Names in the order of life and love

Some of the names surrounding one of the reflecting pools at the 9/11 Memorial.

 

By Ray O’Hanlon

At first it was frustrating.

I couldn’t find the name.

That’s because the names were not set in alphabetical order on the plaques atop the walls surrounding the reflecting pools.

Somebody had the bright idea to jumble them up.

I was correct about the bright idea bit.

And the jumbling.

But it was only after asking that I found out that the names had been laid out, very deliberately, in a kind of life and living order.

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People who had been friends, lovers, colleagues, had been joined together in the most important part of the 9/11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan, the part of it that remembers the lost people.

How they had lived was being remembered as much as the fact that they had died in this place.

And that was good.

Better in fact, for in the search for the name of the one person that I had known personally, and who had lost his life on September 11, I had to read the names of so many others, too many others.

And like virtually all visitors to the memorial, I allowed my eyes to linger on those names and to wonder about these people, their lives and loves, good days and not so good.

The jumble works. By God it works.

It draws you in and delays you.

And this is not a place to rush through.

You have to linger. You must.

You have to consider. You must.

You have to remember. You must.

Doug was his name.

He had lived with his wife below my wife and myself in a Brownstone walk-up in Brooklyn.

Doug was a good guy, a Midwesterner from Ohio.

We were neighbors, and we were both couples starting out on our respective roads to the future.

In time, my wife and I would have three children.

So would Doug and his wife.

So on 9/11 three kids living in New Jersey lost their Dad to an act of such evil that it defies ordinary words.

Eventually, I found Doug.

And I could assume that the other names around him had been friends and colleagues.

He had worked in the South Tower, 104th floor.

Not a place to be that September morning, 15 years ago this Sunday.

Doug was just 38, not even in what we call the prime of life.

If there was one small smidgen of comfort for his family it was the fact that his body was found – two days after the towers fell.

So having to search for his name was no big thing at all.

And a very big thing.

His name is still there.

If you visit, keep an eye out for Douglas MacMillan Cherry.

One of the good guys.

 

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