Irish tributes

“I knew her very well. She was an exceptional lady,” said Jack Lynch, whose 30-year-old son, Firefighter Michael Lynch, died in the terror attacks in 2001. “She knew that 9/11 was really about the victims, honoring and remembering them.
“That was her main aim — to make sure that they were honored,” said Lynch, who emigrated from Tralee, Co. Kerry in 1956. “She was very conscious about that, and she stayed true to that ideal.”
“I’ve met in my life many people who have integrity,” he told the Echo, “Beverly exemplified what integrity is.
“She worked very hard to get the independent commission,” added Lynch, who traveled with Eckert to Washington DC shortly after the terror attacks. “She was capable of working with every type of person and bringing people together.”
Eckert, who was 57, met her husband Sean Rooney in Buffalo when they were both 16. She was traveling to the city last week to present a scholarship she had established in his memory at Canisius High School and to mark his 58th birthday with family and friends.
Rooney, a vice president at Aon Corporation, spoke to his wife by telephone from the South Tower during the last minutes of his life.
“She was a wonderful person,” said Bill Doyle, whose late son, 25-year-old Joe Doyle, worked as a government bond supervisor at Cantor Fitzgerald in the North Tower.
Doyle remembered meeting her in the weeks after the attacks. He said she would stay at three-hour nighttime meetings with politicians in New York even though she faced a long journey back to Connecticut.
“She was quiet, but she got her point across,” he said. “She was steadfast.”
Doyle said Eckert’s group, Voices of September 11th, which she formed with Mary Fetchet, expanded beyond its base in Connecticut. He said it is of the few organization that has survived from that time.
He said that Eckert understood the need to get all the family groups under one umbrella and he worked with her on that goal.
“She worked closely with the ‘Jersey Girls,'” he said, referring to the four widows of New Jersey victims who lobbied for an independent commission.
“They were down in Washington every other day, it seemed,” said Doyle, who himself made many trips to the nation’s capital.
“Beverly kept on going. She kept up her advocacy,” he said.
“Did she get all the answers? No,” Doyle said, “but without her, a lot less would be known.”
“I really feel for the families on both sides,” he said of the newly bereaved Eckerts and Rooneys.
“I’m so saddened that she and her husband should both die in such a manner,” Jack Lynch said. “It’s inconceivable to me.”