February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
“I wanted them to know that I’m sorry for their loss,” said 9-year-old Seamus O’Brien, who journeyed from Skyrne, Co. Meath. He and his brother Gareth, who is 8, and their parents thought it important to visit New York on the anniversary of the attacks on Twin Towers. They were part of the Longford-based Smile to the World Project.
The children were selected to represent thousands of Irish children who donated their artwork in the aftermath of Sept. 11 that was then assembled into an approximately 20-by-100-foot banner.
Brisk winds swept dust from the site where the two buildings once stood in Lower Manhattan into the already tear-filled eyes of thousands attending ceremonies commemorating the 2,801 victims at Ground Zero this Sept. 11.
Each of the Irish children representing both sides of the border, said they truly felt the sadness those on the streets of New York experienced on the anniversary.
Martin McCartney, 7, who is from Antrim, colored his picture with giraffes, zebras and flowers because those things “make people happy.”
None of the children or their parents said they were apprehensive about being in New York, even with the city and nation on the second highest alert for another possible terrorist strike.
The children had interesting ideas on what should be done with the site. “I think they should put up a museum and put drawings inside of what happened there,” Gareth said.
The group’s appearance on NBC’s “Today Show” was scrapped because of time during their stay, but they did make an appearance on the Fox morning show, where the displayed their banner.
As Irish children reached out to help heal, one Irish-American family explained its own very personal loss.
Marie Halloran’s husband, Vincent Halloran, 43, was killed at Ground Zero. She found out weeks afterward that she was pregnant with their sixth child. Accompanied by her five sons: Jake, Conor, Aidan, Kieran, and Declan, she spoke with Tom Brokaw on Wednesday about the birth of her first daughter,
Faolin.
She said, like so many others, her husband was proud of his work to help others in distress and how so many of them were of Irish heritage like themselves.
With the youngest enjoying playing with a television microphone, she said her husband was a lieutenant in a Manhattan fire brigade who answered his call to duty but never returned. The children now carry pictures sealed in plastic of their father with various colored backgrounds. They exchanged them like baseball trading cards. Inscribed on the back of each is: “To keep your father’s memory alive — live your life like your father’s.”