skills.

Upon completing that two-year program, he began his first broadcast job in 2008 at WVIR-TV (NBC29) in Charlottesville, Virginia. He says he chose that job over one in Bangor, Maine, because having grown up in Massachusetts and stayed in the Northeast for school, he wanted to try living in a different part of the country. As a reporter for the station, he was tasked with writing, reporting, filming, and editing his stories.

McGilvery spent three years in Charlottesville before moving to Burlington, Vermont, in 2011 to take a job as an anchor, reporter, and talk show host at WCAX-TV (CBS3). He anchored the nighttime broadcast there with co-anchor Jennifer Costa, FCRH ’06, and on the daily afternoon talk show he hosted, he covered “everything from politics to sports to cooking to entertainment,” he said.

Then, in 2017, he began his current role at FOX61, where he anchors the news desk from 4 to 6 a.m. He is now back in the station’s studio for that early morning shift after eight months of anchoring from his living room during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. From 6 to 11 a.m., he does field reporting, traveling around Connecticut to tell what he calls the “good news stories of the people who live in our region.” And although he also covers more hard news events like President Biden speaking at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy’s commencement this past May, McGilvery says it is the everyday stories of people doing good that he relishes more than anything.

“Everyday people have extraordinary stories,” he says. “I have the privilege of an incredible platform to share really interesting people and innovative ideas and folks who may not otherwise get that exposure.”

McGilvery credits Fordham with helping to shape him both professionally and personally, noting that he is still close friends with many of his classmates and that he brings his school spirit to work, asking his co-anchors to wear maroon with him on Fordham Giving Day.

“There are few experiences in my life that rival my four years on campus, and I know the richness it has brought to my life, to my friendships, to who I am today,” he says. “And I feel privileged to share a little bit of that with other people.”

What are you most passionate about?
I love to try new things, and I’ll do just about anything once. I [recently]flew in a Chinook helicopter and trained with the Connecticut National Guard. Other weeks, it’s anything from aerial yoga and rock climbing to lacing up with Disney on Ice. I also do a lot of volunteer work with the Down Syndrome Association of Connecticut and got the chance to sponsor an assistance dog named Morrissey through the nonprofit NEADS World Class Service Dogs.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
My dad told me that people are lucky to have one positive experience with someone else during the course of the day, and why not be that person? My mom taught me not to sell myself short and that a handwritten thank-you note still means a lot.

What’s your favorite place in New York City? In the world?
I made some of my best friends in Hughes Hall and never missed an opportunity to recruit new Ram fans on Eddies Parade. I also studied abroad while at Fordham and loved the Great Wall of China and going on safari in Tanzania.

Name a book that has had a lasting influence on you.
Right now, I’m reading Fraternity by Diane Brady. It looks at the bold leadership of a Jesuit priest who worked to bring a group of young Black men to the College of the Holy Cross following MLK’s death in the 1960s.

Who is the Fordham grad or professor you admire most?
Dennis Ahern, FCRH ’67, assistant principal for professional development and supervision at Fordham Prep. I met Mr. Ahern while I was at Fordham with his two children, Kevin, FCRH ’05, and Caitlin FCRH ’08. For almost 50 years, Mr. Ahern has mentored generations of young people in the traditions of Jesuit education. He inspires people to be curious and kind. He’s a man for others, and his humble leadership has helped countless students lead lives committed to doing good. He reminds us all that character counts.

“General, you will be remembered as one of the finest and most dedicated soldiers in a long and storied history of the United States military, no question about it,” the president said after describing Keane’s distinguished 38-year Army career stretching from his time as a cadet in the Fordham ROTC program to the Vietnam War to the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Among other achievements, Trump said, Keane “designed new training methods to ensure that military leaders would always be extremely well prepared for the intensity of combat command,” and also designed “state-of-the-art” counterinsurgency combat training for both urban and rugged environments.

In his own remarks, Keane said he was “deeply honored by this extraordinary award.”

“To receive it here in the White House, surrounded by family, by friends, and by senior government officials, is really quite overwhelming, and you can hear it in my voice,” he said. “I thank God for guiding me in the journey of life,” he said, also mentioning his “two great loves”—his wife Theresa, or Terry, who died in 2016, and the political commentator and author Angela McGlowan, “who I will love for the remainder of my life.”

“With all honesty, I wouldn’t be standing here without their love and their devotion,” he said.

Fordham Ties

Keane is the sixth Fordham graduate to receive the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. The most recent alumni recipient was sportscaster Vin Sully, FCRH ’49, awarded the medal by President Barack Obama in 2016.

Keane has advised President Trump and has often provided expert testimony to Congress since retiring as vice chief of staff of the Army in 2003. He is a Fordham trustee fellow and a 2004 recipient of the Fordham Founder’s Award.

Keane grew up in a housing project on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and was the first member of his family to attend college. He had 16 years of Catholic education, including his time at Fordham, where there was a prevailing idea that “you should have a sense of giving things back, and finding ways to do that,” he said in an interview last week on Fox News Radio’s Guy Benson Show.

Six other Fordham alumni, including some who were his contemporaries at Fordham, attended the ceremony. One of them, Joe Jordan, GABELLI ’74, said he’s impressed with how Keane, on television, “can say so much in such a short time that makes sense.”

“He attributes a lot of it to the philosophy courses he took at Fordham,” said Jordan, an author and speaker specializing in financial services who met Keane about 15 years ago, when he was a senior executive at MetLife and Keane was on the board. “He’s a guy who’s extremely successful, extremely humble, has a common touch, and always remembers his friends and attributes a lot of his success not to himself but to the people around him, and the people who helped form him.”

Also in attendance was retired General Keith Alexander, former director of the National Security Agency, who has appeared at Fordham events, including the International Conference on Cyber Security.

Turning Points

Keane earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1966. He became a career paratrooper, going to Vietnam to serve with the 101st Airborne Division, which he later commanded.

He was decorated for valor in Vietnam, which was a turning point for him, with its close combat in which “death was always a silent companion,” he said.

“It was there I truly learned the value of life, the value of human life—to treasure it, to protect it,” he said in his White House remarks. “The experience crystallized for me the critical importance of our soldiers to be properly prepared with necessary skill and the appropriate amount of will to succeed in combat.”

He said he spent his Army career “among heroes who inspired me, and I’m still in awe of them today.”

“My sergeants, my fellow officers, and my mentors shaped me significantly, and several times they saved me from myself,” he said. “That’s the truth of it.”

The 9/11 attacks were a second major turning point for him, he said. He was in the Pentagon when it was attacked, and helped evacuate the injured. He lost 85 Army teammates, he said, and two days later was dispatched to New York City to take part in the response to the World Trade Center attacks.

“It was personal, and I was angry,” he said. “I could not have imagined that I would stay so involved in national security and foreign policy” after leaving the Army, he said. “My motivation is pretty simple: Do whatever I can, even in a small way, to keep America and the American people safe.”

Watch the ceremony honoring General Keane

Several Fordham alumni attended a reception honoring General Keane on March 10. From left: Scott Hartshorn, GABELLI ’98; Phil Crotty, FCRH ’64; the Rev. Charles Gallagher, FCRH ’06; Paul Decker, GABELLI ’65; Laurie Crotty, GSE ’77; General Jack Keane, GABELLI ’66; and Joe Jordan, GABELLI ’74. On the right is Roger A. Milici, Jr., vice president for development and university relations at Fordham.

Grasso says he was so impressed by his fellow students’ quick and professional response to his health crisis that he applied to join the Fordham EMS team—known as FUEMS—as soon as he recovered. And the life experience he gained as an EMT was an education that was just as meaningful as his studies in business and law.

“I saw everything from cuts and bruises to seizures and heart attacks,” he recalls. “And as an officer, I was able to get perspective on the overall operation.”

Rising up the ranks, he was elected director of the club, a position that prepared him for his future career: Today, Grasso owns an ambulance company and emergency vehicle repair service in the Bronx, just steps from the campus where it all began.

Reminiscing about stories like this made for lively conversations at the FUEMS’ April 1 gathering at the Villa Barone Manor in the Bronx to commemorate the club’s 40th anniversary. More than 120 students and alumni attended to celebrate the club’s evolution over four decades.

From humble beginnings to city resource

What began with a handful of students who saw the need for an on-campus emergency response service in the 1970s and ’80s has flourished into a student corps of more than 200 members, 12 officers, and two state-certified ambulances, with collaborative partnerships with emergency service groups throughout New York City.

One of the club’s original pioneers, Bruce Nedelka, GABELLI ’79, is now a certified emergency medical services officer, a title held by just over 100 nationwide, and a nationally registered paramedic and division chief and public information officer of the City of Virginia Beach.

“We started out on foot with fanny packs and basic equipment,” he says. “I never imagined back then that FUEMS would someday serve as backup to the city and the Bronx 911. That gives me a great feeling.”

Those early efforts were followed by a few like-minded students, including Bill White and Dave Winters, both FCRH ’89, who were instrumental in formalizing the student club and purchasing its first ambulance.

“We’re very proud of it, but it’s not about us,” White says. “It’s about the young men and women who are waking up at 3 a.m. to help people in crises and who are continuing the Fordham tradition of service for others.”

Over the years, FUEMS has been an integral part of the city’s emergency response efforts—from the daily calls to big disasters. FUEMS was among the emergency crews that responded to the World Trade Center during 9/11. “They went down and waited for survivors, but there weren’t any,” recalls Kathleen Malara, MSN, FNP, of Fordham’s Student Health Center, who serves as a FUEMS adviser. “It was very traumatic for the students.”

Honoring a fallen colleague

More recently, the student EMTs participated in the funeral procession for a Yadira Arroyo, a veteran FDNY EMT in the Bronx who was killed on the job in March.

“This hit our organization hard, as a few of our members talked to Yadira at St. Barnabas during late-night shifts,” says Natalie Sturgeon, the club’s outgoing director, who plans to attend medical school to become a trauma surgeon.

In the spirit of fellowship for their fallen colleague, FUEMS and Emergency Aid Training—the group that provides FUEMS EMT instruction—announced their donation to a fund for Arroyo’s five children at the anniversary celebration, a gesture that was met with a standing ovation when the gift was accepted by an FDNY union official.

Father Gregory Rannazzisi, FCRH ’05, a former FUEMS volunteer, gave a blessing at the dinner and asked for a moment of silence for the late Father Joseph Currie, S.J., former FUEMS chaplain.

Valuable career training

Many student EMTs join the club to gain state certification and hands-on experience for future careers in the health professions. Training is intense and includes a semester-long course, with classes held at night and on the weekends, and exams that lead to New York state certification. With an influx of volunteers over the past two years, students commit to two shifts each month, but can request more.

The reward of doing work that saves lives attracted Matthew Niehaus, FCRH ’09, to become a FUEMS volunteer while he was a pre-med student at Fordham. Today, the Cleveland native is completing a medical residency in Philadelphia, and he will continue on to a critical care fellowship in Pittsburg.

“The experiences I had definitely led me to emergency medicine,” Niehaus says. “I remember one case in particular when a visitor fell off of a roof on campus. There was a very collaborative effort between the students who responded, and we got the patient to the hospital. Calls like that got me interested in working in trauma.”

Mickaela O’Neill, FCRH ’15, felt she was destined for a career in the medical field when she arrived at Fordham, but after four years with FUEMS she shifted gears from becoming a doctor to becoming a physician assistant so she could spend more time with patients.

Now in graduate school at Midwestern University in Arizona, O’Neill adds that even compared to other EMS teams she’s served with, the friends she made at FUEMS were more like family.

“Helping other students along with students your own age was extremely unique. It wasn’t easy juggling FUEMS with being a pre-med student. You have to be committed and make sacrifices in your social life, but I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

Unlike O’Neill, current FUEMS chief Heather Cahill wasn’t necessarily planning on a career in medicine when she arrived at Fordham. She was a dancer in high school and considering a career in the performing arts. But the Fordham College at Rose Hill junior—just elected for her second year as chief—has decided on a career in forensic science. Responding to campus calls ranging from diabetic emergencies to anaphylactic shock to sports injuries, seizures, and fevers helped confirmed her career path.

“Some situations can be very scary and life threatening,” Cahill says. “But making a difference in someone’s life, even sometimes saving a life, that makes it all worthwhile.”

–Claire Curry

Check out photos from the dinner below. (Photos by Erinn Halasinki)

I was in the Pentagon on 9/11 and lost 85 teammates from the Army Headquarters (among the 125 people killed in the Pentagon and the 59 passengers who died on Flight 77), including a dear friend, Lt. Gen. Timothy J. Maude, a three-star general. My secretary lost five friends she had known for more than 20 years. We sent a general officer to every funeral. Terry, my wife, and I attended scores of funerals. Most were buried in Arlington, all together at a site selected in view of the Pentagon.

On that fateful day, I was in my office when one of my staff rushed in to turn on the TV and advise me something terrible had happened in New York City. I saw that a plane had hit the World Trade Center (WTC). I am a born and raised New Yorker. I noticed it was a blue-sky day and you could not hit the WTC by accident. I knew in 1993 terrorists had tried to bomb the WTC and bring it down from an underground parking garage. I knew instinctively it had to be a terrorist attack and said as much. I ordered the Army Operations Center (AOC) to be brought up to full manning (which was fortuitous because many who occupied it came from the blast area where the plane would eventually hit the Pentagon). The Pentagon is five stories high and five stories below ground level. It houses on a normal day about 25,000 people, most of them civilians. Up until the time the Sears Tower was built in Chicago, it was the largest office building in the U.S. The AOC was on the lowest floor.

We watched the second plane hit the WTC. My operations officer, a two-star general, called me to confirm that the AOC was fully manned. He also advised me that he was monitoring FAA communications. All planes were being grounded, he said, but a plane that took off from Washington, D.C., had turned around in the vicinity of Ohio and approached D.C. from the south along I-95 before turning east, short of the city, and then south again. We know now that the terrorist flying that plane likely believed he was too high. The general and I were discussing procedures for evacuating buildings in D.C. when the plane hit us. My office shook violently and eventually began to fill with smoke. I asked the general if he felt the impact. He said no (he was five stories down under the ground floor). I told him we were just hit and advised him to tell the U.S. Army around the world what happened and that, given the status of the AOC, which was unharmed, we would still maintain command and control of the Army. I told my immediate staff to call home and to evacuate. I kept my executive officer, a colonel, and my aide, a major, with me. I gave them my shirts from my office bathroom, and we soaked them in water and wrapped them around our nose and mouth and headed toward the blast site.

We were about a hundred yards away when the smoke became thicker. People were running from the blast area, and we were ensuring that everyone was getting out. At some point, my executive officer tapped my shoulder and said: “Sir, I think we need to leave this to others and go to the AOC and take command of the Army.” Of course I knew immediately that he was right, and we joined my staff in the AOC. As other officers joined us who were outside the building, we noticed that their shirts were full of blood; some had used their ties as tourniquets to assist the wounded.

We heard the report that five planes inbound to the U.S. were unaccounted for and that fighter aircraft were mustered to engage them. Vice President Cheney had given permission to shoot them down if necessary. I can remember thinking, what must be going through the mind of the pilots knowing they would kill hundreds of innocent people to save thousands. Fortunately, the pilots made visual contact with the airplanes and eventually radio contact, and all five planes were safe. The AOC has very large screens, floor to ceiling, where we monitored activities. The Secretary of the Army was taken by helicopter to our classified alternate site. He did not want to go, but he had no choice.

That night, before I visited the wounded in the hospitals in D.C. and Virginia at about 11 p.m., I told my officers that the Pentagon and the WTC represented the first battle of a new war. “The days of treating terrorists as criminals and bringing them in to the justice system are over. Today’s attack is an act of war, as all terrorist attacks are. The Army will bear the brunt of this fight, and we intend to go find them and we will kill and destroy them by the thousands.” We took one step toward the enemy that night by putting a work plan together to support CENTCOM, who we knew would be in charge of the war. I ordered the 82nd Airborne from Fort Bragg to secure the Pentagon. They were there when people came to work.

We visited five hospitals, seeing all the wounded. The worst had horrific burns. We heard stories of extraordinary heroism. We saw the first responders, many who never left, even though another shift had come on. They told me that because it was the Pentagon, so many of the wounded were initially treated by military people who are trained to treat injuries. In many cases, the bleeding had been stopped, and the wounded were being treated for shock when they arrived. The first responders indicated that lives were saved as a result. Some of the wounded would stay in the hospital for weeks.

The next day, we knew we had a number of people killed because they were unaccounted for. The Army team in the Pentagon showed up for work, on time, mostly civilians. I was so proud of them as I traveled the building to provide reassurance. They knew we were at war and they were a part of something much larger than self. I also knew as I spoke to survivors that many were hurting mentally and emotionally. I ordered the Army surgeon to bring doctors and counselors over to the building to help our folks cope. I also told the Army chief historian to document what took place, it’s part of our history now, and also to record the heroism that took place. When appropriate, I said, we would recognize those involved.

I visited the crash site on 9/12 with the chief engineer, and what I saw was quite remarkable. The upper floors at the plane’s point of entry had collapsed due to the blast and heat from the fire. The Pentagon is actually five independent rings separated by an alley between each ring. The plane entered at the ground floor, knocking down outside lampposts on the approach, and penetrated three of the five rings, with the nose of the aircraft penetrating the inner wall of the third ring. I was looking at what appeared to be a blackened multistory parking garage. I asked, “Where are all the desks, the computers, the walls, the plane?” He said all was consumed in the fire of the jet fuel, likely 2,000-degree heat. He showed me the strut of the plane which held the front tires, and it was in the alley between the third and fourth wing. The whole fuselage had entered the building but nothing was left. I realized that our dead teammates and the remains of the passengers were all around us and had been consumed by the fire.

We ordered the Old Guard, 3rd Infantry from Fort Myer, to the site. They are infantry soldiers. They would come with body bags, and when the fire department recovery teams spotted remains, we asked that all work stop. Everyone on site would stand in place. A four-man team of soldiers would move to the remains and recover them to a tent set up in the parking lot where a chaplain prayed over them with a two-man honor guard at attention. After honors, we turned the remains over to the FBI. They were later returned to us and flown by CH47 helicopter to Dover, Delaware, for identification by their families. We were determined to properly honor our dead as we would on any battlefield.

The engineer indicated that we were standing in the first renovated wedge of the Pentagon, which had not been fully reoccupied as all the new furniture had not arrived. Normally 5,000 people would have been working in that part of the building; at the time the plane hit, however, he estimated that only 2,000 people were there. Moreover, when the building was built during World War II, due to the iron shortage, no rebars were used in the cement beams holding up the floors. As part of the renovation, rebars were inserted. As such, the only part of the Pentagon that had iron rebars in the beams was the area where the plane hit, and that part was less than half occupied. He said the rebars held for 45 minutes, allowing people on the upper floors time to get out. If the plane had hit any other wedge containing approximately 5,000 people, the building would have collapsed immediately, and the casualties would have been on the same scale as the WTC or greater.

A few weeks later, we had the most extraordinary award ceremony I ever participated in. We had to create a new medal for civilians wounded in action because they are not authorized to receive the Purple Heart. The Secretary of the Army and I decorated many people that day for heroism and for their wounds, as they represented everyone who was part of the Army team. They were young and old, men and women, soldiers and civilians, officers and enlisted, black and white. Some were in great physical condition; some were not. It reminded me once again that heroism does not have a gender, a race, a religion, a size, or shape. Anyone willing to give up their life for another, acting instantaneously, has all to do with heart and character. This is about true honor. I was so proud to be among them at the largest and most unique award ceremony of my career.

A few days later, I visited Ground Zero as a senior military leader from New York City representing the Department of Defense. The fire chief in charge of the recovery walked me over the WTC complex of smoldering ruins. It was a macabre and overwhelming experience, as we had all witnessed on TV. I attended the mayor’s evening brief on a pier along the Hudson River. I was impressed; it was as organized as any military operations center. The people were steady, firm, and determined. I offered the mayor the assistance of his military, which had been already offered to him on the phone. As I left, with sirens blasting to take me back to my aircraft, there were hundreds of New Yorkers along the West Side Highway cheering and waving American flags. I was proud of my city, its leaders, and its people. I knew we would never be the same again.

—General Jack Keane, a four-star general, completed more than 37 years of public service in December 2003, culminating in his appointment as acting chief of staff and vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army. General Keane is a 1966 graduate of Fordham’s Gabelli School of Business.

The documentary, entitled In Our Son’s Name, follows the journey of Orlando Rodriguez, Ph.D., professor of sociology, and his wife, Phyllis, to reconcile the death of their son. Gregory Rodriguez died in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The documentary tells the story of a friendship that formed following the tragedy between Gregory’s bereaved parents and the mother of Zacarias Moussaoui, one of the 9/11 conspirators.

In Our Son’s Name premiered at Fordham in the spring of 2015. Since then it has been shown at numerous film festivals, academic institutions, churches, and mosques. It was one of the selections shown in the Global Peace, Peace on Earth, and Atlanta Film Festivals, and has been called: “a compelling message that further violence does not ease the pain of victims’ family members…” complete list of air times can be found at www.inoursonsname.com/tv.php

Locally, the documentary will air on New York stations WLIW21 and on  WLIW21.3 – see air times below.

WLIW21 – September 8 at  2 pm
September 15 at 2 am

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Couple’s Strength Fosters Forgiveness After 9/11

Professor Finds Restorative Justice and Reconciliation After 9/11

But a new documentary titled In Our Son’s Name chronicles the couple’s uneasy journey from victimhood to valor, in which the two steadfastly refuse to buy into a national narrative of war and revenge.

Among the many instances of empathy shown in the film, which had its premiere at Fordham on Feb. 24, the friendship between the Rodriguezes and the mother of one of the suspected terrorists, was perhaps the most poignant.

The event was sponsored by the Francis and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies.

The film initially focused on a friendship that developed between Phyllis and Aicha El-Wafi, the mother of Zacarias Moussaoui, the “20th hijacker”. But director Gayla Jamison said that, in the more than seven years it took to make the film, the relationship between Gregory, Phyllis, and Orlando—a professor in Fordham’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology—gradually became more central to the story.

“Orlando is an intellectual who may not have nurtured his emotional side,” Jamison said. “But that was who his son was.”

Gregory emerges in the film as a rather colorful character that had more than a few brushes with trouble before finding his way to a prestigious job at the World Trade Center. Their own son’s difficulties helped the Rodriguezes identify with Aicha El-Wafi’s agony, the film reveals. It is also what helped them identify with men incarcerated for murder at Sing Sing prison.

In a somewhat surprising segue, the couple visited with convicted felons at the prison to discuss their pain, while the prisoners talked about their remorse. Father Ron Lemmert, who came to the screening, arranged the visit.

“The men were profoundly moved by this,” said Father Lemmert, who serves at St. Teresa of Avila in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y. “They still talk about it.”

Phyllis Rodriguez said that making the film exposed old wounds.

“It was always difficult, but it was tempered by the fact that it will open different ways of thinking for other people, especially in this country’s violent culture,” she said.

She added that after 9/11 there was much talk about giving the death penalty for suspected terrorists, but she and Orlando held fast to beliefs they held before the event, no matter what the public thought.

“There was a lot of talk about the death penalty and let’s get it done fast,” she recalled. “And I said, ‘Do you think you’ll feel better? Do you think it’d bring your son, or daughter, or husband back?’”

“I have violent thoughts and vengeful thoughts,” she said. “It’s not a question of having those thoughts; it’s human to have them.”

“[But] it’s acting on them that’s the problem,” she said. “We just wish that our nation would understand that.”

9/11 Remembrance Mass
Presided by: Mark Zittle, O.Carm. Sponsored by Campus Ministry.
12 p.m. | Blessed Miguel Pro, S.J., Chapel, Westchester Campus
Contact: Campus Ministry (914) 367-3420

9/11 Remembrance Mass
Presided by: Robert Grimes, S.J., associate professor of music and dean of Fordham College at Lincoln Center. Sponsored by Campus Ministry.
12:15 p.m. | Blessed Rupert Mayer, S.J., Chapel, Lowenstein Center, Lincoln Center Campus
Contact: Campus Ministry (212) 636-6267

9/11 Remembrance Interfaith Prayer Service
A candlelight procession will begin in front of the McGinley Center and proceed to the 9/11 Memorial in Finlay Gardens. Sponsored by Campus Ministry.
8 p.m. | McGinley Center Lawn, McGinley Center, Rose Hill Campus
Contact: Conor O’Kane (718) 817-1272

Ten years ago, Orlando Rodriguez, Ph.D., was teaching at Fordham on the day his 31-year-old son, Gregory, an assistant vice president at Cantor Fitzgerald, died in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center.

Through the awful, lasting grief of losing a child, through searing emotions and sobering realizations, Rodriguez and his wife, Phyllis, transformed their pain into a restorative brand of justice that would bring meaning and dignity to their son’s sacrifice.

Rodriguez’ journey from anger and grief to forgiveness, acceptance and hope, he said, comes from “right out of the Gospels.”

“I can’t tell you that on September 11, 2001, I consulted the Gospels and thought, ‘This is how to act,’” he recalled. “But now, 10 years later, I can see that my journey took me in the direction of peacemaking. It sounds trite—turn the other cheek, judge not lest you be judged, examine yourself—but these kinds of honest examinations were the kinds of emotions that went into what we decided to do.”

In the days after the attacks, the couple wrote a letter titled “Not In Our Son’s Name,” which called on the United States government to reject military reprisals against the Afghan people. Its popularity on the Internet led Rodriguez and his wife to meet like-minded people who also lost family members in the attacks. Together they founded the group September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows.

Then, in November 2002, they and some others were invited to meet the mother of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called “21st hijacker,” who faced the death penalty for helping to plan the 9/11 attacks.

At Moussaoui’s sentencing trial, Rodriguez gave a victim impact statement on behalf of the defense, describing, among other things, the course he co-taught in the spring of 2002 on terrorism and society. The defense’s intention—successful, as it turned out—was to show jurors that many families of 9/11 victims were able to turn their grief into productive action.

Ultimately, Moussaoui was spared the death penalty and sentenced to life in prison.

It was a huge emotional challenge to testify, said the professor of sociology and criminology, but he had come to view his son as one of many victims of unjust wars and incursions waged in a “mad century of mutual violence.”

“Nearly 3,000 of our people, including Greg, were killed in that first incursion, and then many more than 3,000 Afghan and Iraqi civilians were killed next, and since then it has only climbed,” Rodriguez said. “Is my son’s death more meaningful than the death of some poor Iraqi boy who happened to be in the wrong place when a bomb fell? Or that of one of our soldiers killed by a roadside bomb?

“Honestly, I can’t say that it is. I have learned to equate their suffering with losing Greg.”

The couple’s story is being captured in the documentary film In Our Son’s Name. Produced and directed by Gayla Jamison and funded by the Catholic Communication Campaign and Al Jazeera English, it details the couple’s decision to befriend Moussaoui’s mother and to testify in the sentencing trial.

“We didn’t want to do the movie at first,” Rodriguez said. “We knew it was going to heighten the feelings we had experienced, just make them more raw.

“But we also knew there was potential here for opening people up, especially Americans, to the fact that there is such a thing as reconciliation and restorative justice.”

Once the film is complete, Rodriguez said he would like to show it at Fordham because it offers what he calls a teachable opportunity for students who were children when the attacks happened; and he is a teacher, after all.

“Ten years ago, the media showed us a lot of images of Arabs dancing in the streets after the towers fell,” Rodriguez recalled. “When Bin Laden was killed, I was taken aback by the fact that people who were 9 or 10 years old on 9/11 were cheering, celebrating—almost treating it like a sports event in which the United States had won. How is that different from Arabs dancing in the streets?

“I believe that there are a lot of misconceptions about political violence and terrorism, and that the message in this film can show students that there is another way of thinking about 9/11 and its aftermath.”

Rodriguez spent the 10th anniversary of his son’s death participating in a Fordham memorial event at Rose Hill, and he and his family also had a private gathering at his son’s gravesite. It was a day, he said, that was guaranteed to open wounds, but it was also a day to create opportunities to offer comfort to others.

“A lot of things have happened since 9/11,” he said. “But in some ways, it just happened yesterday.”

On a day when the entire country came together to mourn those lost in terrorist attacks a decade ago, the Fordham University community marked the occasion with full slate of memorials and masses.

While the ceremonies on Sunday, Sept. 11, focused on remembering the 39 Fordham students and alumni who died that day, they likewise emphasized Christian messages of peace, forgiveness and love.

More than 1,500 people gathered at masses at the Rose Hill and Lincoln Center campuses for anniversary remembrances and a traditional Mass of the Holy Spirit celebrated by Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham.

On what he called the “solemn and somber day for our nation,” Father McShane drew his homily from the Book of Sirach and the Gospel of Matthew, declaring that “living well is the best revenge.”

“God’s first impulse is always to show mercy, and to act with compassion. God is quick to forgive those who forgive others and reach out and love,” he said.

“In the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, we are all of us called to live life not with conspicuous consumption, and not to engage in the wrath of shock and awe. Rather we are called to live lives of conspicuous compassion, to give ourselves over to programs of charity, self sacrifice and love. If we live our lives in this way, I assure you that the terrorists of Sept. 11 win nothing.”

At Rose Hill, the University church was filled beyond capacity with students, community and members of the Security Traders Association of New York (STANY), who had attended a memorial luncheon hosted by John Tognino (FCLS ’75), chairman of Fordham’s Board of Trustees.

The luncheon honored some 44 STANY members who were killed, and another 164 who were inducted posthumously into STANY from firms like Cantor Fitzgerald, Keefe Bruyette & Woods and the New York Stock Exchanges. For Arthur Pacheco, a senior managing director for Bear Stearns at the time, it was a time for personal catharsis.

“I hired some of those kids; they were like my own children,” he said. “We may never have closure for what happened, but we all need consolation as we continue to make sense of it.”

Tognino, former executive vice president of global sales and member affairs at NASDAQ, described the chaos of that day and the shutdown of the nation’s trade and financial houses following the attack. He recounted the extraordinary efforts by STANY and the financial communities—some of which lost entire offices of employees—to get back up and running.

“Hundreds of our colleagues were missing,” said Tognino, who was in lower Manhattan on 9/11. “But the tragedy brought out the best in us. There was no shortage of heroes.”

After the mass, a procession of alumni, students, faculty, administrators and community members led by a color guard stretched from one end of the campus to the other. Those wishing to pay respects at Fordham’s 9/11 memorial in Finlay Gardens carried white carnations and yellow roses along a walkway lined with American flags. Students from Fordham’s interreligious council read the names of all 39 alumni and students who were killed on that day.

At Lincoln Center, community members attended an evening mass at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle and then walked silently to the 9/11 memorial on the Robert Moses Plaza for a candlelight vigil.

In addition to a reading of the names of those who perished that day, those assembled listened to Cait Hynes, a Ph.D. candidate in the Graduate School of Education, speak publically for the first time about her father Walter Hynes.

Hynes, a captain from Ladder 13, Engine 22 of the New York City Fire Department, was one of 343 members of the FDNY to die in the collapse of the World Trade Center. After a decade of silence, she said she decided to speak so as to better preserve the memory of him.

“I was only 12 years old when my dad died, but I will never forget the type of person he was and what he meant to me” she said, noting that he was also a lawyer and an owner of the Harbor Lights Pub in Rockaway, Queens.

“Even though he was always busy, he always had time for me and my sisters. He was always there to cheer us on at our soccer games, treat us to ice cream, take the family to Disney world or just help me with my math homework,” she said. “My dad was the type of person who truly lived his life for others.”

Eight men in her father’s fire company died that day, and Hynes said it was important to note that the bravery and selflessness they displayed that day was not unusual. That knowledge, and the love and compassion that everyone from fellow community members to total strangers have shown her, have helped tremendously, she said.

“I believe that through the people I have met, I have come to know the bond of human love,” she said.

“You will never hear me say I am glad 9/11 happened. I would give anything to go back in time and see my dad again. But for all the pain and all the tears, I can still appreciate the good things that came from that day. Over the past ten years, I have met people who I may have never otherwise known—people of every color, creed, age, nationality and walk of life. The stories of their generosity and compassion are far too numerous to tell.”

At a reception afterward, Joseph Pellicone, a senior at Fordham College at Lincoln Center from Monmouth County, N.J., reminisced about how he was attending fifth grade at the time. Although no one from his family was killed, a classmate’s father was on United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pa.

“I just remember confusion. We saw some kids going home, and not knowing what was the cause of it, and at the end, we found out about the trade center going down,” he said.

“My uncle worked right near there, and I remember him telling us how he ran from the towers. My uncle has always had problems with his legs, and the fact that he was able to keep running and he made it out okay, is just a miracle.”

Chantal Freeman, an FCLS junior from Chicago who sang in the choir at the mass, felt she needed to spend the day coming together and sharing with other people.

“It’s a time when we have to really take a step back and realize how we were in the world, and how consumed we are with ourselves in a way,” she said. “But it also brought us together, made us a stronger country in terms of loving our country.”

On Saturday, the University celebrated a Day of Service, in keeping with the call byPresident Obama “reclaim that spirit of unity” in the country.

Some 130 students from Rose Hill volunteered in the Bronx doing gardening, hosting a car wash and working in local soup kitchens. Before heading out to work on projects at the New York Botanical Garden, the Bainbridge Garden, Crotona Point Park and the Moshulu Parkway, they listened to talks by the Reverend Erika Crawford, Protestant chaplain in the department of campus ministry and Orlando Rodriguez, Ph.D., a professor of sociology who lost his son in the attacks and was the subject of a forthcoming documentary, In Our Son’s Name.

Heidi Hynes, executive director of the Mary Mitchell Center in the Crotona section of the Bronx also spoke, and she appealed to students to think of violence outside the confines of the one-on-one type exemplified by 9/11, and think about persistent inequality as a form of social violence.

(Inside Fordham senior writer Janet Sassi contributed to this story.)

September 11 Slideshow
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