Josh Piver of Stonington, 23, was killed on 9/11. Here's how his family has coped.

STONINGTON, CT — At 23, Josh Piver was working at his dream job in New York and had rented an apartment in Brooklyn with his buddies. Young and happy, he had a full, bright future ahead.

A few months after he started work in 2000, his mother, Susan Piver, sister, Erika Piver — then around 26 — and her children, his niece, Jocelyn, 7, and nephew, Chris, 6, went into New York City to visit him, and check out his office.

A two-decade-old weathered photo shows the family, literally and figuratively on the top of the world.

Just months later, that world would come crashing down and a son of Stonington would be gone.

Piver was killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

Coping with the profound grief "has not been easy," Erika said — for her, for her mother, for her children and for the entire family.

"He was my only sibling," she said. "We were close. The loss is hard."

Susan politely declines media interviews. Erika said this week, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the attacks, that her mother is, "OK, but the anniversaries and his birthday are the hardest for her."

A 1996 Stonington High School graduate and alumni of the University of Vermont, where he’d earned a degree in economics, he interned for Cantor Fitzgerald, a firm based in the World Trade Center, and after graduation, was offered a job there.

"He was just starting out in life," Erika told Patch in phone interviews. "He had everything before him.”

That September morning

That morning, like many before, Josh rode the elevator to the 105th floor of the North Tower.

That same morning, his sister was in a meeting at the Mystic Chamber of Commerce.

At 7:59 a.m., American Airlines flight 11, with 11 crew members, 76 passengers and five hijackers aboard, took off from Logan International Airport in Boston, originally bound for Los Angeles. Forty-seven minutes later, the hijacked Boeing 757 crashed into the North Tower between floors 93 and 99. Hundreds of Cantor Fitzgerald employees were trapped on the floors above. An hour and 42 minutes later, at 10:28 a.m., the North Tower collapsed.

The chamber meeting is "where I was when I found out,” Erika said.

In the minutes and hours after the attack, Erika said she and her family could hardly process what had happened. It would be Josh's friends that saved them.

“His friends, a close-knit group, came to be with my mom and me,” she said. “They came and they stayed. They were there for us. I give them all a lot of credit for helping me, helping us make it through those first days ... those first years."

They gave, “even as they were hurting, too,” she said.

“It was humbling to see.”

And as Josh’s buddies embraced the family, so too did the people of Stonington and all its villages.

It’s been that way for 20 years.

“What kept us going? This amazing community,” Erika, a Stonington native, explained. “They all got behind us. In the early days, we were in no condition to even think. I believe that everyone felt like they needed to do something. And what they did was amazing.”

A family's grief, a community's embrace

In the days after Sept. 11, 2001, people across Stonington, Pawcatcuk and Mystic reached out to offer help. The Mystic Chamber of Commerce, the very place where Erika was that morning, suggested and then helped to create a scholarship program and foundation in Josh's name.

Now managed by the Stonington Community Center, the Josh Piver Scholarship Foundation has awarded a number of Stonington High School seniors with academic scholarships. Students who apply are asked to write an essay that captures how they "connect" with Josh and how they will work to carry on his values as a "compassionate and conscientious" citizen.

Over these many years, there’s been myriad events and fundraisers to both honor his memory and to bolster the scholarship fund, all enthusiastically supported by the community. Though Erika said that in 2020, it was difficult to hold any fundraising events. Nonetheless, it was "our biggest year."

The annual Josh Piver Cup boys soccer tournament has been held for several years and is played by area schools' soccer teams.

Last year, the Stonington High School Boosters and the Athletic Hall of Fame donated the scoreboard for the Piver Field.

And Saturday, on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, a number of Stonington, Pawcatcuk and Mystic eateries are participating in the "Dine to Donate" fundraiser to support the Josh Piver memorial scholarship fund. Among them are: Jealous Monk, Dog Watch Cafe, Dog Watch Mystic, Macondo, Stonington Pizza Palace, Bravo Bravo, Go Fish, Breakwater, Red 36, Capt. Daniel Packer Inne, Oyster Club, Engine Room, Nana's Bakery and Pizza, Grass & Bone, Taquerio, Rio Salado, Steak Loft, and Nana's Bakery and Pizza.

"This community has been there for us all these years," Erika said, to both support the scholarship fund, but also importantly to "keep Josh's memory alive."

All about Josh

Growing up, Josh was “just a normal kid,” Erika described. “He loved to ski. He loved being out on the water. He loved movies, hanging out with his friends, and playing soccer.”

He was a standout goalie for Stonington.

Erika said that one of the things that most pains her is to think of all he missed, a life unfulfilled, not yet lived.

“Watching his friends get married, have kids, doing the things that he should have been doing, I’m happy for them but it hurts," she said. "He’d just gotten out of college. His life was just starting. He woke up and went to work that day and he ... nobody could have imagined what would happen.”

Her brother's life was stolen, she said.

After graduating from high school, he attended the University of Vermont — with his best friend since the fourth grade — Erika said. He started out majoring in environmental science and then switched to economics but still minored in the former. He landed the internship at Cantor Fitzgerald and they brought him on board. After his 2000 college graduation, he left for the Big Apple. At Cantor Fitzgerald, Josh traded pollution credits and energy credits. She said he loved his job and even helped a former college classmate get a post with the same firm. The two were together in the office that fateful morning.

More than 20 years ago, when Erika, Susan and the kids went to visit Josh, they did "touristy things," including a trip to Windows on the World, on the 107th floor of 1 World Trade Center, the North Tower. Josh worked a couple of floors down.

It’s at once a beautiful and painful memory for the Piver family, with Erika’s children very young, but old enough to remember.

The stories that need to be told

A history major, Erika believes that the stories about epic and significant, albeit mostly tragic, events should be more than a textbook summary. It's the "human element" that's vital to true history telling, she said. Families that are torn apart, that suffer. Like the Pivers.

"It can't be they are just names on a page in a book," she said. "Telling the stories will help us heal, help us learn from that history. Telling the stories to keep the memory alive. And that's a way to cope. It's the way we coped."

Erika's third child, Nakhi, was born in 2003. He was told the stories.

"My older two children remember him," she said. "Nakhi never met him, and missed having an uncle, but he knows Josh."

At Stonington High School, a class on 9/11 became part of the curriculum and Nakhi took the class, where the uncle he never met was spoken of.

"It was surreal for him, he said, but hearing, learning and sharing the stories" of the people lost and those left to grieve and cope "meant a lot to him," Erika said.

On a bench at Stonington Point dedicated to Josh and provided by Susan Piver's boss, Erika said, is an engraved message from Josh.

"Play music. Walk on the beach. I won't be far from reach."