Without a trace

Hundreds of them appeared all over the city within 24 hours of the terrorists’ strike. Heartrending glimpses into the private lives of strangers, they were brief beacons of hope before that hope finally faded.
As we have learned, many anxious relatives had their worst fears confirmed within a day of the attack. But many other friends and relatives are still waiting on the call. To date, 1,484 victims of the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center have been formally identified — and almost as many have not.
Regrettably, there rarely was enough bone discovered among the World Trade Center ruins to make recognizable skeletons of many of the victims; there were no faces to be reconstructed; there were few teeth to be matched to dental records; and even fewer whole fingers to print.
So the painstaking task of matching DNA samples from the 14,249 body parts recovered at the site to the 2,795 people who are thought to have died in the attacks is still ongoing. That explains why this week, which sees the second anniversary of the attack, 1,311 victims still await formal identification.
The scale of the attack was such that standard DNA testing was simply not sensitive enough to cope with the number of victims. Researchers feared, for example, that the coincidental sharing of genes between unrelated people might lead to bogus identifications. They wanted to ensure that their findings were conclusive.
To solve these problems, DNA samples were collected from several relatives of each individual victim, in the knowledge that it’s unlikely that one victim’s DNA profile would be erroneously matched, for example, with the DNA of both parents of another victim.
Robert Shaler, chief of forensic biology at the city medical examiner’s office, had once publicly expressed his hope of making around 2,000 DNA identifications, but he no longer considers that to be a realistic goal. Now, Shaler said that he hopes for about 1,700 identifications — or 1,800 at the outside — and city officials recently notified victims’ families of that prospect.
This revised estimate has, understandably, caused anger and disappointment in equal measure among those left behind — and it points to a lingering question that is still raw in the minds of many grieving relatives: How do you mourn a loved one who has vanished without a trace?

Death certificate
On Sept. 11, 2003, almost 100 names will remain on the missing list. No one disputes they are gone, but the city will not list them among the confirmed dead until remains are identified or their grieving relatives can bring themselves to apply for a death certificate. The victims on the missing list do not have court-issued death certificates generally for two reasons — either their families don’t want to apply or they haven’t been able to. Many families have held memorial services for the dead, but have not been able to force themselves to apply for the death certificate, which states with grim finality, “Body Missing.”
The husband and relatives of Sara Manley-Harvey have learned how painful it can be to lose all trace of a loved one. Married to her husband, Bill, for just one month, she was working on the 93rd floor of the North Tower when the first plane hit. When no one received a phone call from her after the news broke, their anxiety intensified. Her relatives suspect she may have been killed instantly, but to date no trace of her DNA has been found.
Said her brother John Manley: “The first thing I did that morning was call my father in North Carolina, to ask if he’d heard anything. This was just a few minutes after 9 o’clock. From what he was able to see on television — based on where my sister’s office was located — he felt it was highly improbable that she had survived. His exact words, which he kept repeating, were: ‘It doesn’t look good.’ “
Unable to return to his home in New Jersey, John Manley and his wife spent the night with friends in Manhattan. The next day they stood for hours in a line outside Bellevue Hospital in the hope of hearing a word about Sara’s fate.
“There were other people on her floor whose bodies were found, but the more we learned about the attack the less hope we had of finding her remains,” Manley said.
Reconciling their hopes with the painful reality, like so many grieving relatives in the aftermath of Sept. 11, they reluctantly accepted that they might never find a trace of her. In this process, John Manley was aided by his Christian faith: “I just don’t believe that anything happens randomly. It’s extremely difficult for any of us to see the presence of God in a terrorist act like that — and I don’t pretend to have any expertise or exclusive insights into the forces at work in this world — but I have made my peace with it. An event like this tests one’s faith. The hard part is to walk away with one’s faith intact.”
And for those who find their faith faltering? Eibhlin Donlon-Farry, a professional psychologist associated with the Aisling Center in the heavily Irish neighborhood of Yonkers, knows that the grief that follows a violent trauma can change the course of a normal grieving process. She is also aware that many Irish people choose to isolate themselves rather than seek professional counseling.
But about the Sept. 11 attacks, Donlon-Farry said: “A difference I would see is in the preponderance of feelings of both powerlessness and anger. The people left behind — the survivors — not only experience guilt and sadness, they also feel victimized.”
Recent surveys support her view. Nearly two years after the darkest day in New York City’s history, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are still fresh on the minds of many. A NY1/Newsday poll released last week shows about one-fifth of those surveyed think about 9/11 every day. About 60 percent said they think about the terrorist attacks at least once a week. Pollsters said the figures reflect how New Yorkers are still traumatized by the tragedy. Remarkably, the poll also showed that more than half of New Yorkers surveyed lost someone they knew or know a family who lost someone on 9/11.
The Irish, habitually stoic in the face of their tribulations, responded characteristically in the months after the attack. “I have to say that I was astonished at the low numbers who volunteered for counseling at the Aisling Center,” Donlon-Farry said. “I was expecting a large response, but none came. It was actually worrying.”
Many firefighters, police officers and rescue workers simply got on with their lives in the months after. “But what’s beyond the structure of the working day? Are they getting up exhausted? Are they not having restful sleep? Have they lost their appetite? Those are symptoms to look for,” she said.
“The initial feelings of grief in an event like this can be overwhelming and frightening,” Donlon-Farry continued. “Confusion, anger, intense sadness, guilt and even fear are characteristic phases of the process. They can lead finally toward an acceptance — this can happen 12 months after an event, or five years after. One of the myths about grief is that it has a time frame. It’s misleading of talk of ‘closure.’ It takes as long as it takes.”