After Identifying Remains At Ground Zero Rubble, Volunteer Will Help Dedicate Memorial

When Rick Lohrstorfer says a few words Sunday at the dedication of a 9/11 memorial in Ridgewood Cemetery, he’ll only allow himself a couple of seconds’ flashback to the horrors he experienced in New York in the terrorist attack aftermath.

At the 3 p.m. dedication, which will include fire department officials from Niles and a Northbrook Boy Scout troop at the cemetery, near the Des Plaines/Glenview border, Lohrstorfer can’t dwell in the past. Nor can he go through life emotionally dragged down by the grisly job he performed along with thousands of other public safety workers and other public and private-sector people who helped a wounded nation recover from the horror.

After all, Lohrstorfer, of Palatine, has been a lifelong funeral director and general manager. He had to be calm, comforting,  professional and understanding every day in countless families’ times of grief. And as a forensic worker and member of a Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team (DMORT), mobilized like the National Guard for disasters, he similarly had to bring closure to so many 9/11 victims’ families who initially had no definite word on their loved ones’ fates. He had to help identify some of the thousands killed in the fall of the Twin Towers through identification of the often-scant remains extracted from the rubble.

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In 2002, the  Alderwoods Group, owner of a series of area cemeteries, made a commitment to construct a 9/11 memorial in each. Lohrstorfer was involved in designing each one and attended each dedication, the latest of which is at Ridgewood. At one time, his daughter Julie Lohrstorfer was general manager of Ridgewood; she has since moved up in the company after Alderwoods merged with SCI. 

Artifact from Twin Towers included

This memorial at Ridgewood will feature a relic of the Twin Towers. It's a twisted steel beam, the type of which has been distributed to fire departments and municipalities nationwide. will be integrated with the memorial along with photos of New York scenes. The dedication ceremony will feature an honor guard and flag ceremony.

“People can always come there,” Lohrstorfer said.  “It was an honor to be a part of this team.”

Julie Lohrstorfer is looking forward to seeing her dad wearing his uniform from DMORT at Sunday's ceremony. Normally he's only permitted to wear a uniform for field work, but he got permission to wear it at the 9/11 memorial ceremony.

"I've never seen him wearing it," said Julie, who was in college in 2001.

Setting up a temporary morgue

For three years after 9/11, he gave talks on his experiences. Retired since 2008 from full-time funeral work, he continues to work for DMORT, part of the National Disaster Medical System, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services.  Other funeral directors and forensic workers invited him to join 15 years ago. The team responds to plane and train crashes, floods and other disasters to set up a mobile morgue to aid in identification of victims.

“We need to be ready to go within 12 to 24 hours,” Lohrstorfer said.

The chaos of 9/11 was still sorting itself out when Lohrstorfer, part of a second group of forensic workers, flew to New York eight days later. With all commercial flights grounded, the first group boarded a military transport plane escorted by fighter jets on Sept. 13.

“The immensity of the event was still developing, and we were setting up teams,” Lohrstorfer said. “Everyone started out as a missing person. People were reported missing by several different family members.”

Doing a grisly job with professionalism

Lohrstorfer’s group worked the overnight shift at the New York medical examiner’s office, but occasionally were assigned to duty at Ground Zero.

“The first time we went to Ground Zero, no one even spoke or talk,” he said. “You had on respiratory  gear.”

The sense of destruction suggested a small nuclear weapon had detonated nearby, minus the radioactivity, to collapse a pair of 100-story buildings and surrounding structures.

“No one ever realized a plane could be that kind of a weapon, “  Lohrstorfer said. “Even the people who did it didn’t anticipate it.”

Lohrstorfer’s crew, which included EMS, police and fire personnel,  used every means possible to identify remains, which in many cases “were almost vaporized,” he said. Employed were fingerprints, dental records and extensive use of DNA matches.

Daily distraction was needed

To distract themselves from their nightly horror shows, the crew would meet every afternoon upon awakening to meet and participate in some activity.

“We’d  go for a fairly long walk in Central Park,” Lohrstorfer said. “We were the first group to visit the  Empire State Building  when it opened. You needed to keep yourself in balance. But you knew that’s what you were there for. That helped you stay grounded.”

If the forensic workers didn’t have a big-enough ongoing job, they also had to handle the aftermath of a Nov. 12, 2001 crash of a Dominican Republic-bound jet in New York.

Lohrstorfer came home with renewed perspective: “Live every day to its fullest; there are no guarantees,” he said. Five years later, his family gave him a trip to see the New York he missed the first time around. He attended a Broadway show. Of course, he visited Ground Zero and was interviewed by WLS-TV’s Kevin Roy there.

“This renewed our Americanism,” he said. "America had a real awakening about what this is all about. It renewed the spirit in all of us.”

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